Stuck on Southern

No, not food or wailing blues music, both of which I do like a lot. I’ve been reading southern books for several weeks (months?) now. Several years ago I gave myself a graduate course on Tennessee Williams, then black writers. More recently it’s been V.C. Andrews of Flowers in the Attic fame, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Sue Monk Kidd. What do people DO who don’t have fabulous public libraries? I can’t imagine.

This process of immersing myself into the gothic, dark nature of the South and its ethic of class structure, proper society, and land inheritance satisfies a curiosity about my own Midwestern roots, certain deep, mysterious values. When I read all these southern stories I “hear” my parents’ neighbors and customers from childhood, the figures of speech, the humor, the making fun of uppity people, and the crude remarks about the opposite sex. Harsh treatment of folks who are a little off in the upstairs. I’m coming to the conclusion that a mellow, mild, Northernized version of the South seeped into the Midwest. It’s still there/here.

I highly recommend Sue Monk Kidd’s latest book, The Invention of Wings, a stark historical story of the Grimke sisters of Charleston who left their father’s slave-labored plantation and became abolitionist lecturers in the North. This was in the 1830s! And also please take a look at this marvelous map from Tufts Magazine that shows the true cultural map of our country. Where are you?

 

Presidents’ Day

I’m still working with images of presidents that are and have been important to me, this time with an artistic twist, in the style of Andy Warhol. Art or any kind of creative expression has the fantastic capability of helping me wrest meaning from a situation, to claim it somehow. Integrate it, and own it.

What if Martin Luther King,Jr.,would have been President? Interesting to think about.

Politics are not my forte. I have deeply held convictions and values, and an intuitive sense about people, whether they are in the public eye or not. All the intricacies of economics, corporate power, lobbying, and election finance and maneuvering are beyond me. Short of staying at home with the covers pulled over my head to avoid such difficult issues, I do rally forth and vote in every election. That’s what I can do. I’m not a crusader or an organizer, but I can do my small part and try not to complain too much about the results and all the other stuff. It gives me a headache and puts me in a bad mood.

I don’t want to waste my life that way.

Thank you to Rebecca Holland and Downtown Studio, www.thedowntownstudio.com.

 

Idealism—-Martin, we loved you

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the day that honors him make me remember my youth and the shattered innocence of the times when prominent public figures were shot. It seemed like there was hope that the country could be improved with the presence of people like MLK and JFK and boom! They’re gone. That’s pretty hard to take for a young person in her 20s, just forming some kind of world view.

But then, they say if you want “fair” go to Pomona or Sedalia or the Livestock Center in Reno or wherever the hell the people in your area go to show their animals and canned goods. I still have that idealism, but from time to time life knocks me around- the idiocies in our government, creeping mediocrity in literacy, and inefficiencies in bureaucracies that one has to deal with.

Trying not to be bitter, just well-informed, and respectful of the visions of those who could see beyond the average and just getting by. Martin, we loved you. You were a beautiful man, and we’ll never forget your dream.

 

Earthquake!

January 17 is the 20 year anniversary of the Northridge earthquake. I remember it clearly. I lived in a triplex in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles and at 4:31 am the entire building shook like a giant maraca. I was awakened out of a deep sleep, and all I knew to do was to cover my head with my blankets!

During the day I walked over to the Hollywood area and saw a four or five story apartment building that had lost one entire side. Just gone. The structure looked like an oversized dollhouse with all the furnishings still there. Surreal. My neighbor’s house outside my kitchen window was equally surreal. The brick chimney was a pile of bricks in the yard and what was formerly a back deck was split off from the house at an odd angle. Oblique sculpture.

Metaphorically one can experience earthquake-like life events that are equally jolting. In my case, the sudden death of my best friend and my mother’s attempted suicide within the same year created seismic readjustments of large Richter magnitude.

What life events have jolted you to the core? How did you cope?

Photo of the Santa Monica Library, Fairview Branch, following the Northridge Earthquake, courtesy library archives.

 

Visits from the Muse

Creative spurts come and go in my life, and I never know what form the next inspiration will take. Ideas come from left field, or some odd material thing comes into my life that nudges an interesting project. In recent weeks the Muse was generous with her visits. I painted a hand made rain stick in the style of aboriginal art. Voila! Note the nifty additions of beads and feathers.

And I made a skirt out of men’s neckties. This was fun, and I must say, taxed my brain a bit in terms of mathematical calculations. Nobody tells you this, but sewing requires quite a bit of math.

For examples of holiday creative frolics, click on my Facebook post.https://www.facebook.com/ellen.bowers.75/posts/426976074095529     Photo credits: Janet Robison

What have you and the Muse been doing lately? I’m always curious what others are up to.

 

Obsession or Focus

I have this way of going off on tangents, some of which last for days, weeks, or months.  It could be reading all the books I can find by a particular author or watching all the movies I can find with a particular actor or actress. One summer I read everything I could get my hands on by Tennessee Williams, another it was Steinbeck. It’s as if I’m running my own graduate school for one!

Lately it’s been Frasier reruns.  Yes, I’m watching all 260 some episodes of the 11 year run.  I’m on year 10. Sigh. And I love it! I can’t say exactly what I get out of these deep inquiries–info about somebody else’s creative process, knowledge about what works and what doesn’t, or just random knowledge about a particular place, Seattle in this case, and the early years of the coffee culture..

I liked Frasier when it was on but didn’t watch it religiously.  Now it IS my religion, as least for a few more weeks.  I enjoy the quirkiness of the characters. Niles is my favorite, and when he had the hots for Daphne without her knowing it, it was really fun.  The tango scene is one of my favorites. I also like the character Marty Crane, sort of grumpy and opinionated like my own dad. And the sparring, snooty stuffiness of the two brothers is entertaining and somewhat true to life, I think.  Social climbing. Trying to get elected to the Corkmaster of the Wine Club and being conversant on all the ins and outs of pop psychology.

These people have been in my living room for many weeks now and nobody’s paying me rent. Oh well. Keeps me out of trouble.

 

From My Sketch Book

I

fall

into

the

Pringles crispy

colors

of the season.

 

The Heaviest Hunger

Today I’m championing The Heaviest Hunger, a new book by poet, Astrid Charron.  This amazing collection chronicles the author’s journey through numerous struggles with family dysfunction and severe eating disorders.  You will cry and laugh with her as you experience from the inside out crippling obsessions with food, weight, and psychological trauma. She triumphs, and you can vicariously celebrate the power of the human spirit.

You will find her book on Amazon.com. Also take a look at her website www.astridcharron.com. She’s a highly creative individual–a vintage fashionista as well as a published poet.

 

40 years make a big difference

black cellist

I played last chair cello in the college orchestra when I was an undergraduate music major and was thoroughly enamored with the black first chair cellist. We could not date within the context of that place and time without getting expelled from school.

Thank God times have changed. Today I saw and heard President Obama speak in person at that very same college campus, and say what you will about his Presidency.  I find it momentous that we have this cultured, elegant person as our first black President and truly believe that he is doing the best that he can within tremendous challenges and constraints that are beyond my comprehension, as I’m not a political scientist or an economist. He’s working really hard. His hair is graying.

Everyone perceives life through the lens of a particular background and experience. Honestly when I vote for a presidential candidate, one of my factors of consideration is whether he (so far only he) seems to love and respect his wife.  Call it woman’s intuition or whatever you like, but I think if a man is able to relate well at that personal level, he will do OK in the White House and on the slippery slopes of international diplomacy.

When I heard Obama’s cultivated, impassioned voice today, I fondly remembered the cellist. It was delicious, one of the best days of my life.

Photo credit: Kenneth Zehir, Goldeneye Art Gallery

 

A new book release!

Book Cover

A Mensa Member’s Book and Film List releases this week! This strange little 75 page oddity was about fifteen years in the making and finally found its form this summer. If you can imagine this, it’s more or less an autobiography of all the books I read (a lot) and all the films and plays I watched (a lot) for that time period, about fifteen years.  You’ll get to see how a truly voracious, obsessive mind goes from topic to topic, in depth, and then off on tangents of various sorts. It’s like a constant graduate school of my own making, but there are worse vices, I think. Librarians are patient with me.

This book is available through Amazon’s Kindle Select program!  I’m so sorry but the links are not working properly.  Just go to Amazon.com and enter the book title.

The list of books and movies is complemented with my collage art of colorful movie stubs and a poem, “The Fragrance of Books.”  OK, now you know about that secret part of my life.