Tag: creative life

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Monty Don’s “Big Dreams, Small Spaces”

Monty Don smiles in behind roses and in front of a water feature in a garden.
Meet Monty Don, British gardening guru.

If you’ve run out of new episodes of “Great British Bakeoff,” have I got a TV show for you. This holiday season, a friend has introduced me to my new favorite show starring British gardening guru Monty Don. In “Big Dreams, Small Spaces” (available on Netflix), I get my beautiful landscape fix, my pedagogy fix, my misty-eyed optimist fix, my accent fix. Served best with tea.

Don (who I’ll heretofore refer to as Monty Don because he requires both) helps people create the gardens they’ve been dreaming of (sometimes in crayon) in their actual yards. This is urgent pleasant viewing. He sprinkles in sage advice between practi- and techni- calities.

My favorite Monty Donism so far? A compliment he gave a couple on their gardening, that they had “seriousness of intent” and “pleasure in the process.”

Wouldn’t that be lovely, to feel those two things, that paradox, with our writing? (Related: What Julia Child says it takes to be a “good cook.”)

Most of us have big dreams and small spaces for our art. We write spent after our day jobs. We watercolor, but we have to choose between better groceries or a few new tubes of paint. We dance without a studio. We practice the fingerings for our electric basses unplugged after everyone else is in bed.

On “Big Dreams, Small Spaces,” one couple turns their plot into a “small holding” (British English for tiny farm) and develops an obsession with chili peppers. One man totally busts his hump to get a pond, a pergola, and more than 50 varieties of flowers in a lawn with the foundation of an air raid shelter and a ton of bricks under the sod. A widow replants her roses, what was good from the home she shared with her late husband, into a brilliant, wild-looking cottage garden. A couple figures out how to plant seedlings in the crags of Welsch hillside.

A million purposes: pragmatic, whimsical, heartfelt, rest, work, relaxation. But all for enjoyment. 

The mistake most make when they start out is forcing: forcing plants that aren’t suited, forcing plans too quickly, forcing a particular desire for a particular beauty where another is called for, forcing something to be hidden that needs sunlight. The forcing dampens the enjoyment factor.

Monty Don (or learning the hard way) convinces them to move greenhouses, to change plans, and most often, to dig. But all this to the end of resourcefulness: Growing not what we wish we could but what thrives. Funny thing, a thriving, well-tended garden is a beautiful place no matter what variety, no matter how different from what we thought we wanted.

Not forcing does mean “settling,” but “settling” has gotten a bad wrap. Feeling unsettled, I can tell you, is not great. Settling is setting down roots. Healthy roots make way for green, meaningful stretching—growth.

I prefer this show to its American counterparts because it features the work, the frustration (less often dramatic than stultifying), and the honest results of what the gardener is able to accomplish. By the end, the garden matches the gardener and her landscape; the hard work and resources blossom given the right conditions.

Often as a writer I’ve made the mistake of seeking right conditions (if only silence! and hours! and a writing group of great readers! and inspiration!) for what I want to be rather than assessing what I can grow well as who I am. When I first moved back (home again) to Indiana, I spent hours trying to find websites that would tell me I could successfully grow what I’d cultivate in Tennessee: cypress that require 12 hours of sunlight to maintain their blue, fig trees in the ground, noisettes acclimated to heat; I’ve wished I were a novelist instead of a poet. I’ve wished I wanted to be an accountant or lawyer or anything else really. I’ve applied to jobs and cried when I got called back for interviews because I didn’t want the job but felt I should want the job. I’ve drawn up many plans on graph paper of who I might be if not me, if only a different me.

But I don’t get enough sunlight for that; the fall’s too wet, the spring colder. Rather than seeking right conditions, I need to seek the right plants.

My friend, watching with me, kept saying, “You need to listen to this.” She was right.

I’ll save Monty Don the trouble this time and begin again with more openness to what is and more imagination as to what could be. I’ll first map the sun across the backyard, research native plants, figure out how to get rid of all that poison ivy on the slope, and, if I’m honest, try to think up a project that requires a digger, because those seem pretty sweet.

I’m considering now what I can cultivate in my writing that will thrive and lead to enjoyment. My 2020 wish for you is the same.

In 2020, I’ll be sending an Artist’s Devotional entry once a week to your inbox to help you explore your relationship to your writing. Like a religious devotional, we’ll consider the parables, lives, paths, and vows of those who have come before and consider how to construct our own; unlike a religious devotional, we’ll be faithful to our art, writing.

If you’d like to join in, simply email “Yes” and your name to Lindsey@LDAlexander.com, and I’ll put you on the email list.

If you’d like to read more of my writing, subscribe to my monthly newsletter or read my book, Rodeo in Reverse.

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The Artistry of Julia Child Part 3: Improvise, Salvage, Play

“A good cook is consistently good—not just a little flair here and there—she can turn out a good meal either simple or complicated, can adapt herself to conditions, and has enough experience to change a failure into a success. If the fish doesn’t moose [sic*]—it becomes a soup. Matter of practice and patience.”

*I love this typo.

Julia Child, one of the most renowned cooks of the last century, doesn’t define “a good cook” as someone who’s well-known, who cooks every day or has a cooking regimen, who cooks for many people or just for herself, who can make anything well every time. To Child, a good cook is someone who:

  1. Is consistently good (which we don’t start out as being—Child herself was a flop in the kitchen into her thirties).
  2. Isn’t necessarily showy (“not just a little flair here and there”).
  3. Creates simple dishes.
  4. Creates complicated dishes.
  5. Adapts.
  6. Can turn something around—“has enough experience to change a failure into a success.” (Sounds a lot like revision, don’t it?)

To me, these qualifications can be chalked up to experience (“practice”) and attitude (“patience”).

She emphasizes experience, firstly—a good cook isn’t a one-hit wonder or a wunderkind. No baby geniuses for Child. A good cook needs a track record; to me, this implies a good cook likely has a history of failure so that she knows when something’s not right. It also means that she has enough dishes in her repertoire—she’s tried a variety of meals—that she can turn one thing into another. Her experience cooking is transformational; experience transforms her into this good cook, and a good cook then can transform one plan into another, one dish into another.

This is a fairly democratic view: Anyone can gain experience. Experience is simply a matter of repeated effort.

But in points 5 and 6, she seems to land on a specific kind of experience—not merely the repetition of going through the motions or following a recipe, but repetition with play, what a musician or actor might call improvisation.

Masters and amateurs

So what’s the difference (besides product) between a good cook and all other cooks? Between a master and an amateur?

A master starts with an idea, some ingredients but lets the creation become what it becomes. Masters play. Amateurs force; they serve liquified fish and call it “moose” [sic] and feel disappointment and make others eat their disappointment and complain about how hard writing is (woops) and how much they hate doing it.

This reminds me what poet Mary Szybist has referred to as avoiding “willfulness” in writing, not forcing an ending (or a middle or anything else) before we start. She meant this in the context of a poem (e.g., if I want to write a poem about my mom but it instead jumps to the garbage man and a dog, let the garbage man and the dog in—don’t shoehorn an ending about my mother in). It can be applied to genre, too, though. If it starts out as an essay but I realize it’s better as a poem, it’s a poem now. If I sing a wrong note, I start singing the harmony rather than overcorrecting and drawing attention to what was once a mistake. I use my senses and feel my way through. And finally, the concept can be expanded to process: Some days are hot, some are cold, some days I mangle words (words? what are words?), some days I sing them, but no matter the situation or my skill level on a given day, I can show up and play.

When I’m playful, I’m a good cook. I can serve a disgusting mousse because the menu says mousse or a delicious soup because that’s what the meal became.

The special attention of play

Play requires much more attention, besides just laughs. It demands that I listen, observe what’s there—what’s really there—on the page or in the pan, not just what I want to be there, not just following a recipe with abandon. Play lacks a formula. So while play might sound childish, like a lack of diligence or responsibility, in fact it requires a different, if not deeper, attention than a workaday mentality.

Of course, I don’t believe in good cooks and bad cooks, good artists and bad artists. I believe in behavior. Some days I’m a good cook, some days, not so much. It has a lot to do with my sense of humor. The best days on the page (and in life) I am myself without apology but with humor.

Most of my materials are salvageable (ideas, images, music) or easily replaceable (paper, ink). Even if the work’s subpar, if I play, I learn from it. Or at least I have a good time. When I hammer it into something it’s clearly not meant to be, all I’ve learned is disappointment without the benefit of experiment. The next time I’ll be no better off.

The most electric performances, the best players, are those who’ve practiced enough, failed enough, to improvise and improvise well, which is a more positively connoted word for salvage. It’s Charlie Parker. It’s Julia Child.

And so in life: that balance between perseverance and the primrose path. Having a direction but remaining adept and open. Not forced—lived. “It’s a matter of practice and patience.”

Me? I’m gaining the former and working on the latter.

In holiday celebrations and in art, may you be creative enough and summon the humor to soup your moose.

In 2020, I’ll be sending an Artist’s Devotional entry once a week to your inbox to help you explore your relationship to your writing. Like a religious devotional, we’ll consider the parables, lives, paths, and vows of those who have come before and consider how to construct our own; unlike a religious devotional, we’ll be faithful to our art, writing.

If you’d like to join in, simply email “Yes” and your name to Lindsey@LDAlexander.com, and I’ll put you on the email list.

If you’d like to read more of my writing, subscribe to my monthly newsletter or read my book, Rodeo in Reverse.

P.S. Here’s my favorite writing about moose—no, it’s not Julia Child’s or Elizabeth Bishop’s.

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“Take the 🦆ing donuts,” or the Womanly Art of Becoming a DONUT PERSON

In high school, I worked at an unimaginably greasy spoon, The Donut Kastle, with my friend Cassie, and it remains one of my favorite ever jobs. We sold donuts, talked to regulars and fielded their (regular) complaints, cleaned (inasmuch as that was possible), glazed and dipped donuts, rolled out donuts, restocked donuts, listened to Death Cab for Cutie and the Jayhawks, and once, when we ran out of glazed and told our boss, heard our boss say, “If I make more, they’ll just sell out again.” So he didn’t.

Photo by Beth Truax (Armstrong) for the Manual High School yearbook. From the story: "Senior Lindsey Alexander mixes a chocolate glaze for her donut creations. Mixing glaze was just one of her many responsibilities at the Donut Kastle. 'The most fun I have is making the weekly donut burger, even though nobody has ever bought it,' Alexander said."
Photo by Beth Truax (now Armstrong) for the Manual High School yearbook | From the accompanying story: “Senior Lindsey Alexander mixes a chocolate glaze for her donut creations. Mixing glaze was just one of her many responsibilities at the Donut Kastle. ‘The most fun I have is making the weekly donut burger, even though nobody has ever bought it,’ Alexander said.”

I ate a lot of donuts. And whatever extras were left at the end of the shift, we were welcome to—so I brought them to theater practices and my then-boyfriend and my friends who didn’t wake up early enough to visit me on my shift. (Our boss took the rest to the homeless, because he may have been a god-awful businessman, but he was an excellent baker and a good person.) The tip money was negligible, and several weekends, Cassie and I spent it buying cheesy tots and slushies at the Sonic next-door.

Before a redesign, we also received the best shirts ever. Despite the pit stains only a teenager in a hell kitchen could create, I still have mine and wear it with no small amount of pride: “I AM A DONUT PERSON” it proclaims, rightly, above a stick figure drawing of donuts wearing crowns and capes on a stick figure castle.

Even after having to give up gluten (shudder), I remain a donut person. (Finding a gluten-free blueberry donut is what led me to work at a bakery in Knoxville. I follow the donuts.)

In a discussion of judgment of how artists make their money or pay for their art in Amanda Palmer’s book The Art of Asking, Palmer brings up Henry David Thoreau. She notes that some people call Thoreau a poser—he isn’t a true man of the wild; he got land from a friend, was close to town, had regular dinners with his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, and every Sunday, had the audacity to accept baked goods from his mom and sister, including the occasional unforgivable, totally decadent donut. This seems like the kind of gossip that floats along in art school (“She’s only able to do that because her spouse supports her/Her mom has a trust fund/She knows someone/That opportunity was only open to [insert often racist comment here]” and so on), typically out of envy, to negate someone’s work by saying they didn’t do it all on her own.

But who among us has done it all on her own?

Palmer talks about DIY versus “maximal DIY,” saying true DIY is doing truly everything on your own—no help, no donations, no phone calls, please. True DIY, she says, requires ingenuity. “Maximal DIY,” however, is asking for help and accepting it. She argues this requires ingenuity (knowing how to ask and what to ask for, plus balancing confidence with gratitude) and trust. (You’re not totally in control. You’re dependent on other people.)

Maximalist DIY-ers take the donuts.

Palmer’s point? If Thoreau had been saving to buy land, hunting for food, making meals from scratch, and starving, chances are he wouldn’t have been writing Walden … or anything else for that matter. Whether Thoreau fails some sort of grit test because he ate some donuts and went into town, he still wrote one of the important pieces of American literature of the 19th century.

If someone offers you donuts, in the words of Palmer: “Take the f*cking donuts.” If you can afford to take time off to write your novel, take it. If your friend offers to give you studio space to record your album, take it. If a pal Venmos you money for gas for your tour or for refills of paints, say thank you, and take it.

For a long time, I’ve tried to be a true DIY-er, which, frankly, is a path I respect but, for me, has been a lonely road. That changed with the publication of my book, which depended on an excellent designer, a fabulous editor, and a publisher I would work with again without question. It continued to change as I asked friends if they’d help me with my book tour—and, remarkably, they did, offering spaces to read, audiences to read to, classes to teach, couches and air mattresses and once a real bed to sleep on, their company when I was passing through, meals, interviews, sharing reviews of my book—you name it.

Maximal DIY is the way to go, IMO. And I did not come by that opinion easily. (Us hard-heads never do, unless we are bullshitting in the middle of a debate over drinks.)

There’s no glory in refusing a donut. Or in refusing gifts, which I tried to do several times in the publication process for my book Rodeo in Reverse.

I’ve turned down some pretty good grub in the past because I didn’t have the humility to eat—avoided opportunities or publications for fear of nepotism, not accepting invitations because people are “just being nice” (uhhh, let people be nice to you?), been resentful of my husband because his career lets me have the (lower paying) career I want (and then not got much writing done because of handwringing over my lack of financial contribution), and I could go on.

But you know what? I love donuts. Life is hard enough without refusing its most perfect circular treats. I want a t-shirt with Thoreau’s face on it that says “Take the donuts” (because I am too afraid to wear anything with the F-word on it in public).

High-school me knew what was up: I AM A DONUT PERSON.

What donuts can you take to get some creative work done?

What’s your favorite donut shop where you live?

Let me know in the comments below, or email me at Lindsey@LDAlexander.com.

If you enjoyed this post, sign up for my monthly letter, and get essays on the creative process, plus some sweet jams, poems I like, and other tasty tidbits. Order my poetry collection, Rodeo in Reverse, here.

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Seeking, Stopping, Finding: How My Word for the Year Changed Me

“What you can plan is too small for you to live.”
— “What to Remember When Waking,” David Whyte

Inspired by Susannah Conway, I now choose a word for the year, or a handful of words, instead of making a list of resolutions. For 2018, I chose “Connect.” I chose it because I craved connection; I wanted connection to guide my decisions. I sought connection, searched for connection, hunted for friends, for happiness, for purpose. I picked the word connect because it was scary and because I felt disconnected.

Truth be told, 2018 kicked my hind-end into outerspace and back again a couple times. A long-term friendship ended; my grandmother died the same week; six months of freelance work evaporated unceremoniously; I had two asthma attacks a day for 20-some-odd days. I couldn’t even stick with my breath. That was the spring. As I pulled into therapy one day, The Mountain Goats’ “I Am Going to Make It Through This Year (If It Kills Me)” popped up on Spotify. Uproarious laughter. I never lost my sense of humor, and yet, for a while, I was calling this year “my unwanted lesson in impermanence.”

I went on fabulous vacations and smiled and laughed and danced and ate oysters on the half-shell and learned and promptly forgot all the facts I could learn and forget about the Colosseum and drank wine under the stars and stared into dozens of famous stony faces and had my first book come out and loved my life and grieved and got angry for reasons I couldn’t explain and woke up in the middle of a few nights wracked with panic.

But some time, somewhere, with connect, something happened. I didn’t notice when it began, but later, driving long hours through the South, listening to the radio, singing so loud in the middles of so many nowheres I thought were just beautiful. I realized—twice—that as a song came on that touched me, I was holding my hand to my heart. ((It was this song.) Which, honestly, what?!)

Rather than seeking to connect, I saw all the connections I’d been unable to see before.

People who were already my friends, the richness of those friendships, the place I could call home, the interests I’d been too shy to claim, how writing connects me to the world, how all of it both roots and frees me.

For years, I thought my writing was part of what kept me lonely or maybe that I kept myself lonely to devote myself to my writing. But through others reading my writing, my small but intelligent, generous audience, I’ve found, especially through my book tour, that writing is what connects me to others, to kindred spirits—not what separates me from them. Writing brought me to New York, where I spent a whole afternoon talking with my cousin on a patio and a whole day walking with another cousin sharing our deepest selves; it brought me to Mary Corse’s work, to Central Park, to meeting a man who has kept a picture of his wife in his wallet for 40 years—since they told each other they couldn’t remember why they’d gotten married, so now he always remembers; it brought me to nachos and sushi with an old friend; a porcelain duck named Spinoza; to a dog that could dance; to my great-aunt’s property and finally meeting her llama; to recognizing my friends in East Tennessee, some of whom even braved a torrential downpour to support me. Writing has brought me close friendship with a baker-writer and weekly walks with her. It’s brought me to the mountains in the cabin of a country civil rights activist, watching squirrels shake leaves from the trees.

Without writing, I would’ve forgotten the details; without writing, I would’ve lived different details. Writing, in connecting me more with the world, has brought me back to myself, to my senses. I’m not one to say art can save you (or me). It can’t. But art can remind us who we are, and we can save ourselves and each other. Thank you for being here with me, for connecting with me and continuing to read. Thanks for being patient with me. I see you now.

If you enjoyed this post, sign up for my monthly letter, and get my thoughts on the creative process, plus some sweet jams, poems I like, and other tasty tidbits. Order my poetry collection, Rodeo in Reverse, here.

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I Prefer My Poets Dead: Why ‘Making It New,’ or Anything New, Is So Dang Hard

The movie you watch in English class when you have a sub is not called ‘Living Poets Society.’

Virginia Woolf on why we prefer our poets dead:

In a sort of jealousy, I suppose, for our own age, silly and absurd though these comparisons are, I went on to wonder if honestly one could name two living poets now as great as Tennyson and Christina Rossetti were then. Obviously it is impossible, I thought, looking into those foaming waters, to compare them. The very reason why the poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now. But the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment. One does not recognize it in the first place; often for some reason one fears it; one watches it with keenness and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew. Hence the difficulty of modern poetry; and it is because of this difficulty that one cannot remember more than two consecutive lines of any good modern poet.

—A Room of One’s Own, p. 14

Stan, from Mad Men:

Everything good I have is from a long time ago.

When an earnest thread on Facebook emerged asking for good work by contemporary poets, I responded by paraphrasing the Woolf quote above. When the friend who started it asked me for recommendations, I came up with a list of favorites and highlighted what might be a best fit, only to have A Random Dude respond that Bob Dylan and Tom Waits were better than any contemporary “self-identified” poets. (Please insert eyeroll here and also a note that I am pretty sure Bob Dylan would lose it if he could no longer walk out to the “Poet Laureate of Rock and Roll” introduction you know he approved.) This annoyed me, but also gave me a good laugh, because clearly Random Dude, according to Woolf, who has earned more of my trust, might say he just longs for how Dylan and Waits were able to make him feel a long time ago.

With respect to Dylan and Waits, many of us can only keep our dead poets alive in our hearts. It’s what brings us such magical imaginings as Mary Ruefle’s “My Emily Dickinson.” It’s why some poets (asininely) opine about dying young, like Keats, or part of why Plath skyrocketed to fame quicker than some of her contemporaries. (Dead longer.) And it’s why those of us poets who still count ourselves among the living are awful cagey about the subject. “We’re working here!”: a rough translation of so many Twitter posts and essays on the non-death of poetry. The dead poets are rich compost people can use to make their daily lives flower and give fruit; us living sods’ works are the pile of eggshells, mown grass, and aromatic vegetables left in the back of the fridge too long, waiting to help. One’s a tool; one’s an eyesore that will someday be a tool. (And if you love Dylan, which, ugh, I do, you’ll know his “folk process” often involves churning up the words of obscure dead poets in his own lyrics, only to be called a poet while he’s living.)

Maybe it’s unfair that readers ask death of us to consider our poems as ones that have “passed the test of time.” But so it is. It’s nice to be a martyr.

As a modern (lowercase m) poet myself, I can even feel this way about my own work. Longing for old writing styles of when I felt or perceived differently—almost as if by another person. Often, poets at readings will say something like, “Many poets will tell you their new work is their favorite; I am no exception.” I guess I am an exception. Which I’m recognizing especially now as I begin work that is not for my debut collection, Rodeo in Reverse. I’m suspicious of new work; sure, loveable maybe, the sounds it makes especially, but I long to do work as good as my old work—and sometimes worry I won’t.

Yes, I worry I peaked at 17 when I wrote a sexy villanelle about hooking up in a car that inverted lines about volume, wheel, up, down; the lines were short—two or three words apiece maybe? My teacher, a favorite, not an effusive praiser, read it out loud to the junior class, which made me elated—my poem was good and maybe the junior class would not think I was a virgin. To me, it’d felt important not to seem like a virgin but also to try and be one then.

Been chasing the ghost of that poem, which is lost to floppy disk and trash heap, for years since.

And if nostalgic for my own past work, one might imagine the case for others’.

Maybe 5 years ago I read an essay on the internet that argued every book you read before age 25 affects you more deeply than those that come after. This is an unfortunate view. I’m not far enough out from 25 to a- or disa-gree, but I wonder how many people are able to read many books after age 25, by which time career and family and responsibilities are likely to be settling in.

I count myself among the lucky few and look at each blank page, each new title askance—in suspicion and flirtation. Who knows? This might be the one I’m looking for. If not, it still does its work in the compost pile.

Besides, dead poets have everything going for them but life, which is a great advantage. Whatever you make today will be old in no time.

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