Inspiration Monday: Finding Your Voice

This past weekend, I attended the funeral of a good friend. He was a former Navy musician, and a professional french horn player most of his life. He was an accomplished vocalist, an old-school barber-shopper with just enough ham in him to steal the show even in a gigantic chorus. My friend loved music with the zeal of a missionary and evangelized it like it was a religion. It was his one true voice, and he shouted his joy for the world to hear his whole life long. I was honored to play trumpet in a brass ensemble for his funeral.

I hate funerals. Even the lovely ones mean that someone who mattered is gone even though they still
matter. Most of the time, I find myself sitting tense in a pew, picking at my fingernails and chewing on my cheek to distract me long enough to survive the service. This time, I sat in the pew and held on to my trumpet. I don't know what it was about it, but holding that piece of cold, familiar metal in my hands throughout the service comforted me like a security blanket. It held me together and reminded me of the joy it was to play music with my friend. Holding my instrument close to me, I didn't have to think whole thoughts in jagged, sad sentences. It was like my whole body was remembering. How many times did I sit that way, with my trumpet slung across my lap while he told me jokes with his french horn tight in his fingers? How many easy days were there when we shot the breeze and talked composers, hating on Sousa with his oom-pah horn parts and sadistic trumpet licks? So many times he ran up to me and pressed a CD into my hand. "You've got to hear this," he'd say, and he'd mean it. To him, music held all things worth knowing in the world, and what better way to tell your friends you love them than to share all the secrets of the world with them?

My trumpet belonged at that funeral because it was as much a friend of his as I was. It was how he heard me, how we understood each other. There was no better, more natural way to honor a man who was made of song than to stand in front of his loved ones with my instrument and play music for him. I got to say goodbye to him in his own native language.

It got me thinking about all the ways we communicate with one another. I'm a writer (well, a person who writes), and I do a lot of thinking about how to say things so that I can get what is in my head into another person's head with the least amount of interference. Then I usually throw that out and try to think of a prettier way to say it. When I'm writing fiction, I write myself in circles and turn myself inside out trying to figure out how to capture a character's voice and make them seem real. I am a trained therapist and work as a case manager with an oppressed population, so I am always going around saying things about speaking other people's languages, and listening between the words for what a person might be struggling to say.

But maybe it is easier than that. There are so many ways to raise a voice, and who says a person can only have one? Music is a language I speak, and it is a part of who I am, always. Is it any more or less so than writing? Why can't they touch? I draw, paint, and bind books. In every piece of art I make, I mean to say something, even if I can't always verbalize what it is. There's a piece of me in everything I create. (Sometimes literally--I am not so good with the X-Acto when I move fast. I am not above bleeding for my art!)

This was an EXCELLENT cheeseburger.

What is art, anyway? How did we ever come to the ridiculous notion that artistry can only exist in aesthetics? Could you not find your voice making really excellent cheeseburgers? I think so. I think you can find your voice in any number of places, doing whatever it is that connects you to the rest of us. Everyone has something to share, some quiet, some loud, all worthy.

Go out and find your voice. Chances are you already know what it is, or you think you do. Look closely. There will be places in your life where you feel stifled. Don't grumble--sing! Find a way to bring who you are to where you are and be whole. Share your true self with others in whatever language you have.

I love this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.” 

If you find yourself making cheeseburgers for a living, make them with love and build them like works of art. It doesn't matter what it is you do, you are who you are all the time. Bring your voice with you where it falls your lot to stand and you will never be alone. Someone, someday, will stand up and say, "I hear you."

Panda Express never lies. Ever.

From the Wilds of Creation

Blog! There you are! You stayed there, right where I left you and you kept my seat warm. I am grateful.

I am especially grateful BECAUSE there has been a reason I have not been blogging, and now I CAN.

I made myself a rule that I could not blog (or do anything else that is fun, basically) unless I was caught up for the day on my Nanowrimo word count. Then I proceeded to be behind the curve all stinkin' November long.

Except now. Except today. Because today I am ahead. I am caught up and since caught up is one whole step behind the preferable comforts of being ahead, I took that step. For right now, I am victorious. Later? Eh. We'll see.

Writing this month has been a challenge. Yes, Nanowrimo is a challenging experience in and of itself, but it has been extra challenging given all of the life-bits fate has seen fit to throw at me. Given the choice to sink or swim, I continue swimming. Sometimes I feel like I'm going with a half-drowned doggie paddle, but I'm not going under just yet.

It has been a full month and it is not over just yet. I am hoping that by the time December rolls around, the world will have one more unfinished mess of a novel in it, the guilt monkeys currently residing in my brain will be through with their feast and leave me a few neurons for my own personal use, and I will be able to use contractions properly again (why use one word when it can so easily be two?).

Until then, I have a new muse on the case, and there is still plenty of work to do!

There's yer problem: Muse asleep on the job. Amateur.

Halloweenie and All Nano Eve

Halloween is here, and it's a pretty important day for a few reasons.

For one--let's be honest here--it's an excuse for candy. LOTS.

Even on good years my neighborhood doesn't have very many trick-or-treaters, but we always stock up. Always. This year the weather wasn't great so we didn't have any. At least, I'm pretty sure it was the weather. I don't think there's anything about my house that gives us away as greedy candy-hoarders, even if it is true. I was a little sad not to have some trick-or-treaters come by and be adorable on my doorstep, but then I ate some candy and got over it.

For our dog Bella, Halloween is a most important day. She is the only extrovert in our little family, and every year she sits with wagging tail, just overflowing with excitement to bark at the doorbell and lick the sugar off tiny, costumed hands. This year, they didn't come. She waited and waited, but this year she had to settle for some heavy sighs and consolation petting. At least she got to wear her little wiener-dog Halloween kerchief for a while.

Husband and I cuddled up on the couch next to her to watch our once-a-year Halloween movies, several of which include Tim Curry. At least there was candy.

Probably the most important part of Halloween for me is that Halloween is actually TWO holidays. It is like a holiday in COSTUME.

To a great deal of writerly folks, Halloween is ACTUALLY Nanowrimo Eve.

If you don't know what Nanowrimo is, go here.

I have attempted and completed the Nano challenge every year since 2007. I might have written 50,000 words of various novels in each of those years, but it was not easy. Not at ALL.

Most years, I have some idea of what I'm going to write. It might change along the way--okay, it will PROBABLY change--but I have some kind of clue. This year, I planned to write my first sequel to a previous Nano novel. Unfortunately, my October was so full of busy, I never got a plan together. That's another thing I've learned--you can fly by the seat of your pants through a lot of things, including novels, but not middle books of a three-part series. Those require brain cells and good notes. I have a few of the latter and not nearly enough of the former.

So, once again, I find myself sitting on my couch listening to the "Time Warp" blare from my television, and the only tools I have at my disposal to turn a bunch of words into some kind of art is a notebook and a pen.

It is a very good notebook and an excellent pen. I hope there are a lot of good words hovering around in one or both of them. Come midnight, we shall see.

At least there is candy.

Inspiration Monday: Among the Porch Lights

Recently Husband and I took an unexpected detour through a rural part of the state. It was late at night and I was tired. My eyes were so itchy and heavy, I would have traded a nice chunk of my bank account for a contact lens case and a cool washcloth. When Husband turned off the interstate past that detour sign, all I could think about was how much longer it would take me to get to my nice soft bed where I could rest my poor back.

Since my only options were to go along with it or get out and walk, I stayed in the car and did what I do best: I stared out the window and daydreamed. (Well...technically it was night, but I was awake. You get the idea.)

We drove for miles down a faded two-lane that cut a scar through a patchwork of vast Tennessee fields. There was nothing but friendly, grass-covered blankness as far as the eye could see (a considerable distance, even with tired eyes in the nighttime). Well, except the cows. I could see plenty of those.

I've been a city-dweller for many years now, but I was raised in rural Tennessee, full of hills and grass and fences. The hills used to frustrate my wandering eyes. I used to wonder how far I could really see if they weren't in my way. I wondered how far I could go if they weren't blocking me in.

The grass is always greener, and the mountains are always in the way, but I wish I would have paid more attention to how pretty my side of the mountain was before I got so fired-up to climb it.

Eventually, we drove up on a stretch of houses. It was a good thing; I had begun to wonder if the cows had taken over the town. It amused me to picture them going about their daily business as civic-minded townscows, until I thought about what type of rump steak might be cooling in their little freezers.

The houses we passed were pure country, built like run-on sentences with rooms tacked on when they were needed and painted to match. They had porches. All of them. Real porches, for sitting and keeping an eye out for rebellious cows. They were spread out, each house on its own little piece of earth, but close enough that one could say it was a neighborhood. The porch lights were all on, beckoning us down their street like a string of runway lights. I liked them.

I thought about each of the houses we passed in turn. What would it be like to live in that one with the Coca-Cola sign hung by the front door--would I feel blasphemous for drinking a Pepsi? Would I have a little writing nook in the one with the extra room growing off the side like a blister? After a hard day at work, how would it feel to turn that corner and know that yellow door was my own? Would there be one room that is always cold? Does the refrigerator hum? Where would my cats find to hide from each other? Would there be a smooth floor so I could slide in my socks? It was quiet there and sparse--where would I buy my loaves of bread and reams of paper and dog toys? Would there be trick-or-treaters on Halloween? Does everyone have a cow?

I moved in and out of every one of those houses as we passed them by. I lived a quick lifetime in each one and added those memories to my own. (Extra memories are always a plus for a fiction writer.) I was still tired, but not in quite such a hurry to get to my own house. I already knew what it was like to live there.

Inspiration is all around. Everywhere you go, people are living their different-shaped lives: they are stocking their freezers with rump steak, they are driving home the long way, they are leaving the light on for someone they miss to come home to them.

Aren't you curious? Don't you wonder? What do you see under the welcoming glow of a friendly porch light?

Just watch out for those cows. I'm telling you.

Things I Learned on Blog Hiatus

1. Three animals are better than two. The animals do not necessarily agree.

2. Early episodes of The Simpsons never get old.

3. Gnocchi are delicious. This was news to me.

4. My friends are amazing and incredibly supportive. I already knew that, but it bears mentioning.

5. I lose my keys an average of four times per week.

6. I still love the Narnia books.

7. I also still love Stephen King books.

8. SweeTarts are addictive. Even the orange ones.

9. I am biased against orange candy.

10. A lapsed musician is still a musician. My copy of Arban's and I had a reunion party with the whole trumpet family.

John, Paul, George, and Ringo. (Not really)

11. I love to write. Anything. Always.

12. My body has staked a claim on 2pm as nap-time. There are no exceptions, whether I get to nap or not.

13. The number 13 is not particularly unlucky.

14. Cat hair sticks to everything. Every. Thing.

15. Fortune cookies from Panda Express never lie.

16. I am starting to like pink. The ghost of my teenage-self is very upset by this.

I prefer to think of it as "light mauve."

17. When I am nervous, I forget how to spell (among other things).

18. Watching my husband shop for clothes is adorable. He hates it, and that just makes it more adorable.

19. I still don't understand football.

20. According to my eye doctor, I have beautiful corneas. Well, thank you. I try.

21. I still have my lucky pencil. I got it nearly ten years ago when my college band director went around the jazz band docking grades for anyone who didn't have one. I found it on the floor just before my turn and it has lived in my Bb trumpet case ever since.

Excalibur.

22. I had to add one more because I cannot in good conscience leave a list with an odd number.

When Darkness Falls

My job takes me to some dark places. I see and hear things that stick with me long after the close of the day. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are tender moments that humble me straight down to my marrow, and hard decisions that chew my mind to bits but which always soften my heart. I'm grateful for the unique opportunities I have to meet people where they are and receive their impact on my life as I do my best to enrich the lives of those around me.

Sometimes I get reminders that what I do is not safe. As comfortable as I am, as easygoing as my personality is wont to be, I work on the front lines of an impoverished city with damaged, vulnerable, and severely ill people who inhabit dark places where it isn't safe for anyone. Not for them. Not for me, even if we are both armed to the teeth with the best intentions.

There are many kinds of fear, and most of them are messages trying to tell us something about ourselves and our relationship with the world around us. There is fear of the unknown vs. fear of the known, fear of failure vs. fear of success, fear for safety vs. fear of being too darn fearful. It doesn't matter what flavor it is, what matters is that we all have it, and it can serve a purpose (as long as you're not afraid to look it in the eye). 

My work is not safe, and I am not safe in doing it. I am okay with that. I am grateful for days that remind me of this and give me the opportunity to decide anew that I am okay with that, and that I am honored for the opportunity. No matter what comes in each of my days, no matter what goals I cross off my bucket list, no matter what kind of fear I may walk through, my deepest hope is that I will be able to keep marching through the darkness, keep staring down the fear, and stand up straight and strong when I'm called to.

When darkness comes calling, I hope I will always answer:

Let there be light.

Inspiration Monday: Connect the Dots

Oh, blog. I've missed you. I've been slacking, I know. It's life. It gets in the way: oil changes, doctors' visits, cat food shopping, Post-It note writing, lightbulb changing, hair cuts, and world changing. It can wear a person down.

Though I'm the first to admit that I get caught up in the everyday, lately I realize that it is the spaces between things that our life stories take shape. It's in the detours, the side streets, the unexpected dead ends that we find our surprises, think on our toes, and test our worth. If everything always went as planned, we'd never have anything to talk about. It would be a boring, soft-heeled world full of boring, soft-heeled people with no stories to tell and no lessons to learn.

Take a look at these two photos. They seem a world apart, but use your imagination. Think up a way that a person would visit them both in the same day. What does the road between look like? Which one are they coming from and which one are they going to? How will each place change the way the person thinks about the other? Will they return?

Connect the dots. You might be surprised how many pictures you can make with just a few, and it's really the only way to make sense of a world of endless shapes.