Category Archives: Artsy

Rhymers, pace-eggers, soulers, and the like

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My current writing project is a middle grade fantasy that’s sorta my version of Pilgrim’s Progress. Instead of researching the dark history of our state, which was a ton of fun for my previous book, now I’m learning about my own spiritual state. (You see that play on words? Wokka wokka.)

I was listening to my Nobuo Uematsu station on Pandora (I highly recommend it) and Loreena McKenna’s “The Mummers’ Dance” came on.

It just so happened that I was at the point in my writing where an airship crew was dancing a mournful jig (because my story is awesome) and this song, a corsair interpretation of Ecclesiastes 1, came to me:

All streams run into the sea
But the sea is never full
All things full of weariness
But hearts are never whole

What do we gain from our day’s toil
Beneath the beating sun?
Can we say that this is new
Before our course is run?
Before our course is run

What I love about writing a fantasy is that I can bust out with a song and no one thinks it’s strange. I mean, if dwarves can sing of cracking plates, then why not a corsair jig about empty pursuits?

So, sing my song to the tune of “The Mummers’ Song” and marvel at one of the only music videos (that I know of) to feature people dancing with wicker chairs on their heads.

(A mummer is a performer who acts in a traveling troupe to tell folk plays. Yeah, I Googled it.)

Jonah

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Your wind
bends the ship
Your sea
rages and calms
Your protective judgment
swallows me

In the belly of Sheol
I cry
confident
in Your love

Water closes in
driven from Your sight
my brain
a sushi wrap
my life
faints
what I have vowed
I will pay

A second time
I hear
Three days
In the belly
Three days
To the city
But I go
One day in
And say,
“Forty days left!”

And they
Believe

But how can they?
I’m the one
You sent
I can hear
Your word
I’m the one
You love

Fire here
Locusts there
A pillar of salt
A shake of the Earth
Maybe even
A flood
(You’d make an exception, right?)

But no, it’s
Sackcloth
Fasting
Turning
Relenting

Disappointing
I said this back home
I called it
My reason to flee

You are gracious
Merciful
Slow to anger
Steadfast love
Abounds

It is better
For me
To die
Than
To live

You ask
if I do well
to be angry

East of the repenting
I sit
Pouting
The sun beats down
You cover me
A worm warns
of Your judgment
I’m faint
I repeat
It is better
For me
To die
Than
To live

Do I do well
to be angry?
Yes, I do
Thanks for asking
Kill me now

Steadfast still, You say,
“You pity the plant that
you did not grow
came in a night
left in a night;
I show my mercy on those
who did not yet know.”

Why art

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Towles Kintz gets it:

Reading was an escape, but not an unhealthy one. It didn’t enable me to deny my grief or the strain our family was under. It didn’t distract me from my children or make me wish for another life.

In fact, the simple act of allowing myself the luxury of literature served to inspire my days with my children. I was a better thinker — more happy, more energized, and more full. Reading served as a wholly reparative act, something that offered renewal at a time when everything felt out of sorts.

A Haiku Song? Yes, please.

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Thanks, Jesse, for thinking of me when you watched Tom Wilson play songs in haiku.

Haikus for a year
Make me want to play guitar
Just like Biff Tannen


Tom Wilson is also on Netflix. I will definitely have to check it out.

I hope you all are having a happy Veteran’s Day.

On Sunday, this is what I’ll be wearing:
Photobucket
No, Mike, I haven’t converted to something, although you gotta admit that my wife’s texts were a lot funnier than my own. (I said I had converted to Awesomeness. She beat that.)

I’m wearing it in solidarity with believers, specifically with Juma Nuradin Kamil’s family, around the world on a Sunday when we remember and pray for followers of Jesus who have been/are being persecuted. (Really, we should remember and pray all year long, which this app (for iPhone and Android) can help you with, but it’s also good to have a set day on the calendar.)

Thanks, Jeremy, for showing us this video that lines up with one of the songs we play. We won’t be showing it on Sunday, but it’s definitely worth a watch.

Art that expresses my heart? Sign me up.

Travis Prinzi of the Rabbit Room has a great article about telling a meaningful story, quoting from Walk the Line:

I mean, you can’t help nobody if you can’t tell them the right story.

I started a new story as part of NaNoWriMo, yes, but also because it’s straight from my heart. Each book I’ve written, I’ve rejected people-pleasing more and more and now write what I believe to be a good story and not what I think will sell (if you’ve watched the majority of what’s on TV, you’ll notice that it’s not always the best story that sells).

Thanks, Futile Ohm, for the link to the NaNoWriMo version of Scrivener. This project has so many character details that it definitely helps me keep all my notes organized. Anyone that has seen me in the midst of writing a novel knows that they should have bought stock in legal pads and tiny memo notebooks.

And for those praying about agents looking at my manuscripts and all that, James 4:2-3 had some insight for me this morning.

The Death of Maybe

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Not this Maybe. We wish the Bluth family many happy years.

Jeremy put music to two poems I had written. Amazing stuff and yes, I did get a little misty-eyed. I’m going to blame it on allergies. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

My wife pointed out an interesting part of my creative process tonight. I didn’t realize how many times I say, “Maybe if I…” and usually what follows is trying to guess what someone else would like. I can tell you that it’s definitely come up quite a bit during this search to get published. It also shows up when I paint. You know when “Maybe if I” didn’t come up?

The Haiku Project

I just wrote. I just did.

Considering your audience is an important part of writing, but I swing so far to paranoia so easily. I was reading an article on the Art House America blog (thanks for recommending the site way back when, Sidewalk Driver) and found this quote from Rembrandt:

I can’t paint the way they want me to paint and they know that too. Of course you will say that I ought to be practical and ought to try and paint the way they want me to paint. Well, I will tell you a secret. I have tried and I have tried very hard, but I can’t do it. I just can’t do it!

The part of the quote that Art House left off was, “And that is why I am just a little crazy.”

I also started reading more about Emily Dickinson and learning that she had a huge portfolio of work and only a fraction of that is what has been published. That was the motivation (albeit sarcastic on my part) when I found out that e e cummings wrote a poem a day for years.

Dickinson wrote to write. Some of her greatest work she never intended for other people to read.

Two Sundays ago I was listening to the sermon and I just broke out in pages worth of poems. I was responding to what I was hearing, what I was feeling, and a whole bunch of other stuff. That flowed into the week and the night that I stayed up way too late and wrote a poem summarizing Philippians. I had wanted to create something as a response to Philippians for months. It was when I just sat, wrote, and had God as my only audience that this poem showed up on the page.

It’s funny because I’m not a good judge of poems. Sure, I can teach them, dissect their structures, but the “Is it any good?” question stumps me. Until the Haiku Project, I actually kinda didn’t like poems. They used to be a waste of time (thus my haiku sarcasm).

And that’s why I can’t overanalyze the poems that I write. I have absolutely no confidence in my poem writing ability with regards to other people’s approval and I think that’s pretty freeing.

So here’s to shunning the “Maybe this needs…” and the what-ifs.