The piles of snow are shrinking. The ice is turning to slush. It is time to come out of hibernation. Thanks to those who inquired after me and the blog, and wondered when we’d be back.
It’s good to be here again.
Checking out Sol LeWitt at MASS MoCA
I’ve spent the last several weeks cornering various members of the Bennington faculty, trying to set up lunch or coffee dates so that I can talk to them about why they make art, how they do it, and what ideas are behind it. All the while, in my own home, a seven-year-old girl has been at the kitchen table producing prodigious amounts of work: drawings, paintings, books, yarn sculptures, cardboard box castles, paper suits of armor.
It has only just occurred to me that I’ve been chasing down the wrong teachers.
Jane is not going to tell me that her mermaid painting is an encapsulation of a particular moment in her perception of mermaids. She’s not going to wax philosophic about the tension between shape and skin in the tiger she made out of a paper bag. God knows I would have pounced on those conversations — I am skilled at intellectualizing things, and using thinking to avoid doing is one of my signature moves.
But that’s not the way Jane rolls. She quietly and quickly makes art throughout the day: Her pencil is on the pad before breakfast. She asks to borrow my camera constantly. It’s the most natural thing in the world to draw Mom at the dinner table nursing her glass of wine.
She is not analyzing. She is not theorizing. She is not planning her work out three steps in advance. She’s just making stuff. Whenever, wherever, as the mood strikes. It doesn’t all get finished. It doesn’t all go up on the ‘fridge. But she’s doing it all the time, with no fanfare. It is integrated into her life; it is part of her way of being in the world.
Now that’s what I want to learn.
The song currently on endless repeat: Ted Leo’s “Biomusicology.” It’s joyful and affirmative, but it also acknowledges the struggle. Ted’s as indie as they come, and unusually thoughtful about trying to make a life from doing what he loves. My younger brother gave me this album for my birthday in 2001, but it’s only now that it has gotten under my skin. Funny, that. I guess the time wasn’t right until now. Anyway, some choice lyrics and the song itself are below. (And if anyone wants to translate this line–’Oed und leer, das meer–I’d appreciate it.)
Come from out of the tunnels we dig in
To see that tunneling’s not living
And working doesn’t work.
Come and find the love in this labor
Labor’s life and life’s forever.
All in all, we cannot stop singing.
We cannot start sinking –
We’ll swim until it ends.
They may kill and we might be parted
We will never be broken-hearted.
Confusion is the state of promise, the fertile void where surprise is possible again.
–Paul Goodman
I am so grateful to have stumbled on this idea. There is a name for the prolonged state of uncertainty in which you feel the impulse to change and you sense the coming adventure, but have no idea what type of action to take. This is the fertile void. And it is a legitimate point on the journey, not a sign that you should pack it all in because you can’t figure out your next move. I am going to relax into this warm, loamy place for awhile and just sit.
I’ve been talking a good game lately about my Plan and my methodology and all the rest. But I’ll let you in on something: I’m delaying. Sure, I’m doing a lot of thinking — what else is new? — but I’m not actually creating. I’m not making shit. Not even trying.
Some of you will counsel me to be gentle with myself and patient and to let it unfold. But I know when I’m avoiding and I want to come clean: Most of the blog posts you’ve read over the past couple of weeks were written in one fell swoop weeks ago, and then carefully parsed out so I could fool myself into believing I was advancing the project without really doing much at all.
The fact is I’m terrified. See that picture at the top of the post? See the tiny figure alone in the black? That’s me. The picture was taken by Jen Lee in August; I was swinging on a rope into a swimming hole, and the day was overcast and there was too little light for her camera. I kept the picture because it felt true.
I am in a position where I need to swing out into a universe of uncertainty, unable to see anything, not feeling much except the burn on my hands from the rope. And a terror so vast that it feels like nothing. I keep saying I want to be an artist — but I have no medium, no materials, no process, no work. I’m engaged in an elaborate game of make-believe where I pretend it’s possible to think my way through this, to plan it out in advance. I create the ruse of a big, bang-up beginning here on my blog, but I risk nothing because I actually do nothing.
I cannot take the first step because I want to know exactly where I’m going. And there is no way to know that.
If I ever start this journey, I will have to find my way in the pitch dark. And maybe it’s better to swing bravely out into it rather than to crawl inch by inch.
An Inuit poem that, somehow, astonishingly, speaks directly to my life:
Into my head rose
the nothings,
my life day after day,
but I am leaving the shore
in my skin boat.
It came to me that I was in danger
and now the small troubles
look big
and the ache
that comes from the things
I have to do every day
big.
But only one thing
is great
only one
this:
In the hut by the path
to see the day
coming out of its mother
and the light filling the world.
–translation by W .S . Merwin
The idea was that the Bennington Plan Process, modified for a mid-lifer like myself, would get me from Point A to Point B.
But as a sage colleague and fellow traveler observed, Point B is doomed to always be replaced by the next Point B, and, whatever or wherever it is, the idea of Point B will always diminish Point A. Which is where you are right now. Which is where you always are.
I struggle with the whole ‘be here now’ proposition. It’s habitual for me to rush forward to Point B or an endless series of Point Bs. Making it about Point A—the enrichment and appreciation of it—and really occupying this place now, that’s the way, I know. And I acknowledge the mystical but quite accurate thought that THIS MOMENT is eternity—the only thing that will ever exist. I get it. My brain just doesn’t like it.
My brain needs to be demoted.
This might sound strange, but the other thing that bummed me out about engaging in the Plan Process was the writing. If putting pen to paper was going to get me where I’m going, I think I would’ve arrived a long time ago.
What I really envy of the Bennington students is the Plan committee, the three or four faculty members from various fields who give them direct feedback as they write and re-write their Plans. Can you imagine a dancer who has choreographed for Baryshnikov or revolutionary Iran’s first ambassador to the United Nations weighing in on your intellectual musings? And just think of those fortunate Bennington students whose Plan committee included the now-retired Mary Oliver? As far as I’m concerned, that’s the prod and the prize—not the writing but the frank talk from a glittering band of artists and intellectuals about what you’re doing with your life.
So I have identified ‘conversation’ as my primary methodology in this endeavor. As I adapt the Plan Process for my own personal use, the engine driving it is going to be talk—with friends, faculty, colleagues, family members, people sitting next to me in bars, and anyone else who is willing to talk about their aspirations, their fears, their process, their stumbling blocks—really, their life—in an honest way.
How do these conversations happen? Simple: I tell the truth. I’m discovering that when I speak sincerely about this project with the people around me, those who know what I’m talking about—those who are asking similar questions of life—tune in deeply. And they seek me out and want to talk more.
I also ask. And guess what? Me and that dancer who worked with Baryshnikov—we’re having lunch next week.
I was so excited when I first got the idea to do my own mid-life Plan Process. For several years, when I worked part-time for Bennington and drove up to campus from Brooklyn once every couple of months, I felt nothing but envy for all the arty, alt-y young people reading in Adirondack chairs on the lawn or emerging from the College’s cavernous arts building in paint-splattered boots.
I was–and probably always will be–haunted by a strong sense of having wasted much of my own expensive liberal arts education, and I longed for a do-over. Until very recently, I didn’t understand that I was being granted that very opportunity. When I shifted to full-time, moved to Northampton, and started spending two days each week on campus, it suddenly became clear to me that all the resources I needed to examine the questions I was asking were RIGHT THERE. It’s like my eyes opened to the place for the first time.
There’s the remarkable faculty, the best of whom are as deeply engaged in their teaching as they are in their own artistic or scholarly work. There’s the ethos of the place, characterized by self-direction, discovery, creation, integration. There’s the legacy of thinkers and artists who have taught or studied at Bennington, and who have inspired me personally: Mary Oliver, Erich Fromm, Martha Graham, Helen Frankenthaler, Jonathan Lethem. And then there’s the Plan Process, a tried-and-true method for figuring out what you need to do to become the person you want to be.
I was elated and relieved to have such a methodology to follow as I take on life’s big questions. Stuff like, Is this all there is? And, What now? And, Can I choose to be and do something new at this point in the game?
So I talked to one of Bennington’s first-year advisors, who guides freshmen toward the daunting task of beginning to create their Plans. And I met with faculty members, who have provided feedback to students on the crafting of their Plans. And, for two whole hours, I was brimming with resolution and confidence.
Then I started to feel low.
Things have been unfolding pretty organically and, in my excitement about adopting an official method for figuring out my next steps, I could feel myself start to impose a structure on what’s been happening naturally and thus introducing expectation and anxiety and a lot of other shite stuff into the picture.
I’m not abandoning the project. But I can see that it’s going to be both easier and harder than the Plan Process is for the students. Easier because I know so much more than the young folks, about myself and the world. Twenty-odd years of trial-and-error is a pretty hefty headstart. But harder for those same reasons. There’s a lot of nuance in the mix and more than a little contradiction, which can make direct action stickier to take.
I was initially thrilled with the concreteness of the assignment: “I’ll write a Plan that’ll get me from Point A to Point B!” But the truth is that it’s never going to be that linear or that concrete or that clear. It’s going to be risky and messy and confusing and, hopefully, interesting and satisfying and joyful too. And while I might be able to cobble together a “committee” of supportive friends and colleagues that rivals the faculty committees that Bennington students are guided by, the only voice of authority that I’m going to be getting feedback from is myself.
I work at Bennington College, where there are no academic departments, or requirements, or letter grades. Every single student here designs, charts, and defends his or her own individual education, which typically integrates disparate fields. They do this through the Plan Process. Working closely with an academic advisor and a small faculty committee of their own choosing, students craft their Plan during sophomore year and continually revise and refine it during their ensuing years at the College.
The primary tools in this task are questions, exploration, conversation, and reflection. And, of course, there is the work in the classroom, the studio, and the real world that emerges from all of that. I think the Plan Process is an astonishing act of responsibility, intention, and imagination. I would have failed miserably at it when I was 19.
But I’m not 19. And I am ready to design my Plan.
Stay tuned.
