Making of a Maker - Third Friday Post - October 20th

The Road to Here

If there is one thing I have wanted to share most from my experiences in life, it is how I became a maker of things. And by that, I mean the long road to "here". From those first inspirations and indulgences as a child to the present moment.

This weekly third Friday post will focus on exactly that.  And maybe even exploring side-roads to talk about what and where "here" is exactly, since it is always changing. 

If there is one thing I want to put across right off, it's that what I offer here is just ONE individual's perspective on how it can be achieved. I cannot even be sure I see it clearly in retrospect. I can only talk about the beginnings, the course changes, the bits of luck, inspirations and decisions that led to here and now.

I do NOT think my way is the right way for even a good chunk of folks who want to be artists or indulge in creativity full time. What my path is, is one more viewpoint that perhaps you can take something from it all and go forward with it in your own pursuit of becoming the working artist you want to be. 


So where to begin? 

How about this, I believe you can reinvent yourself time and again ( I certainly have) but what I've come to learn, all thee years later, is that you have to embrace, or at least make peace, with who you are inherently. Where you come from. What "made" YOU.  

You don't have to live in and with it every day if it was, as it sometimes can be, negative or shadowy, but I think that you do have to give it more than just a nod of acknowledgement. 

How many times have we all seen that artist's statement, written in the third person, that just doesn't tell you anything about the artist at all? Oh, it's a list and who's who of degrees, schools and mentors to be sure. But then you turn and what you see on the paper or canvas or in three dimensions doesn't seem to have anything to do with that at all. I see that less and less, of course, and I'm happy that we seem to be moving beyond that as a whole in our world. I don't care where you went to school, where you reside, how long you've been drawing those concentric circles etc. . . I care about where you came FROM. What inspires you now and what did then. Who you are inherently and how that is honored today in your life. 

I came across a "modern artist" who was quick to tell you, in third person, about walking the same streets of Europe that the masters did and sitting at Van Gogh's cafes, living abroad. . .  but who was a midwest farm kid by birth. I never met that particular artist but I am guessing that no matter how they cover it or try to rearrange the parts, the farm-kid's spirit and essence is still there in everything they do and all that they are. Yet it seemed they were trying so hard to separate themselves from it. I know because I did that for years too. But now I'd say it's important to embrace it. You can reinvent yourself and still honor and pay homage to those beginnings. 

I say that because for me, going back to that origin, creatively, became a huge part of my road to here. Childhood imagination. The same one I used to escape school bullies and that filled the many hours I had alone in my room as a kid, was still there waiting for me when I ran out of "adult artist" costumes to try on.  

Keep in mind that before I came to this realization, I DID create sooooo much. I performed the music I wrote on stages, had gallery shows and was part of collective exhibitions here and there. 


What Interested me then was making something from nothing. Even in those childhood, neighborhood sports-playing days we were always making due with less. Less players, less equipment, less than ideal places to play. Gravel instead of grass, slanted side streets instead of level lots. . . sharing gloves and bats, hoping someone brought a decent ball. . . but regardless, we played just the same.


Outside of sports, which was never a full time interest, my attention was put into to creating worlds. With action figures, costumes, props etc a few of us spent entire days lost in scenarios from space exploration to digging out of post apocalyptic ruins, to medieval knights. Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Lost in Space, Planet of the Apes and so on.  Strangely enough, though it was becoming quite the thing and I was aware of it, I never got involved in role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons in those years.
We were, perhaps, the last of the "outdoor" generation of kids. Even on the worst of days weather wise, we spent as much time outside as we could. I mean, when else were we going to be able to pretend we were on that snowy, ice planet of Hoth other than when we were slogging around in the midst of a 12 inch snowfall with gusting 40mph winds! 
But I've discovered the amazing worlds of Role Playing Games as an adult and I can see the parallels between the experience we had in our outdoor imagination-born adventures and role playing in the tabletop gaming world. 


Paul Lafarge, an essayist, author and long time D&D player and enthusiast, writes how gaming is like reading a book:  


"You start outside something (Middle Earth; Dickens’s London; the fascinating world of mosses and lichens), and you go in, bit by bit. You forget where you are, what time it is, and what you were doing. Along the way, you may have occasion to think, to doubt, or even to learn. Then you come back; your work has piled up; it’s past your bedtime; people may wonder what you have been doing. In a society that conditions people to compete, and rewards those who compete successfully, Dungeons & Dragons is countercultural; its project, when you think about it in these terms, is almost utopian. Show people how to have a good time, a mind-blowing, life-changing, all-night-long good time, by cooperating with each other! And perhaps D&D is socially unacceptable because it encourages its players to drop out of the world of competition, in which the popular people win, and to tune in to another world, where things work differently, and everyone wins together."

As we grew a bit older, reaching 'tween years, that small group of us who relied on imagination separated further from the sports playing kids just as the reached that peak competitive phase. My social/play group dwindled to three and, often times, it might just be two.  

Of course, the advantage I had over even the D&D kids was that I didn't need a group to have my most memorable fun. The worlds that I explored individually in my alone time, and there was an abundance of it, were the best. Still, to this day, I can recall the games, the characters, the little places in my mind that I would return to again and again. 

So lets lay the groundwork for this Third Friday post series like this:

I am a product of many events, circumstances and actions. Like all of us, I made choices, took roads that were more or less traveled and, at times, had to double back to find my way forward again. But in the midst of all of that, there has been a firm, foundational knowledge that the world around me is a magical place. A place of possibility. And that the world we experience and see is just a fraction of what is out there for us.

When that world around me became less than magical, I changed it. When the people around me became less supportive, too destructive or just got too caught up in their own version of the real, adult world, often meaning they gave up on their own dreams and creativity, I left them behind. When the places I've lived became less than magical, I've moved. And I'm aware how that could seem like I am running from something but, in truth, I am protecting something deeper. 

And I'd say the greatest lesson I learned was to treat your creativity like a gift of creation itself. I have come to think that our creative pursuits should be treated much like having a child (or kittens, baby birds, puppies. . . whatever you prefer) Your idea for a creative life is born or hatched as the case may be. . . And it needs your attention, care and, especially early on in it's infancy and development, your nurturing and protection from certain influences and experiences. You wouldn't turn your child over to just anyone to "rear and raise", and you wouldn't take just anyone's advice about how to raise them. . . so treat your creative work the same way. It's your dream, your pursuit, your passion. Your child. 

It most certainly can be harmed by the wrong hands, the wrong mouths, the wrong hearts. 

And, most of all, what parent out there would tell you their life didn't change drastically when their child was born or, to a lesser degree, when a new pet came into the house. We rearrange our lives to take care of them, yes? You put aside many of your other pleasures and indulgences to be there for it at all times, right? 

Then that is how you should approach your creative notions too.  

Ultimately, if you are really going to develop the creative soul you wish to bring forth. Even the idea of "success", of making a living from it, is just another point on the map, and the map we draft is a lifelong pursuit of putting beauty, whimsy, color, imagination, words, imagery, ideas and thoughts. . . even utilitarian items. . .  into our world. 

I make a living at what I do. I work harder than I have at anything else in my life. More hours. Like a small child, it's not something I can put away at 5pm, turn off the lights and go home. Since I reached that goal, I've come to realize that it's just another rung of the entire ladder of my life's journey. I want to evolve and grow with it. Whether I can make MORE money from it is immaterial because I know i can adapt and change MY life to suit it. 

To close this first installment of the Making of a Maker, there is a poem I adore that I actually was first shown by my Zen teacher. She thought it was perfect for me then because at the time, as I tended to from time to time, I was struggling with these same issues of the making and care of a creative life. To this day, some 15 years later, it remains one of my favorite poems and I think that it sums up the creative soul, the maker, that dwells in all of us so well. 

The Way It Is
William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. 

It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Thank you for reading, following and commenting! 
Keep MAKING!!!!!

Nicolas XO

<>oOo<> <>oOo<> <>oOo<>


Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:

1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)

2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me) 

3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where this is my full time job.)

4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)

Loss and Gain - Inspiration

This week has seen both. . .

It is almost impossible for me to imagine the world we live in without David Bowie.  He's just always been there. . .  the thin white duke. . . the man who fell to Earth. . . Major Tom.

He taught us to dance under the serious moonlight. . .

It's taken me three days to figure out what I'd like to say because I wanted to offer something meaningful and heartfelt. Something to sum up his place in my own world. What I can think of is this. . .  Growing up we all had this small window of time when, for most of us, music was just this magical thing that was a part of our world. Before we knew of radio stations, MTV, Concert tours, the business of it, the sometimes disfunction and self-destructive tendencies of it, the money and politics of it.

A time when it really was just pure sensory bliss.

For me, there is no other artist that sums that time up in my life like David Bowie. Songs like Starman, Rebel Rebel, Changes, Golden Years, Jean Genie, Young Americans and Fame were all over the radio stations and became the soundtrack of my single digit youth. I'd often sit in my room on weekend nights at age 10 and 11 and pretend to be a DJ with my own radio station on my old red plastic record player and I'd look so forward to playing those songs in my "rotation".

There were other artists and songs that stand out, to be sure, but there was something so magnetic about Bowies songs. And in my pre teen years, getting my first look at the visual world of Ziggy Stardust or Alladin Sane. . . well I, and my hair, at least for the next 20 years, would never be the same again. : )

And I am reminded how at my first cooking job at an Italian Restaurant the gregarious dishwasher named Rudi who was literally straight off a boat from Italy, and who seemed so out of place and spoke so little English, warmed up to me and my flame red hair right away and pretty much from his first day just called me, "Bowie".

And no doubt, due in great part to that chameleon aspect of Bowies public image, I've also changed personas over the years. Reinvention is how I have always thought of it but, when one phase of my life ended, I tend to move on completely and reinvent the outer/social/expressive me to suit my new environment. Keeping the best o the past incarnations and leaving all of the rest behind. Those days are far behind now too in all likelihood but, with his passing, I am reminded of it all again.

This is one of my favorite quotes from David Bowie. It has served me well for years in many facets of my life and perhaps never more so than now. . .

"I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me." - David Bowie

And then, this past Wednesday, I received a book in the mail that I have been waiting awhile for. I know many of you probably are not very interested in the world of comics today but, if you'll bare with me, this may be one of the most wonderful art books, period, I have ever seen. 

In 2006 a friend of mine, and employee at the coffeehouse I owned then, handed me a comic and said,"I just think you might like this." That comic was the first issue of "Mouse Guard" by David Petersen.

I had not read or even considered a comic book for I don't know how long and was not prepared for the effect it would have on me. The art is, as I think the cover of this hardbound collected edition alone shows, simply amazing.

If you were ever a fan of Redwall or any animated animal series, DO check this out!!

David Petersen draws, colors and writes the entire series.

It inspired me
It lifted my soul
It righted a listing vessel which was, in many ways, my whole life at that particular point in time and it steered me back towards the possibilities and wonder of my youth. 

It was just the first of many comics I would come to love over the next few years (comics today are such a far cry from what I grew up with!)  and, whenever things felt a little dark or I lost sight of the connection between those early days of imagination and where I was at the time, I'd just pull out those issues and let them take me away again. 

Mouse Guard reminded me of my love of Redwall as a child and brought back a sense of purpose to the world I wanted to create as an adult. And, it led, indirectly and with many other little factors and influences, to what I create now. 

To this world I live in now. 

Never happier
Never more certain
Though, these past few days, a bit of sadness. . . missing Mr. Bowie and realizing time is always and endlessly marching forward for us all. . . 

“Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming”  ― David Bowie

xo

nicolas

Small Town Vignette #1

There are so many things I absolutely love about living, by choice, in a little town of 800.  Some are expected given the size and some are random, it-could-only-happen-here, sort of events.



Across the street from my studio windows is an old fashioned Barber Shop with the old fashioned moving red, white and blue striped barber pole in the window. The woman who owns it is always very busy the five days a week she is open. Almost all old timer's and retirees are her clientele. It's a rarity to see her chair empty though.

Awhile back she was closed for months during a series of chemo treatments for cancer. When she returned the turnout was beautiful. . . all her old clients returned and business is, from where I sit, good.

Just the other day we noticed a new addition beside the barber shop. Built by her husband to look like and old style, blue and white phone booth, it is a little booth with a seat in it and the sign, instead of "Telephone" says, "Cell Phone Booth"

I love this for several reasons.

One, it's just a great way to say, "take your calls outside please!" without it being confrontational or rude. Seriously, I am so grateful to live in a place where the majority of people scrunch up their face and shake their heads when someone is using a cellphone inside a business. Personally, I have, for some time now, had it with the need for people to be "connected" 24-7 in every store and in every place of business. And I applaud any business that will draw that line and say, "Not in here"

But more than that I love the fact that, without a doubt in our town, there was no permit process or debate over whether this little addition was ok or not just off the public sidewalk. No sign zoning or city ordinance to deal with. Though it is quite possible a deal was made for volunteer hours or a donation.

The point is that I love being in a place where people are left to do as they wish (within limits) and that there is still room for a little ingenuity and originality and it doesn't cost you to do it at every turn. Occasionally this means having to deal with the guy who has a fire-pit and a couple of beat up couches on his lawn for his weekend loving, classic rock, beer drinking soirees. Even that becomes endearing in it's own way. . .

This little fishing town is changing as it turns it's collective eye to tourism a bit more but, in the meantime, I will enjoy the small things like that cell phone booth and celebrate the fact that places still exist where nothing much changes but, when it does, it isn't always necessary to fill out an application and apply for permission for it to change.

:)

After the Pause. . .

When it comes to starting or maintaining blogs, more than anything else, the one thing I I hear people say about starting one is, "I just want to wait til I know exactly what I want to say."

Which is when I turn and say,  "It's more important to just sit down at the computer and write and let others decide what is of value and what is worth reading. . . you can always delete later"

It comes down to fear, of course.

But there are times, once the writing is started, to pause and think this over too. Not out of fear but out of a desire for more succinct expression.  And, for me, the first three weeks of 2013 have been that.

I could keep on going with just random thoughts, creative inspirations, mystic meanderings and poetic expression and that, of course, would be just fine as they are all part of me. But I am finding myself, on this rising side of 40, wanting to be a bit more succinct and to lay down the stories and thoughts that have taken me thru my life to this place. To a life I have CREATED just as I have created all thru my years and will for the rest of them, if I am able.

So first, what is "this place?"

It would be easy to say the "place" is a very small town on the Oregon Coast I chose because it allows me to live and work as an artist with little or no worry about needing to make more money to survive or combating the frantic and disconnected vibe of a city.

But it would be more succinct to say that this "place" is the whole of my inner existence. Much of which I , as many of us do, tried to shake off in my young adult years thru my early 30's.  under the guise of "growing up".

I feel fortunate now to have been allowed the gift of seeing myself clearly again. To have recognized that the only people I have met who are truly happy souls are those that are doing what they love. Those who are living their entire lives creatively and choosing their actions each day with thought and consideration to how it does, or does not, facilitate that dream.

It's not the creativity of painting or writing or sculpting. . . it's the deeper creative force of living. 

I am fortunate to have come to this place and time and to have believed in it, and in myself, enough to walk away from the rest and to create this world of my own imagining.  To trust what feels right and what opportunity seems to be presented along the way.

I also have left so much behind.
This life includes few people by nature of the necessity of so much internal and uncluttered time .
Few material "things" that are not true needs and only truly soulful luxuries.
It is not about acquisition or compiling something for the unforeseeable future.
It is about the one thing I know I have to believe and trust in.
The greatest privilege that any of us have
Living FULLY today

My direction then, for this blog, is to tell the story of how I got to this place again. The cycle from childhood to adulthood that took me right back to what I always was. A maker of things. And how I came to believe again in it and to create a life built from that instead of from what we are taught life is supposed to be.

If I am lucky, I will find the words to put even a piece of it into some sensible structure. . . and I will hope that it helps someone else out there to have the courage to step into who they are and to leave the rest behind as well. . .

Allowing them to come home again and to live their todays as fully as they can too.

Here's to hoping that is you. . . today. . . and always.

nicolas

Angel in the Fold

Ted Althof. . . of Tarentum PA. . . a man I never met.  An angel none the less.

It is strange to write about the loss of someone you never knew. . . but who impacted your life in ways you can only begin to sum up at the time of their passing.

When, just a few years ago, I realized that my path, my future, indeed my purpose might be tied so intrinsically to all that I experienced, dreamed and created in my childhood, I found it hard to speak of it. To share it with anyone through any method other than my creations. . . and that, from a safe distance.

We are all too often told we need to "grow up", become adults and leave behind the wonders of childhood.  That we can't "live in the past" and that we should move on from those old days and memories.

But i have believed for some time that ALL that we are is written in those early pages and all that time we spend trying to create the adult us is wasted most of the time when it does not factor in those early and pure pieces of ourselves.

But even I, who have clung to that childhood magic inside for so many years, have struggled with the notion it could be the basis of my purpose and pathways in life.

I do not remember how it was I came across the article that completely blew that out of the water for me but, upon first reading of Ted Althof, a collector of Christmas Putz houses who lived in Tarentum PA, not far from where I grew up, I found an angel in the fold.

To read of his love for the past, for his childhood memories and, above all else, the magic of Christmas, the way he had never lost that spark in his life. . . it did more than inspire me, it cast me in a form that will now remain with me forever to my death.

I am saddened today to have learned that Ted passed on last month after a long battle with illness. I knew he was not well for some time as he had not been updating his incredible Christmas Putz site for some time now. . .

I won't go into all the ways this stranger touched my life but I will leave you with this quote of his that has been woven into my heart for the last two years and that keeps me believing, daily, that I have found my path through creating wonder and magic in my miniature and fairy tale works. . .

"The power that an object unseen in decades can have to transport us in mind and spirit back to a specific period or moment of our lives -- to unlock long-closed doors in the mansion of our memory -- is the true value that it has." Ted Althof

Thank you Ted. . . you inspired the discovery, or rediscovery, of that magic in so many and many of us will carry it on for the rest of our days. . . just as you did in your life.

That original article can be found here:

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/sectionfront/life/putz-christmas-villages-of-the-early-20th-century-bring-out-nostalgia-for-collectors-278154/#ixzz2EUBwXgPG

43 Degrees

I knew it would happen. . . it was just a matter of time.

Sun broke for the first time in four or five days. First thing in the morning and just weeks away from the shortest day of the year, the sun now rises and sets well within view of our windows.  It lit the eastern horizon, cascading over the coast range and filling the inland end of the bay with warm winter light.

43 degrees the thermometer read but with no wind in sight, we headed for the beach.

As we walked down the short trail from the jetty parking lot to the beach, the huge skyscape in front of us opened up. Voluminous clouds filled the sky, some tinged with the gold light of the sunrise and some, already, white against the brightening blue.

Most of the year, if one gets here early enough, you can have the beach to yourself.  Perhaps passing one or two others who may be occupants of the RV park at the jetty or a few locals who, like us, look forward to having this curving piece of the pacific all to ourselves. . . or almost.

Especially when it is rainy or cold. Even with the sunlit morning skies, i did not expect ot encounter anyone else walking today.

However, just ahead we saw an old man walking the beach with his dog. a Cairn terrier. The man, with a driftwood stick in one hand serving as a walking stick, edged along near the water, gazing out across the rolling waves. His little terrier, darting around his feet and stopping to look out at the waves, though I suspect with a less enthusiastic, shorter perspective eye. 

Once the dog noticed us his tail went up and he began to circle the old man a bit. His excitement increased as I made what I consider one of the many universal dog gestures for "come here".  He accepted this invitation and his excitement built as his short legs carried him up the beach to greet us.

I knelt down to accept his welcome and he skittered about all around us, allowing just a moment or two of petting before turning and returning to his master. It was enough time to see that he was an older dog, the years showing in the little ways they do on our ageless friends.  Ad we saw that had been dressed in a hand knitted blue and white "sweater" that ran from tail to neck. We laughed at this and commented on it as we continued our walk.


We watched the dog a moment more, waved to the old man as well, and turned to go on.

t one point I turned to look back and saw them both, man and dog, far now in the distance.  So small against this vast backdrop of sea and sky.

And it hit me.

I felt more curiosity, about a random human being, than I have in some time.

I wanted to know if the woman who had knitted that dog sweater was home awaiting their return or if the man came here to the beach alone because she had passed.  Perhaps he came here, where they once walked together, to feel her near.

I wondered what HE thought as he watched the endless cycles of waves as he has through all of his years.  I wondered if he felt peace and contentment with his life. I wondered if he felt he had done and been all that he was meant to in life.  If he was living in the place he most wanted to live.

I wondered if he had any regrets.
Or anything yet undone.

I felt all of this curiosity that life in a city, the previous 10 years, seemed to drain from my soul. Owning a coffeehouse, people are always willing to share their stories, their joys and sorrows and I have always been one who prefers to listen rather than talk about myself. It was a perfect fit. . . but the heaviness of city life, as it careens and spirals and rockets out of control in recent years,  as people struggle and awaken to more and more unfulfilled dreams, can really wear one down.

There, it is the greatness and the loneliness of any one person caught in such a contrived and stifling landscape. It is overwhelming.

I knew that the solitude we have embraced here the last year would allow my heart to open up again to that beautiful, endless wonder.  To the curiosity about one person that I know, in so many ways, is so intrinsically tied to myself.

It is a mirror.
A view into my own mortality

And here, I feel the greatness and the loneliness of one person in such a natural and timeless world.  It is inspiring.
 
As the tears welled up, I saw myself as whole again.
I felt the joy I've found being exactly where I know I belong
Doing exactly what I believe I am meant to do.
When people say "Oh, you're an artist?"
I say, "Well, no, I just make things"
And I tell stories with them
As I always have

Such is the wonder of accepting space and silence
Of embracing alone-ness and fragility
And the endless beauty of all that we may be, every day.

It 's all there
In one morning
In one moment of awareness
In a sky illuminated with the sun's rising
In 43 degrees

-nicolas

What's Missing

She asked me, "Did you know that Malta is it's own independent country?"

I did know that.

That simple question though prompted me to think about HOW it was that I knew that. Where that little bit of knowledge came from and why it remains with me to this day.

It is there because  many years ago, on those Friday nights when my grandfather and I would watch Studio Wrestling as I drifted off to sleep, there was a regular wrestler named Baron Mikel Scicluna who, as it turns out, hailed from the "Isle of Malta".

I am sure it was one day when I was 11 or so that I took to leafing through our home encyclopedia and read about this Isle of Malta for the first time.  That led to a visit to our neighborhood library for more reading.  This was right around the time of Malta's claim to independence so there was much to read at the library.

It was planted in my brain and remained a part of my consciousness all these years.

But why it remains up there is, I believe, mostly because of all the circumstances surrounding the actual knowledge I acquired.

Today, when I think of something or hear about something that peaks my curiosity, I look it up instantaneously on the internet and, to be honest, it is usually gone from my memory capabilities within a day or two.  I believe this is because a large part of the circumstances that make things memorable are not there with such instant, high-speed gratification.

As a child, there was the need to research any topic you wanted to learn about and an effort required to do so. Even if it was only to get up and go into a different room and pull out a thick volume of an encyclopedia and leaf through it. Better yet to walk the long blocks to the library and pour over books and magazines. The trip there and all the surrounding experiences etching themselves in as a form of inducing the tactile memory.

I love the world wide web. . . it is how I make a living and I count on it for recipes, information, news etc etc but, I know deep inside that something is missing when I take that route. As someone who experienced life before and after the explosion of the on-line world, I can tell you that the convenience is not always the best thing for our storing and retaining of knowledge. 

Something is missing when you can just sit at the same desk and whip through one subject after another. . . there is no separation. No lead up to the discovery of the knowledge. No sense memory to help write it into our consciousness.

It's not a better way.
It lacks soul, as do so many other internet based discoveries. . .

I recently got a library card in the new county I live in. Just walking around the aisles of books and magazines remains a thrill.  And I am determined to venture there on occasion to learn things the "old fashioned way".

So they'll stick like Malta.
For years to come

Cycle of Seasons

I haven't written anything here for some time.

This is not out of a lack of ideas or content. . . it is more that my brain has been overloaded with thoughts.
Creative ideas
Reflections
Nostalgia
Memories
Possibilities and questions

It's autumn. . . or close enough
My mind does this at the end of every summer as it has since the days of grade school.

It's like fall is a reset button in my soul.
I find myself purging old thoughts and attitudes
My eyes open to new things and something in me seems to connect with the faltering of summer
and the transformations of fall.

It's the beginning of my creative season too
Following the warmest season which always seems to leave me in a fog. . .

And this year, on top of it all, I find myself thinking more about the possibility of whether there is a divine plan to it all

My life has had more than it's share of turning points and moments I can only describe as "guided"
All along, since I was 7, possibly earlier, I've felt the presence of other forms and entities around me.
Voices have, literally, saved my life
Imagination too has been a saviour of sorts
And I've gone off course before over the years
Only to pulled back by luck, fate, timing, circumstance. . .
Call it what you will
It comes along with the cycle of seasons too. . .
And life as one big cycle, is fulfilling that as well now
In the summer of my life, the fog all around me, I lost the way
Not completely mind you
But I read the signs wrong
Missed the opportunities to advance and grow
Or perhaps, I was just "biding my time"

Now, the autumn of life is here for me
The years are past their brightest and fullest point
this, I expect, is a very good thing

The fog is clearing
The voices and dreams are returning
I am on course again
Finding the strength to stay steady
Is a daily challenge
And so I come back to imagination
As I always have
The worlds I invent
Are what keep me in reality
As I create it
Walk through it
And disappear

nicolas hall

The Name Game - Etsy Lessons - Creating a Life Around Creating

Etsy Lessons ( short essays on making a creative life )

"The Name Game"

I have wanted, for some time now, to begin to write about my experiences as they pertain to making a living as a "maker-of-things". I suppose that very phrase may be as good a place to start as any.

This question is for the creative soul. . . What do you call yourself?

I prefer to describe myself as a maker of things as opposed to an artist. The reason has nothing to do with my thoughts about the word itself being too general, which I DO think by the way. Saying one is an artist narrows the field about as much as saying physician, custodian, counselor, teacher, performer, laborer etc. Nothing wrong with it really. . . but beneath the surface it usually seems to belie a lack of certainty and confidence while still attempting to stake claim to a desire to be creative.

For me, the realization came that calling myself an artist allowed me to stay stagnant and not move forward with my desire to live a creative life. I floated in apathy and dead space. Though I never stopped creating.

I realized that the term artist described nothing about my passion or my creative soul and offered me no motivation to get moving. At the same time, I had come to think of some of my favorite people around me as artists though they had no traditionally creative outlets.

They were artists at living. They created a life that suited them in every way.
That appealed to me greatly

So, a maker of things? Yes, that, although as general a term at first glance, came to seem far more true to nature. At least, to my nature and to the life I wanted to live.

I make a living by making things. Simple and true enough.

What is most important to me is to be working with my hands and my mind in unison. Exploring many avenues and always in search of new roads to explore and ideas. All with the intent to tell my stories and offer my customers and casual observers the opportunity to be a part of them.

I didn't want to settle on one form of expression.  If I was to be true to my creative origin, I could not do that.  Though it seems that is what an "artist" is supposed to do.

But me?
I make photographs
I make miniatures
I make entire worlds in forms and words
I make music
I make poems
I make things
And above all else, I play

I felt that, to be successful,  I needed to embrace every fiber of the vivid and unending imagination of my childhood. . . or more precisely. . . to bring it all forward into my "adult life" and allow it to take over now as it did then.

With that comes the pleasure and the pitfalls and the constant fight against the programming I believe we all receive about what life and adulthood are "supposed" to be and look like.

Also, it is imperative to say that nothing went as planned during this transition period of my life. I had to think on my feet and constantly rework the original plan, sometimes daily.

I was able to change my life completely in a little over two years.  And while I feel that I am well on my way, the path is just beginning in many ways too.

The excitement as raw as it was in my youth.

So, yes, a maker of things indeed.
Not just art
Not just craft
But of a life itself.

nicolas hall 2012

Cobblestone Road

When is the last time you really looked at the surface of a road?

I do not mean while driving or riding in a car. I mean walking or sitting along the curb and staring at the road? My guess would be, in this day of asphalt and blacktop, it happens rarely if ever.

I grew up in a neighborhood built around the river and steel industries. The roads, in many cases, lasting into the early eighties, were made of large cobblestone or brick (called sett). Big square granite stones with sand between them,

If you have never seen this type of road, or did not have the luck to grow up on and around them,  it may be hard to understand what it is I miss about them.

Originally laid because they made travel easier for horses and carts, offering traction and better footing than dirt or, when it rained, mud, the sett and cobblestone roads were already being phased out of many highly traveled areas by the time I was growing up.

For me, they were a source of endless fascination. Our driveway was lined along the edges with the remnants of the stones that once made up the driveway itself. I spent many hours as a child examining the worn and smooth surfaces of the stones and the maze of spaces between.

They were an integral part of the landscape and the roadmap of my childhood.

Times change
Not always for the better

The stone streets were murder on the ever more expensive automobiles and, as snow removal became an important part of keeping a growing city moving in winter, (they were impossible to scrape completely clear of snow or ice) they became a liability in most eyes.

Not mine.

Let me tell you what they did do.

They slowed you down. The speed limit on our street, a fairly well traveled artery, was 25. . . and you had to be a fool to go much faster over those stones. Many a hubcap became a treehouse trophy or home plate for a wiffle ball game after being found along our road, lost in the night by those too drunk or too young to know when to slow down.

You could play on the street anytime of day or night with little fear of a car ever surprising you. Even today's hybrid or full electric cars would make enough sound passing over those stones to warn you ahead of time.

These are roads laid by hand. Each brick set in place and filled in. That part was timely I am sure, yes, but I can recall few road crews setting up for now customary days or weeks on end to have to repair them.

These roads had give and move, the stones and the sand between them flexing with heat or cold.  On occasion that some might need replaced, it was often a one day job done by hand. No machines, no smelly asphalt, no high tech engineering.  Simple.

They are beautiful. Today they are often referred to as "up-market", quaint or unique.
All words I have never used to describe a blacktop road anywhere at anytime. . .

We've lost so much beauty in this modern age
Everything is supposed to move faster and easier
Cities accumulate, suburbs sprawl and the ugliness seems to have no end
People and places have become dull in this scenario

Along with those gains has come a loss of just as much if not more
Cobblestone roads are just one example
And we just went ahead and paved over them
These colorful ribbons of our life blood
We willingly replaced them with ugly black veins
We poisoned a bit more of what made us feel
Alive

All these years later, the avenue I grew up on is all but gone.
The geography is the same
The curves, the hills, the houses. . .

But the stones are gone
Black veins that no one notices run the course now
People speed without a thought
Children stay clear
They paved over it all
Right through the heart of my childhood

nicolas hall

Postcards

In the postcard, the old man is stands along the edge of a rough and stony shore
It's on an inlet or a bay perhaps
A wooden fishing skiff sits at the water's edge
Weathered and worn as the man

The scene around him is vivid and raw
Stones reach to the sky, jutting from the water
Their outlines worn and shaped by the ever present forces of time

The obvious natural beauty of the scene is not the essence of the image though
To me, the draw to it is something more
The man in the postcard belongs
This land is clearly as much a part of him
And he is of it

There is so much talk in our country of seeking in a spiritual context
And it occurs to me now that perhaps what is missing is not the lack of community or of a faith
Not the lack of belonging to an organization or a lineage
But the lack of belonging to a place
To a landscape

But instead, here, people flock in droves to the same urban bone yards
And what their spirit seeks is never going to be found there
We've leveled and scorched that landscape
We've built above and through it's heart
We've left ghosts and shadows on this bloated vista
 Inhabited by empty souls
Dead weight

Our place can't be found among the hordes and the groups born of so called common interest
That is not what we are bound to connect with in this life
We have created that purpose in our mind
To stave off the constant hunger
Just as we have created so many other distractions
So many other false starts

But maybe you have felt it stirring inside of you
Along a weekend country drive
Or at the water's edge
Across a plain or a plateau
In the forest or the sea 
Just a moment perhaps, when everything you deem your life was left behind
When it all disappeared into a dream
And the place filled you
Consumed you
Recognized you
As you seemed to recognize the place
What lie did you tell your heart then?

Often, in the end, we let all our superficial needs pull to the bone yards again
How would we live without our pleasured distraction?
How would we live without our tribe and causes?
How would we live without ambitions and status?
How would we survive?

The answers is
If you truly listened
Heard the landscape
Opened to that spirit
You might actually find yourself
You might actually find that you ARE alive there
You might just. . .

One day I hope to be the old man in a postcard
In the right place
A part of the landscape somebody captures
Whatever the background
Wheteher a storm is coming
Whether it is dusk or dawn
Whether it is sea or sage
I want to look, not like an awkward visitor
Not like a stranger
I want to look
As if I too
Belonged

nicolas hall 2012

Crossroads

A few months ago I left the city to return to the Oregon Coast. Leaving the spiraling, urban sprawl of 600,000 for a quiet fishing village of 900.  The return to a simpler place and a less frantic pace has allowed me to breathe for what seems like the first time in years.

I return to the city twice a month, for now, to help out at the coffeehouse I used to own. I work two shifts in a little more than 24 hours and I get to see many people who were part of my daily routine over the previous 10 years.

I am asked time and again "Do you miss it?" and the answer, without hesitation is "No."

Now, I left the urban sprawl and static once before, years ago. And, after five years in a similar small town, I felt I had to get back to where things were "happening".

So what is different this time? Most people would tend to put it down to little more than the fact that  I am 10 years older?

In retrospect, I think it is simply that I realize the site of the crossroads when I am at them now.

In any lifetime, I believe we come to those crossroads again and again.
Many times over actually.
Some large and some small
Some almost daily.

But all of them are marked by choices we make or have to make and then, by the directions we turn. Often we do not turn. We just plow ahead with no acknowledgment that we are even passing through one or slowing to think about where the other road might lead.

We think that the slick, well paved highway we are on must lead to a better place than that little dusty road that transects it.  But that well paved road was once just dirt and gravel too.

When I return to the city, I walk about  25 minutes from the train station to the coffeehouse. Crossing through downtown and then across the river into the old industrial SE area of the city. I pass by hundreds of people going about their day. Some walking firmly with each step a foot-fallen vow to "make it" and some stumbling along just barely making it.

And I fee l this hanging, smoldering presence pressing down on so many of those I pass.

They've all reached the crossroads in life too.
Many did not think to slow down at all.
Most did not turn.
They just kept on going.
They made choices at each crossing whether they know it or not
And they are living out the result and destination of their choices.

Yes, it gets harder to go back each time

I am grateful to have seen the signs
To have known when the time was right
And to have turned down this little dusty road where few would think to turn
Off of the fast track
Leading to a place where I belong
Where I can slow down
And now
Thrive

-nicolas hall

Lessons In Time (Everything Must Change)

When I was a little boy, my room, to the naked eye, looked pretty much like any 11 year old's with the sport's posters on the wall and the baseball glove and souvenir hockey pucks on the dresser and night tables. Yet, hidden way under the bed, in the closets and anywhere I could find, were the pieces no one was able to see.

I had entire cities made of cardboard boxes stowed there for my action figures. My closet was painted (as well as an eleven year old can) with Egyptian hieroglyphs on the walls and my dresser drawers were filled with all the little extras my imagination created to aid the hours of solitude and play time.

And, no matter how much I had already created in this way, there was a to-do list somewhere with another three dozen ideas. . .

This is pretty much how I am today with my Etsy shops.

I have a foundation of things in each shop that I make and remake as they sell. They are the things "on the dresser" so to speak, there for everyone to see. . . but I always have another three dozen and more in some form of process going at any one time.  Seriously. . . all. . . the. . . time. . .  lol

This is both the good and bad of my creative soul.  In one way, it allows me to constantly keep moving forward even when I am making that miniature stone chapel for the umpteenth time, which is the good. I never quite feel like I am in a rut.

On the down side, I can guarantee you I should be spending time making multiples of the things that, come the holiday season, I will wish I had made many of in advance. Because I know they will be selling but I would rather take that extra time and work on something new or undeveloped.

The thing is, my creative "success" has been directly related to a return to those childhood habits and imaginings. Much of what I create today is based on that 11 year old boys fascinations and interests in mysteries and unknowns. So, the change we experience in life is also, as I have found, cyclical.  

Everything must change or it stagnates. In my world I can feel stagnation, when it creeps in, like I can feel the slow movement of the hands of a clock. . . it can somehow be upon you without any notice.

So, take five minutes, if that's what you can spare, and just start on a new idea. Or find something inside from your childhood. Tuck it away and keep at it when you can. . . but consider doing it because, if nothing else, it's a movement forward.

It's a nod to the law of change.
It's a step towards a circle completed '=
And it will keep you ahead of the sands of time. . .if only by a grain or two.

*No tidying. . . this is just how I started the day. . . projects everywhere . . . LOTS of motion just like when I was 11. lol*

Thanx for reading!!

nicolas

This was inspired by an excellent post by Sarah on the AGTeam blog which you can read here:
Time's Catching Up: Making Big Changes

And another view:
donauluft