No class for me last week. I felt nauseated on the 17th and almost every day last week. My neighbor was smoking outside my home and it was getting in somehow. I think I may have picked up a small bug and didn't take care of myself enough to get thoroughly until the weekend.
It's a good beginning. Don't know how to get a copy made to upload so you can see my work as it progresses. Much more interesting that way. Another challenge to solve.
Spent all day Sunday going back to Swamp Fever reading the posts in search of one of the most poetic posters on the site to see what they were like. As I skimmed and read the longest ones, and stopping at icons I recognized from today's, I collected them to read in detail when there isn't any Brian O lj to read anymore and during the winter when I'm cozied in and snuggled in my blankie. Sad to say, I haven't got a really comfortable spot in which to read at length, except my writing desk and my dining room table.
I am definitely allergic to wheat. makes my nose run like a son-of-a-gun. and I feel nauseous when that happens. Hmmm...my nose ran all last week.
Brian O's lj is a place I love to go to but not a place where I belong. The folk there are incredible writers, at least to me they are, and good at critiquing his work. It's difficult for me to focus, there, and say something about his work that they haven't said better, already, or will. It's quite discouraging, actually, sometimes. it is a place where I can learn what i can. Brian and Ran have been very kind to me and helped me more than they will ever be able to understand or comprehend. It is not necessary that they do. It is also uneccesary that they be people I get affirmation from around that idea.
Back to the Burn Website:
I can't wander there. I have to focus. His writing brings so much to mind for me I want to say. So do the commenters as they do their comments, but, I no longer have the ability, if I ever did, to use words the way they are able to. Often, I find out they are writers, themselves or betas for fanfiction writers. it's quite intimidating, actually, at times.
it's not my thing, that kind of writing, and Brian's work so often touches upon some really personal issues I have that just plain hurt, and it's very difficult to write something coherent besides how grateful I am to have his work and the work of others to read and learn from. I find myself comparing what I say to what others say. Wanting to fit in, apologizing for what I say and do, and it's a difficult place to be. When the emotional stuff settles down, it won't be.
The live journal format is not a comfortable one for me because in it, like teaching, I have to be so careful not to share something I don't mean or want to share. I keep trying to leave comments, though. To find a comfortable way for me to do it.
Swamp Fever is one of the best pieces of fiction of its kind I've read; and I've read a lot in my life. The author is a kind, loving man who has created a most intriguing and provacative story and group of people who respond in writing to it I have seen. I say provocative in that they provoke one to think deeply about what they are writing.
I belong in my art class, however. I still have to watch what I say and do, somewhat, but, since we are all learning the same things, we are in the same boat and can share more easily.
My teacher in art is very encouraging and en-something that means gives students the ability to do the work for themselves and is very patient with new, beginning artists. I am so open to trying his techniques, also. When he says someting is great, I want to keep on going and trying and getting better and doing what he tells me is good and what he encourages me to do, and see how it turns out.
It appears to me that, in the same way, the writers who comment on Brian O's Burn, give him insight into what he does and writes that he doesn't necessarily see in his own work, or did at the beginning. It encourages him to do more work and keeps him going, and as he said in one reply, "it fuels me."
That's how I felt when one of the girls from the site worked with me and my Elevator Stories. She called the men in the elevator with Brian K, blended men. From that comment, I was able to use it and run with it in my next draft. God, I love revising. it IS like pumping iron, just like my best writing teacher taught me to teach kids.
Everything about the creative process is used in any activity that becomes art. the same feelings, the same steps, the same frustrations and breakthroughs and the same gaining of skill and confidence.
Mitch, my instructor. He knows how little confidence I have sometimes and is very gentle.
I do forget how important it is that I can often recognize what the problem is even though I don't know how to solve it. The problems I had teaching were caused by my illness and lack of medication and were not solvable at the time. I'm glad I get to substitute and learn to do things differently so I didnt' have to quit not having reached my full potential.
I love to learn and am happiest and most alive and turned on when learning and it's something I can do well at. The class in acting was too difficult, at least after the car accident with a brain concussion.
Maybe I'll try it again sometime. I learned some valuable lessons in that class about using whatever it is, whatever state you are in, to make a performance come through. How not to give up. It's deepened my understanding of acting and enbled me to understand everything Dustin Hoffman said about the art of acting. He is a consumate professional, artist and teacher, and LOVES what he does. Not many of the people i see, even on the Actors Studio, seem like they love what they do.
Mitch loves what he does. Ann loves what she does. I love what I do as long as I have a chance of improving and fulfilling my potential in it. I love living my life, not the lives of others.What a huge step that is. Following are the first two sketches I made and the best one on the 24 of July.
Lyn
WEll, there was no way to go but up, here. Stick figures for start; in an art class no less and the teacher didn't laugh at me. He could tell how much I was trying to follow what he said in class, and just picked up from there.
I'm quite proud of this one; got tired after and the drawing even though only ten minutes sketches, was more difficult to focus on and concentrate and keep things in mind as I went.
It's a struggle in some ways to work the mind and hand that much, just as it is to read the novels of Brian and learn so much from them, especially things I wonder about and am not sure how to even ask the questions I have about what I read there.
This is what ties the ideas of my class and Swamp Fever together. They are both places where I push my own envelope. In one I'm far more comfortable. What intriguing in both is the creative process. I am understanding Brian's more and more as I read his Swamp Fever lj.
It would be such a pleasure to sit down with him for an hour and inteview him as James Lipton interviews actors. In the case of Brian O, it will be his writing process I am be trying to grasp. What turns him on. Where he came from. How things come to him and how his life fits into the whole thing. Not highly personal things, just an opportunity to really hear and feel how he creates. To find out about his dreams. To hear why he writes. God, that was the most interesting part of Dustin Hoffman's interview; the why he writes part.
Dreams. The whys.
I have interviewed a few people. It's a privilege and an honor and most people don't understand why I would even want to. Espcially since it would be just for me. If not Brian, someday, another writer.
Artistic travels is a place for me to understand my own process. and allows me to wander around til I can tie what I know is connected together, together. In my mind, at least.
Lyn
