Artists and Other Endangered Species (Notes from a composing fellowship residency)
Ucross. Light. Time. Hills. Non-human companionship. Human conversation (limited). Safety. And the FOOD. Beautiful, soulful, nutritious, abundant, gorgeous.
I cannot offer a sound bite about how much this experience means to me, how magical the moments, how lucky I am.
No, for me this is a back-from-the-edge-of-artistic-extinction moment. I’ve been put back onto the Endangered Species List where at least I can safely rest. My time at the Ucross Foundation Campus amounts to a transcendent intervention, a last minute pardon from the gallows. It is nothing short of a mythic rescue from the falling, falling, falling into the morass of conventional busyness.
An artist can be busy. An artist can be productive. People can look at an artist, see work, and say, “She is creative.” But an artist cannot make authentic work unless she knows who she is. Perhaps she doesn’t always experience it this way. She is constantly floundering to find out. But from time to time, from rock to rock crossing the stream, she must know her own specific gravity in her bones. Her first artistic duty is to loyally and carefully follow the trajectory of who she was born to be.
Grizzly bears cannot thrive while constantly being harangued and harassed, pursued, persecuted, interrupted. In the physical and psychic realms, we put ourselves in great danger if collectively we hold no space for the Great Bear and other relative rarities, including artists. In the real word we misunderstand art and mishandle the gift, mostly by way of bobbling at the receiving end. But also by the constant encroachment on habitat, the ceaseless interruption of process.
At Ucross, there is healthy habitat for artists. There is quiet and a respect for process. There is the nuts-and-bolts nurturing of good (really good) food. Perhaps most important, there are other members of the group. There is not an animal, even the Great Bear, who can survive entirely alone.
I will not offer a sound bite. The meaning and depth of this experience is rich and complex. This place is no less than a monastery. The genius elements, large and small, alchemically combine to create a place of active rest. A place where art can be born, live, and ultimately pass into the collective body of work upon which we all draw daily, whether we know it or not.
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Literacy and the Rinpoche
As a bellow-beginner armchair Buddhist I was delighted to have my first experience sitting with and listening to Phakchock Rinpoche, the reincarnate Buddhist lama. The evening was lovely, poignant and deeply humorous—a song, a poem, a prayer and a lecture rolled into one. Spiritual traditions more familiar to me have possessed these same elements, but the evening with the Rinpoche differed in this way: The poetic aspects did not seem separate from each other nor from the message of his talk. All of it was all of it. In particular, the Rinpoche repeated concepts many times, the like a chorus or refrain. The rhythms and pitches he used added up to one long, beautiful song. Although his English was excellent, there were times when the translations became funny literary puzzles and the host had to explain the questions that were posed. This was perhaps my favorite part. The symbols and words in the prayer book seemed to reach into the far-away exotica in my soul, and spoke to me from a vastly different perspective.
A word reaches beyond it’s literal meaning. When sung, a word is completely different than when said. A song in a language unfamiliar to the listener can illicit the most passionate response of all. The timbre of the voice in utterance communicates much more than the dictionary definition. Thus it may be the phoneme itself that pierces our hearts.
The evening before the Rinpoche’s talk, I sat on a panel with the talented fireball Alexandra Fuller (aka Bo Ross) to help celebrate the Teton Literacy Program. It was a terrific honor and lots of fun. We spoke of how important words are to each of us. The Teton Literacy Program is dedicated not only to establishing fluency in English and other languages for critical life skills, but also to the nurturance of the highest use of words: Literature, poetry, and song.
The completion of any form involving words occurs within the Genius Listener. The gift is created in the open heart of the receiver of the word, note, or idea. Often when I’m ‘listening’ in conversation I am simultaneously thinking of the next thing that I am going to say. Occasionally I will be still enough to hear the echo, the space, the immense landscape of thought.
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