Sunday Salon: The Future of Work

 

These are the days our social media feeds fill with colorful images of fall foliage, long vistas of crimson and gold trees, piles of crunchy leaves underfoot, scenes of warm firelight, cozy blankets, steaming cups of coffee. Our taste buds crave hearty soups and stews, the spice of harvest flavors like pumpkin and apples. We don’t really mind pulling on a sweater or jacket these first frosty mornings, and marvel, childlike, at the magic of our very breath made visible in the air before us. I always feel lucky to live in the Midwest in autumn, for nowhere else does the season gift us with such grandeur and beauty.

Fall is such a poignant season – my favorite one most likely for that very reason. I am, by nature, melancholic, and autumn fits my natural predisposition like the fuzzy gloves I pull out of my jacket pocket. With autumn the light dies quickly each day, the cycle of seasons comes to a close, the year ends in a triumphant blaze of glory.

All things -good or bad – come to an end. If I’ve learned nothing else in my 62 years on the planet, I’ve learned that lesson well. Not every ending comes with the brilliant shades of autumn, but each one colors our world in its own unique way. And of course, with each ending comes a new beginning, with every change comes new opportunity. Its an old adage but a true one – when one door closes, another one opens.

I truly appreciate living in a place with four distinct seasons because along with the gifts of beauty autumn provides, it offers us a chance to reflect on the year gone by – on ALL the years that have accumulated like the piles of leaves under out feet, years that have blown in a vortex, whirling and swirling around our heads. Autumn gives us a brief moment to prepare ourselves for the work that lies ahead, the cold winter days that call for courage and perseverance and determination.

This autumn, more than any other in recent history, I feel called to work, to the kind of work that brings something meaningful to the world. As long as I’ve been writing here in The Sunday Salon (and this column predates Modern Creative Life by many years, going back to the days when I maintained a book blog called Bookstack) I have focused my attention on the intersection between life and art. For me, art is something like the fall foliage of life, the surprising and glorious beauty that appears out of nowhere when we turn the corner, that inspires a quickly indrawn breath, a murmured “ahh,” a welling of tears in the eye. Art is what connects me to thinking and ideas from centuries past, from the expressions of my contemporaries, and also from the ideas of youth. It shines a light on the world and helps us understand in a new way.

It gives solace. It inspires courage. It offers hope.

Those are things I believe we need in the world, just as we need food and shelter, and perhaps we need them now more than ever in my lifetime. But for all the mess society seems to be in, within the chaos and the strife there are millions of individuals like you and I going through the motions of each and every day, getting up for work and school, driving our cars in traffic, dealing with demanding and recalcitrant bosses – or spouses and children. As we do our daily work, whether we know it or not we each hunger for something beautiful, something easy on the eyes and ears, something that will lift us up.

Here in Michigan, autumn does a fine job of all of that.

Art does all those things too, and more besides.

As Modern Creative Life goes on hiatus, I know I’ll need reminding that creative living is the way we bring art and life together in real time, everyday. The future of MY work entails staying connected with the creative side of my being and also with other people who inspire me. The future of my work means listening to the creative voices that speak hope and truth. The future of my work means diving into the deep waters of my own thoughts and dreams, distilling ideas that I can share with you, ideas that may resonate within you and make you feel less alone.

In practical terms, the future of my work means exploring life in general through writing, it means developing the determination to regularly connect with others on my personal blog and on Medium. It means trying to shift my perspective from negativity toward hopefulness, from complacency toward action. It means looking inward more often rather than allowing myself to be flooded constantly with chaotic words and images from the outside world. Maybe it means a new book, the one I’ve been thinking about and wanting to write for almost two years, or maybe one I haven’t yet conceived of.

It’s pouring rain today, a chilly rain accompanied by gusts of wind that send the last of the leaves dripping into sodden heaps on the ground. It’s a melancholy day. Cold rainy days like this at the end of October are usually harbingers of autumns final breaths. But I fight my natural despondency – I play games with the puppy, I start reading a new book, I go shopping and buy a soft sweater in the same deep crimson of the maple tree outside our bedroom window.

Even as this season, this year, this time of my life comes to a close, I challenge myself to blend memories of the past with a vision for the future of work.

For the future of Art.

For the future of Life.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their Shih Tzu puppy, Lacey Li. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, collections of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her teaching tricks to the puppy or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

Sunday Salon: Armchair Escape

I can’t help chuckling at the theme for this issue of Modern Creative Life – ESCAPE. It’s particularly ironic for me at this moment because six weeks ago we brought home a tiny puppy, so we’re spending most of our time tethered to the house or the puppy’s needs. When we do “escape” it’s to make a quick run out for a meal, or groceries, or more chew toys, or to the veterinarian’s office.

And while I absolutely adore this little critter, there are times when I do long for a real escape – somewhere the sights and sounds consist of other than squeak toys, kibble dispensers, puppy pads, and all the assorted accoutrement puppies now seem to require.

Here is just where art and life intersect in a marvelous way. In the past few weeks I’ve traveled to India and South America, to Spain and France, and even back in time to the 1930’s and 1940’s. All while ensconced in my favorite chair, a bundle of fur curled up beside me snoring softly.

If you’re a reader you understand what I mean. Books have always been my preferred means of escape. In reality, I’m not much of a traveler anyway. I always prefer home over foreign locales. For many years, I wasn’t inclined to admit that, because it seems most people count traveling as a huge life goal and have exotic locations lined up on their bucket lists. Alas, I’m happy spending the majority of my time in my own home, especially as I get older and admittedly more persnickety about my personal spaces. Whenever I do travel, I’m usually disappointed. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in Self Reliance: Traveling is a fool’s paradise…I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the same sad self, unrelenting, identical that I fled from.”

Yep, there’s just no escaping that “same sad self.”

So books – and also music and movies and artwork – take me most anywhere I want to go these days. Add in some rich coffee grown in the Andes mountains and a buttery Parisian style croissant, a cold crisp glass of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand with some cheese from the coast of England, and the armchair international experience is complete.

Maybe a few months from now when the puppy is grown up and settled I’ll decide to take a real trip instead of a virtual one. I’ll hire a pet sitter, pack my trunk, wave farewell to my friends, board a plane, and take off into the friendly skies toward unknown and interesting destinations.

Then again, maybe I’ll just settle back in my armchair with a pile of good books. Think of all the money I’ll save to buy chew toys and dog treats.

How about you? Are you an armchair traveler or an explorer for real?

Here’s a list of books I’ve “traveled” with in the past few weeks:

A Place for Us – Fatima Farheen Mirza

The Masterpiece – Fiona Davis

Another Side of Paradise – Sally Koslow

The Story Hour – Thrity Umrigar

Moonlight Over Paris – Jennifer Robson

Women in Sunlight -Frances Mayes

 

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their Shih Tzu puppy Lacey Li. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, collections of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her either playing with (or cleaning up after) the puppy, or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

Sunday Salon: The Time for Art

 

“In these relentlessly dark and riven times, I find myself beset by a near ravenous hunger for beauty.” ~Claire Messud

It happens when I hear the extraordinarily poignant melody of a Chopin Nocturne, when I gaze on the placid hues of a Monet watercolor, when I read the lines of a Mary Oliver poem. For those moments in time, my soul expands, my spirit quietens, my heart calms its racing, and I feel reassured.

In our modern world it’s so easy to discount the importance of Art. There are such huge divisions among people, there is massive weaponry being tested and touted, there are innocent children being killed in school and separated from their families by virtue of nationality alone. We are taking sides against one another, brother against brother, mother against daughter, husband against wife. There is so much work to be done, even to begin the long process of bending history toward justice, as Martin Luther King promises us will occur.

What use is a song, a painting, a poem in the face of so much outrage? Who feels like dancing or singing anyway? Isn’t it just easier to go to work, do your job, come home and settle on the couch watching TV news or scrolling your Twitter feed for the latest outrage? Or try and escape from it all by numbing yourself with food or alcohol or other destructive behaviors?

We have been trained to believe that if something isn’t immediately useful and purposeful, its benefits cannot be measured, evaluated, calculated, and monetized, then it’s not worthy. It’s dispensable. We can get along without it. But if we accept this, I fear we risk losing sight of what makes us human.

I believe the quality of life is not measured by material goods or celebrity or social media status. It is a rich and sensitive mind, a giving heart, and meaningful human relationships that feed our souls and lead to the truest fulfillment we’ll find in this lifetime.  Art is a bridge between the chaos of the modern world and the spiritual refreshment we so desperately need.

As difficult as it may be to scientifically analyze the benefits of art on a personal or societal level, there is no doubt in my mind that Art has the power to heal, to reframe thinking and to encourage justice. We learn compassion for others when their circumstances come alive in stories. We see the beauty of nature in paintings on canvas. We hear emotion come to life through music. We marvel at the fortitude these artists demonstrated, making art in the face of terrible trouble. Art lifts us up to possibility, to the creation of beauty within our own spheres. It encourages quiet and thoughtfulness. It makes us take stock and think.

Because truthfully, every nation at some time in its history has faced a reckoning similar to the one we’re facing now. Where will we stand – on the side of truth and honor and service? Or on the other side.

And what will we do with our anxious minds and spirits while we make that decision? We will illuminate and observe and perform. Our soul cries out for it, our hearts ache for it.

Novelist Claire Messud writes: “Art has the power to alter our interior selves, and in so doing to inspire, exhilarate, provoke, connect, and rouse us. As we are changed, our souls are awakened to possibility – immeasurable, yes, and potentially infinite.”

So go and make some Art. Create it or soak it up in silence. Lift your voice in song, spin your body in a dance. Awaken your soul to possibility, immeasurable and infinite.

You will be changed. And so will the world.

 

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their Shih Tzu puppy Lacey Li. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, collections of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her playing with the puppy or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

Sunday Salon: Life Lessons from the Gym

 

I would never consider myself an athletic person. I don’t enjoy watching or participating in sports, I hate to sweat, I get headaches when I exert myself. I’m not very coordinated, or graceful – my dad used to tease that I was the only person he knew who could fall up the stairs. (I had a peculiar way of stumbling over my own feet when I raced up the stairway.)

During my elementary school years, I counted myself extremely lucky to have exercise induced asthma which meant I was excused from gym classes throughout my entire school career! What an amazing gift for a chubby, shy, couch potato.

It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood I began to appreciate exercise. Moving my body, getting a little bit winded and shiny with sweat, feeling my heart start to pound and blood race through my veins really did give me a tiny bit of a “high.” Besides that, it helped keep me slim, and having once been decidedly “not slim,” I’ve always been a little bit paranoid about gaining weight.

Being an introvert through and through, I only liked to exercise alone. I had a library of VHS tapes: Jane Fonda, Kathy Smith, and my all time favorite, Leslie Sansone and her Walk at Home Program. I had such a collection I could workout everyday for a month in the privacy of my basement and never do the same routine twice. When the VHS machines wore out, I replaced everything with DVD’s and continued my walking, yoga, pilates, and strength training.

Of course there were times when the regimen was interrupted for varying lengths of time. Months – even years – when life in general was simply too hectic and I couldn’t muster the energy to trek downstairs for that 30-45 minutes.

That’s the thing about a routine – exercise or otherwise – it’s easy to fall out of the habit.

And then it’s difficult to get back in.

But for the past several years, I’ve been happily back in the basement at least three or four mornings every week, walking away the pounds with Leslie or doing yoga with Rodney Yee, or strength training with  Petra Kolber (I love her Scottish accent).

This past January my husband retired and one of the things he wanted to do was start a regular exercise program. So we joined Planet Fitness, conveniently located just a mile from our house. I started accompanying him to workouts, because I knew he was much more likely to keep it up if I kept it up with him. So for the past seven months, we’ve been attending quite religiously twice a week for an hour’s worth of strength training and cardio.

I’ll admit, I didn’t think he’d stick with it. He’s not much more athletically inclined than I am, although he did enjoy golf for a while back in the 1980’s. Lately though, working the gears on a six-speed transmission in his classic muscle car was about the most work he was interested in doing on a Sunday afternoon.

But like me, he got hooked on the feeling. Hooked on feeling better, to be more precise. On losing weight and having his clothes fit nicely. On having more energy. On knowing he was doing something good for himself.

Certainly there are days when either one or the other (or both) of us really doesn’t feel like going to the gym. We hem and haw and drag ourselves out the door. But once we get in and get started on our routines, I think our mojo starts working and we leave a little sweatier than we went in, but also with a clear head and a spring in our step.

In other words, (to paraphrase Dorothy Parker) we may not feel like exercising, but we love having exercised.

So what does all this have to do with art? Or Creative Living? Or “the intersection of art and life,” which is what these Sunday Salon posts are supposedly all about.

I think you know. It’s about discipline and habit and routine. It’s about getting yourself to the page or the keyboard or the easel or the sewing machine or the garden or the barre. It’s about making time and space for your art whatever it might be, and showing up when the time is right.

Even when you don’t really want to.

I’ve been proud of myself for my Planet Fitness attendance this year. I’m less proud of my dedication to any of my artistic endeavors. I’ve yet to develop the kind of discipline needed to carry through on self-imposed deadlines, and those are the only ones I currently have. It’s so much easier (and more fun) to go for picnics in the park with my husband, or catch a matinee in the afternoon. Curling up next to him on the couch with a book is lots more appealing to me these days than writing or revising or practicing piano.

My favorite at-home exercise guru, Leslie Sansone, has another piece of advice I think is as appropriate to creative work as it is to exercise. “You don’t have to spend an hour on your workout,” she says. “If you can only spend 15 minutes a day, then spend 15 minutes a day. Believe in the small doses! It all counts.”

Believe in the small doses. Perhaps that’s something I could apply to my creative living with some semblance of regularity. A small dose – 15 minutes a day? 15 minutes of free writing, or responding to a prompt. 15 minutes on one page of a Mozart Sonata.

More than likely, the 15 minutes would stretch into 20 or 30. My hands might get a little achy from holding the pen or running 16th note passages. My heart might race a little with excitement at finding just the right words or mastering the phrasing of a difficult passage. And no matter what the end result, I know I’d feel a sense of accomplishment for having written, for having played.

For having the discipline to Just Do It.

It all counts.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, books of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. These days if she’s not curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand, she just might be on the treadmill at Planet Fitness. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

Sunday Salon: The Room Where it Happened

There’s a song called The Room Where it Happened in the hit musical Hamilton, a song that describes the debate which occurred in the room where the Founding Father’s placed their signatures on The Declaration of Independence. Like many of the songs in that musical, it’s rousing and invigorating, bestowing a huge sense of importance on this particular place in time.

I suspect we all have significant rooms where things happen in our lives that serve as tipping points for our own personal history. A few weeks ago, I was able to return to one of those rooms for the first time in over 40 years.

The occasion was a final walkthrough of the building where I went to high school, a Catholic school for girls that recently announced it would be closing due to lack of enrollment after 75 years in the community. And though I didn’t love high school like I loved elementary school and junior high school, had not in fact ever been back inside my alma mater for anything since the day I graduated in 1974 (even though I live only a couple of miles away), I decided to pay my respects on this final day when the school was open to alumni one last time.

There was really only one room I wanted to see, and that was the music room. When I stepped inside, 45 years fell away and I was the tiny, shy sophomore walking into her first choir class, a room full of girls dressed in blue plaid skirts and saddle oxfords. I don’t recall feeling nervous, although I must have – I didn’t know anyone in the room, having transferred from public schools in another town. And I hadn’t sung in several years, choosing to play in the orchestra during my middle school years rather than sing in choir. (I do remember feeling horrified when the choir director – a little spitfire of a nun named Sister Alexis, who was also my French teacher – went down the rows voice testing us individually.)

A few days after that first day, something happened in that room that set my life on it’s course for the next 40 years. Sister Alexis asked if anyone played the piano. I raised my hand, along with three or four other girls. Each girl was called to the piano and asked to sight read the music on it. As they fumbled their way through, I became more and more nervous. What was this horribly difficult piece that no one could play?

When it was my turn, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I say it was a simple version of Amazing Grace, which I played through without a problem. Sister looked at me, her dark bird-like eyes shining. “Can you play something else?” she asked. So I played Bach, a Two Part Invention. The class applauded.

I tell you this story not to be boastful, but to recall that simple action was a tipping point in my life. I became the official choir accompanist that day, a role I would play for choirs of all ages over the next 50 years. A role that has led me to some remarkable experiences, some remarkable friendships, some remarkable growth.

And for the first time since I left in 1974,  I was back in the room where it happened.

The room itself looked remarkably the same, rows of chairs lining the built-in risers, a bank of windows along the wall showing the long driveway leading up to the front of the building, the upright piano in the same place on the right of the podium. There were a few other women looking around the room, ranging in age from their early 20’s to over 70.  I heard one phrase repeated over and over again.

“I lived in this room!” a young woman exclaimed.

“So did I,” said the oldest among us.

“Me too,” I agreed.

My friends and I ate lunches here, often gathering around the piano as I played Carly Simon or selections from Jesus Christ Superstar. I had three classes every day in this room – Choir, Orchestra, Theory – and when I wasn’t in class was often practicing in one of the tiny practice rooms or gathering with other officers on the music department student board. I stole time during study periods to sit along the wall of windows and write letters to my boyfriend who was away at college. I sat in the hallway outside the room and comforted a friend who was crying because her parents were getting divorced. I rehearsed for hours with singers and instrumentalists, working our way through everything from the Messiah to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

I lived in that room.

I’ve lived in a lot of music rooms like that one during the past 45 years. So much happens in  rooms where art is created – living, working, dreaming, expressing emotion through music, sharing the joy of working together to make something beautiful for others to experience. Music touches something deep in our souls, helps us connect with our feelings and memories in a way nothing else can.

These are the rooms where life is lived on a special and significant level. May we all live in rooms where this happens.

 

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, collections of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

Sunday Salon: Lives of the Poets

April is National Poetry Month, and although I’m not a poet myself, I have a deep appreciation for the way poets use syntax and imagery to examine their subject matter from a completely different vantage point than one would do in prose. Here in the Sunday Salon, I like to think about the intersection between life and art, and poetry seems to be one of the finest examples.

This month I returned to the poetry of Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall, two poets who happen to be married to one another and who, for me at least, really embody this intersection of life and art. I return to Hall’s memoir, The Best Day the Worst Day, his memoir about life with Kenyon and her death from leukemia at age 47. I return to Kenyon’s book of collected essays, A Hundred White Daffodils, where she often writes about life in the small New Hampshire town where she and Hall moved in the late 1970’s. I return to Bill Moyers Emmy winning documentary about the couple, A Life Together.

In short, I immerse myself in the lives of these poets. I become something of a poetry nerd, searching out poems that reflect life events both large and small.

 

I’m not disappointed. Early in their marriage, Kenyon writes of moving into Hall’s boyhood home.

You always belonged here.

You were theirs, certain as a rock.

I’m the one who worries if I fit in with the furniture

and the landscape. 

Hall writes so often of their daily routine it becomes sacred in it’s assuring sameness.

In the bliss of routine

-coffee, love, pond afternoons, poems –

we feel we will live

forever, until we know we feel it.

When illness strikes one and then the other, they work out their reactions and experiences in poem after poem, reminding us of the way life can upend itself, rearrange itself, and come to rest as something completely changed. One of Kenyon’s most well known poems, Otherwise, describes this uncertainty with such grace.

I got out of bed

on two strong legs.

It might have been 

otherwise. I ate

cereal, sweet 

milk, ripe, flawless

peach. It might have been otherwise.

I took the dog uphill

to the birch wood.

All morning I did

the work I love.

***

At noon I lay down

with my mate. It might 

have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together 

at a table with silver

candlesticks. It might 

have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed

in a room with paintings

on the walls, and

planned another day

just like this day.

But one day, I know,

it will be otherwise.

In Her Long Illness, Hall describes the days of vigil at Kenyon’s bedside, a feeling familiar to anyone who has nursed a loved one.

Daybreak until nightfall.

he sat by his wife at the hospital

while chemotherapy dripped

through the catheter into her heart.

He drank coffee and read

the Globe. He paced; he worked

on poems; he rubbed her back

and read aloud. Overcome with dread,

they wept and affirmed

their love for each other, witlessly,

over and over again.

Hall writes that “Poetry embodies the complexity of feelings at their most entangled.” It offers us company in joy and sorrow, invites us to examine emotions, nature, all of life in a unique way. Poetry parses the stuff of life and untangles the snares of emotions that trap us in grief,  loneliness, or confusion. It glorifies the particular beauty in nature and living things and reminds us of their value. In a few carefully selected and crafted phrases, a poet creates a new way of seeing, and also reaches a hand to the reader, inviting them to meet at this juncture of art and life.

Just because I don’t write poetry doesn’t mean I can’t look at life with a poet’s eye. Reading and studying the lives of the poets, observing the way they view their experiences through that unique poetic lens encourages me to do the same. Poets lift up the smallest details to a level of near holiness, something we might all benefit from doing. If, as the saying goes, life is in the details, the poet can teach us to examine the particular details of our own lives, appreciate and even exalt them in ways that can change us forever.

 

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, collections of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

Sunday Salon: Inspiration

As creative people, we often think about inspiration. What compels us to the page, or the easel, or the keyboard? What sends us running to the kitchen to perform alchemy with spices, what puts us in the garden planting bulbs and seeds for the promise of color and scent to come?

And what do we do when that sense of urgency doesn’t arrive? When days or weeks or even months go by when our creative juices seem to have run dry?

There are those who will say that creative output is more perspiration than inspiration, that when you begin the work, the inspiration follows. “Inspiration usually comes during work, not before it,” wrote author Madeleine L’Engle.

Others swear by a pre-work ritual – moments of meditation, lighting candles, preparing a special blend of tea, wearing a particular shirt or piece of jewelry – to inspire the flow of creative juices.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for inspiration these days. I’m in one of those ubiquitous dry spells, when nothing seems to provide the creative inspiration or satisfaction I need to get going. It’s pervasive throughout all the creative parts of my life – writing, reading, music. Nothing seems to set off that spark, the one that puts me in search of the nearest pen or makes me excited to settle my fingers on the keyboard.

So as I pondered this the other day, wandering through the house aimlessly fingering the notebooks and index cards scattered here and there, I began to think about my life in general at this moment. In the past few months I’ve gone through quite a sea change in my lifestyle. We lost both of our dogs last year, and suddenly I am free of responsibility for any living creature except myself. My husband retired from his job after 44 years of working, and is now home all day, excited about the prospect of all his free time and looking for pleasant ways to fill it. We are enjoying our new lifestyle enormously. Maybe you’ve heard the saying about grandchildren which goes – “If I had known grandchildren were so much fun, I would have had them first.” We are feeling the same way about retirement. If only we’d known it would be so much fun, we would have done it first!

It occurred to me then that building this new life IS in fact a creative effort on my part. I am changing my routines, building in more time to spend with my husband, looking for meaningful and enjoyable things we can do together. We’re actively planning our future – travel, possible moves, bringing another dog into our family. It’s all new and different, but also exciting. It requires creative energy.

Life and Art usually intersect for me in words and music. But perhaps right now, Art is intersecting with Life itself, and my creativity needs to be put in service of building an entirely new life, one that will carry me forward into the next decades.

Come to think of it, I’m finding the whole idea quite inspiring.

How about you? How is your real life requiring your creative energy right now? Is it affecting your artistic inspiration?

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, collections of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, or Goodreads.

Sunday Salon: Framing Life

 

The Artist’s House at Argenteuil

In 1871, the great Impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840-1926) left London where he had  been living with his family during the Franco-Prussian war, and moved to Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris. Monet painted almost 200 paintings during the four years he lived in Argenteuil, often standing outdoors (or en plain air) to capture his impressions of life outside the hustle and bustle of the city. They were paintings that depicted family life – his young son Jean playing with a ball in the backyard of their home, his wife Camille peering out the front door expectantly waiting for him to arrive home from the train station after traveling to Paris for a meeting with his patron. They were painting of his friends, Renoir and Manet, who visited him with their own easels and palettes, the group of them painting together, each one recording their own impressions of the world around them. They were paintings of Argentueil itself – an idyllic harbor scene with the intruding pinnacle of industry as the factory smokestack becomes the focal point, drawing one’s eyes away from the blue water and white sails of the ships.

Argenteuil, Late Afternoon

Earlier this month I attended a small and carefully curated exhibit of these paintings at our Detroit Institute of Arts. Aptly titled, Framing Life, the curator expertly chose the paintings from this period that demonstrated Monet’s ability to capture the beauty of family relationships, friendships, our natural surroundings, ordinary moments, and everyday objects and places.

Looking at these paintings, which were really just scenes from the artist’s daily life, I was reminded of the ways creative people try to capture the essence of our personal lives in our work. We want to cherish and keep this moments with us forever – the way the sun shines on the sidewalk where our child bounces a ball, the movement of white clouds across the azure blue of the sky, a friend smiling at us over the backyard fence, the trees laden with snow on a cold winter morning. We attempt to immortalize them in words, in melodies, in photographs, in soft water color “impressions” on canvas.

Monet, and his colleagues in the Impressionist School, were criticized by the art world for this focus on the everyday. Art was supposed to depict life at its largest – the lifestyles of the rich and famous, the lofty visages of royalty, the glory of battle. Instead of using art to illuminate mythological and Biblical themes, the Impressionists left their studios and went into the real world, literally by painting en plain air, and figuratively, with their subject matter.

Woman With A Parasol

But before long people began to appreciate the rebellious Impressionist artists for just these very reasons. “Ironically,” writes art historian Ann Dumas, “the Impressionists former status as renegades enhanced their appeal to the connoisseurship and speculative skills of the bourgeois collector…(it was) a new art for a new class that wanted images of the world they inhabited.”

Sometimes it’s difficult to make the real world beautiful, but the artist is compelled to try. When the wider world becomes too dark, we turn to the beauty of our own small worlds, cherishing and immortalizing that beauty with our words, our images, our impressions.

Framing Life. As I sit at my desk, looking out the window at the bare tree branches etched before me, I place a mental frame around this moment, this space. As I walk through the quiet streets of my little town, looking into shop windows, stopping for a coffee and the bookshop, smelling the scent of fresh bread oozing from the bakery, I place a mental frame around the sights and sounds. As I wake on a cold winter morning, my husband sleeping peacefully beside me, the promise of a new day ahead of us, I place a mental frame around that picture too.

That’s how I frame my life.

How do you frame yours?

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, collections of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

Sunday Salon: Comfort Care

Sunday mornings come quietly here at our little house, especially in this frigid Midwestern winter. We start a fire, settle in with our coffee and a book or newspaper, munch on some toast and honey from our local bakery. As the morning progresses, we might brew another pot of coffee, put some music on the CD player. I might finish one book and pick up another; my husband might move into the den and catch the latest replays from Saturdays soccer matches.

Sundays haven’t always been this way. For many years, we were very active in our church music programs, and would hustle out of bed on Sundays just as we did on other weekdays, needing to be there prior to service time to rehearse. After worship, we often went out for brunch with friends, arriving home mid-afternoon. This was all quite lovely, of course, but it often made Sunday mornings feel frantic. So perhaps this was one reason we’ve fallen away from regular church attendance. With age has come a sense of needing to choose those activities that serve us best, that provide comfort and care, rather than the sense of one more obligation to fulfill.

Until the last few years, the idea of self-care was foreign to me. By nature and nurture I am a caring person, born with a deep sense of responsibility and need to be loved, but also trained in the Golden Rule. The top priority for most of my adult live has been caring for others – my husband, my child, my grandparents and parents, my dogs, my friends and jobs and volunteer work. While I never begrudged any of that, it kept me in a perpetual state of agitation and anxiety, trying to juggle everyone’s needs. There were many times when I felt out of sorts, or even physically sick, without really knowing why.

My Self became lost in the mix of caring for everyone and everything else.

As the years have passed, many of those obligations have disappeared quite naturally, with no intervention or intention on my part. My son grew up and moved away, all of our relatives have died, and last year we lost both of our precious dogs within five months of each other. I’ve retired from all my jobs and narrowed down my volunteer work to one or two activities. Life is simpler, and it’s easier to make those choices I mentioned before – the ones that provide comfort and care.

Of course comfort care for me is heavily weighted toward enjoying a creative life. It means books and music. It means enjoying lovely scented body creams and fresh home cooked food. It means a soft blanket to wrap around my shoulders on chilly mornings. It means looking for beautiful moments in the day – watching the sunrise from my favorite window, hearing a friend laugh, cuddling on the couch with my husband.

In actuality, most of my mornings look a lot like that idyllic Sunday morning I described in the first paragraph. Hot coffee in my favorite cup, an hour of two of reading a good book.

I came across this quotation and it spoke volumes to me: “You have permission to rest. You are not responsible for everything that is broken. You do not have to try and make everyone happy.  For now, take time for you. It’s time to replenish.”

It’s a relief to give myself this “permission” – to take care, to replenish the needs of my own body and soul for a change. It’s been a long time coming, but now it’s here.  And it’s really comforting.

How about you? What are some ways you provide your own comfort care?

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her (newly-retired!) husband. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, collections of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

Sunday Salon: The Gift of Art

It’s that time of year, the countdown to the holidays. People hustle and bustle, make lists, check them once, twice, thrice. Amazon’s server is on fire with orders flying in from around the world.  If you haven’t finished your shopping by now, well – you’re in a bit of pickle, aren’t you?

Photo Credit: Ben White for Upsplash

For quite a few years I’ve eschewed the whole holiday shopping enterprise. My husband and I are at the stage where we don’t need or want much of anything, and if we do, we get it for ourselves. We might treat ourselves to a concert or dinner out, maybe a little trip somewhere. But buying more “stuff” for each other has lost its charm. As one of my elderly friends put it: “If I can’t eat it, read it, or go to it, I don’t want it.”

But in these often troubled times, when materialism and greed run rampant throughout our society, there is one still one gift well worth investing time and money to give.

The Gift of Art.

Sadly, this gift is not valued highly in the modern world. Artists struggle for recognition, for funding, for space to do their work. When budgets need cutting, the arts are the first place to point the knife.

For the past three weekends, I’ve been out performing with my group, Classical Bells. We’ve watched our audiences come in tired and cold, stamping snow from their boots, looking weary and downhearted. If we do our job well, the music helps thaw those icy places in their lives and even provides a few moments of transcendence from the mundane problems of daily living so they go back into the world with a quieter, softer heart.

“Every piece of art, every performance, is a state-of-the soul address,” wrote poet Jane Kenyon. “The love of the absolute beauty of art, the longing for the well-being of the planet and all its creature, the awe we feel in the face of life and death, the delights of the inward eye and inward ear, the understanding and nurture of the soul – these are the gifts of art.”

And it’s not only the recipient but also the maker of art benefits from this gift. This has been a horrible week for me. Our little dog Molly died unexpectedly Monday, just five months after we lost her brother, Magic. I grieve mightily for these precious companions of my home and heart. But the hours I spend playing music are a balm for that ache, directing my focus away from sadness and toward the task of creating something beautiful.

“Artists report on the inner life,” Kenyon continues, and the inner life distinguishes us from centipedes.” The inner life – our imagination, our compassion, our spiritual awareness – these are the places art touches in us. Art allows us to glimpse something larger than ourselves, that “awe in the face of life and death” as Kenyon put it. We ignore our inner life at our peril, Kenyon warns, for when we do, we “become capable of extreme cruelty and destruction.”

The evidence of that abounds in the world right now, doesn’t it? So this holiday, commit yourself to making art and sharing it widely with young and old. If you’re a writer, volunteer at a local library to do a reading or host a workshop. If you paint, set up your easel in a public place and invite questions and comments. If you’re a musician, take your instrument or your voice to a hospital, a nursing home, your neighborhood coffee shop. If you knit, make scarves and socks to pass out to the homeless.

The possibilities for gifting are endless.

And the gift of art is PRICELESS.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan. She is the author of the books Life in General, and Life Goes On, personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.