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I was talking with a friend after the Grammy Awards about Adele and her amazing success. We discussed her approach and delivery and how it was so clear that night. It was all about her voice and only her voice that mattered most. There was no glitz. No ridiculous outfits, props, or gimmicks. Her focus was clearly on the strength of her voice and her delivery of the song. And in doing so, she captivated her audience with her unique sound.
This sign posted at a neighborhood boxing center seems to tell it all, just as Adele performed at the Grammy’s, keep your mind as clear as a polished mirror. It’s all about staying focused on what is important and keeping that in mind as you strive to give your best performance.
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I took a walk yesterday after a light snow. Nearly home I pulled off my mittens to adjust the zipper on my jacket. Warmed by the afternoon sun I thought I’d stuffed my mittens into my pocket but I must have dropped one in the process.
This morning I went back in search of my much needed mitten. I was pleasantly surprised when I came across it. And even more surprised by the footprints around it! All I could imagine were the jack rabbits that live in the natural prairie next to us stopping in the light of the nearly full moon, sniffing the red wool, their whiskers twitching wildly. And I pondered for just a moment…did they push their nose inside wanting to climb in like Hedgie and all the wonderful animals in Jan Brett’s The Mitten? For now… I’m happy to just wonder.
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This past Monday ALA announced the award winning children and young adult books selected for 2012. In honor of the various awards I chose to display some of the past winners in our children’s section. As I pulled books from the shelves I was reminded of all the great stories written and illustrated by fabulous writers and wonderful visual artists over many years.
One of my favorites, growing up, was Up A Road Slowly by Irene Hunt. There’s a scene near the end where I’m transported (even today when I reread it) to the rainy evening with Julie and Danny as they drive home, windshield wipers beat away the rain, the cool weather chills the air, and there’s a moment of realization that the two characters care very much for each other. Hunt was able to weave the characters up and down emotions over the course of the story so when that special moment occurred it was authentic and emotionally driven.
Hunt like so many writers and illustrators have given us the best stories they could create. Stories that have endured the course of time. Today, when it seems like everyone expects everything to be given to them. I look at the shelves of award winning books and think as a writer that the world doesn’t owe me anything. I owe the world my best writing just Irene Hunt did in Up A Road Slowly.
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Our local, volunteer-run movie theater showed Hugo this weekend. We went on Friday night to a packed showing.
I’m always anxious to see how movie makers interpret books, especially children’s book. But I was particularly interested in Hugo because of it’s unique format of words and illustrations. How might a movie capture that relationship on the big screen?
The theme of movies is woven through Selznick’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. From the first page his illustrations, framed by a black border, start in close with a tight like camera shot and pull back to reveal more in a wider shot thus creating movement and action to advance the story.
But when words are introduced there exists a bit of a gap between the illustrations and the words. Not a gap in the sense of white space but a virtual gap by what is left unsaid or not shown. The reader must bridge the gap to connect words and illustrations and continue the flow of the story.This bridging allows the reader to create what is missing or left unsaid and becomes the unseen narrative or what I like to call the “invisible” narrative. When the reader is able to, in their own mind, create narrative that connects the flow of the story it becomes seamless in their mind and the reader feels fully engaged.
I thought the movie makers bridged the gap between the book and movie connecting images and words very well. The crowded train station in the movie felt like it did in the sequence of illustrations in the book. Or when Hugo peered through the opening of the numbers on the clock with his direct line of sight on the shopkeeper. All felt close and immediate in both formats.
There were longer pauses or quiet moments in the movie. I heard some movie goers say the movie dragged or seemed slow. But I believe this was intentional for the very reason of encouraging watchers to make those invisible narratives happen in the their own mind, just as if they were reading the book.
The movie in my mind was a big success!
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It’s a cold morning. My office is dark except for the early morning light that filters through the window above my desk. We haven’t had many cold days in January but this morning is bitterly cold. My laptop sits waiting but I don’t feel like going to work yet so I go to the bookcase to find a poem by Ted Kooser, poet laureate from Nebraska.
January 13
One degree at 8 a.m.
All night these trees in the woodlot
have been the veins and arteries
of darkness, carrying darkness
out to the capillary twigs and into
the thick black leaves that filled the night
but that at dawn are falling,
blowing like shadows over the snow.As I’m closing the book I’m struck by a poem in the preface…
The quarry road tumbles toward me
out of the early morning darkness,
lustrous with frost, an unrolled bolt
of softly glowing fabric, interwoven
with tiny glass beads on silver thread,
the cloth spilled out then lovingly
smoothed by my father’s hand
as he stands behind his wooden counter
(dark as these fields) at Tilden’s Store
so many years ago. “Here,” he says smiling,
“you can make something special with this.”I look out the window at the growing light, the lustrous frost and the beads glass laced along the bent prairie grass on silver threads. The day has begun. I open my laptop and let it whirl to life. It’s time to get after doing something special.
Thanks, Ted!
Poems from Winter Morning Walks: one hundred postcards to Jim Harrison by Ted Kooser
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This tulip image is actually a double exposure. Taken through a series of steps referred to as an image transfer. I took the photo using Polaroid 669 pull- apart film. Instead of waiting for the film to completely process I pulled it immediately. The thick, dark negative I placed on warm, wet watercolor paper, pressing the image into the paper.
I took another picture and waited before separating the film. I placed the negative over the original tulip image on the watercolor paper. As I pulled off the second negative it left the dreamy sort of image that you see.
I’m reminded of Robert Olen Butler’s words in From Where You Dream: The process of writing fiction about dreamstorming. The process of “inviting the images of moment-to-moment experience through your unconscious” the way in which a writer finds themselves in that dream state of flow. Like the tulip’s soft and dreamlike image that pulls the admirer’s eye deeper into the image, wondering, imagining is much like the writers unconscious mind as words flow upon the page, giving that dreamy-state for the reader to discover.
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Red Clouds
I’m reminded of the author Willa Cather whenever the evening sky in my Nebraska backyard is filled with red clouds. Her stories of pioneers settling the dusty plains or the middle aged woman with the garnet earrings lost in the societal norms of the small town of Red Cloud.
Recently, I came across part of an interview Willa gave to the Lincoln Daily Star published in 1915. She discussed how imagination reflects a writer’s experience by stating, “imagination is a response to what is going on-a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation.”
In a new picture book, Stars by Mary Lyn Ray, illustrated by the wonderful Marla Frazee, the duo captures the essence of Willa’s thoughts on imagination. We find a sensitiveness in Mary Lyn’s sparse words and Marla’s big sky illustrations- a winning combination of observation and empathy of meaning. The brightness of their imagination shines with each page turn, leaving the reader satisfied as the story comes to an end with the night sky endpapers. The transformation from day to night appeals to our interest in the what’s all around us. As those red clouds in my backyard slowly fade and the sky grows dark, I find I’m surrounded by the illuminating lights described by Mary Lyn and Marla… “And if sometimes you can’t see them, they’re still there. Every night. Everywhere.”
I bask in the tenderness of a red sky and search the corners of my imagination in hopes of finding the glimmer of a first star from which will beckon more words, thus I write.
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Recently, I was walking through the mall between the Cosmopolitan and the Bellagio Hotels in Las Vegas and came across a store window filled with Singer Sewing Machines. Row upon row of black enamel machines decorated with narrow ribbons of ornate patterns anchored by dull metal wheels sat poised and ready in the display windows.
I looked above the doorway and read the sign- All Saints. Curious, I crossed the threshold and was transported to a time that felt reminiscent of the turn of the century and possibly a shirtwaist factory like the setting in Mary Jane Auch’s book Ashes of Roses.
Striding the well worn wooden floor the air became electric with crisp new cloth. The distant hum of machines buzzed in my ears like a well-oiled memory. Pulleys and ropes, metal pipes held hangered garments in ash gray, gunmetal blue, wet slate, and smoke.I searched for the piles of freshly sewn garments by young women hunched over sewing machines. Discarded wooden spools were replaced by tall soft leather boots arranged on metal bins. I was distracted by a young woman who asked if she could help me. I shook my head and mumbled “just looking, thanks.” Her smile told me I wasn’t the first.
I smiled back and let my eyes gaze across the store before turning toward the door. It was an amazing moment where the past and present were stitched together. Walking back out into the florescent, shiny mall I wondered how often the clerks at All Saints must deal with people, like me, who seem dazed and lost in time?
