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Category Archives: Go Play Project

Go Play Project: Day 10 | Bird by Bird

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Go Play Project – Day 10

For my money, you won’t find a better book on writing than Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. My well-worn copy has been read and re-read countless times. She writes about the need for shitty first drafts, that perfectionism is the enemy of the people, and that if you want to turn someone in real life into a character in your fiction (and avoid getting sued for libel), the “best advice I can give you is to give him a teenie little penis so he will be less likely to come forth.”

As for today’s collage, it’s inspired by this passage, from which her book takes its title:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day… he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

 

 

Go Play Project: Day 9 | Midnight at the Oasis

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Go Play Project – Day 9

Send your camel to bed. As it turns out I’d always misheard this line as “sing your camel to bed,” which sounds so much more interesting, don’t you think? I can’t believe this song was recorded in 1973 and that I remember it so vividly. I’m officially older than old.

But beyond Maria Muldaur’s song, I chose these images (which were actually on the back of a magazine page I had torn out) because without camels, I wouldn’t be here at all. As the story goes, my Iraqi grandfather had the brilliant business idea to bring camels to Mexico and corner the beast-of-burden market. Unfortunately, it was only after he and his camels had traveled half way around the world that he found out that the Mexicans were pretty well set with burros, thanks.

I’m sure you’ve got a fascinating tale to tell about your ancestors. Share it in the comments below, on Facebook, or use it as your own inspiration for your Go Play Project!

 

 

Go Play Project: Day 8 | Under the “X” in Texas

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Go Play Project – Day 8

I don’t have many rules about my collage process, but one that I stick to pretty hard and fast is that I don’t use words. Words are what I wrestle with in my “real” job, and this Go Play Project is meant to be just that… playing. My lofty ideal is that anyone who looks at one of my collage pieces should be able to interpret it however the heck they want to. And, well, once you slap down a word, there’s no ambiguity. Bam. There it is.

But I found this image, and it was just too damn perfect. Moving to Texas has been, in a way, coming full circle for me. My father was born in El Paso. His mom crossed the Rio Grande so he could be born in the States, and then crossed back over where he grew up in Mexico. He never actually knew he was a U.S. citizen until it was time to enlist for the military. True story.

Now I’m back in Texas, and far away from El Paso, but for the Mexican in me, it does feel a little like coming home. As for the rest of me… I’m not quite sure how I feel. And that’s what’s been great about these daily collage exercises. I get to sort through some of those feelings, stretch myself a teeny bit creatively and then step back and say, “I wonder what the hell that means.”

Have a wonderful weekend, y’all!

 

 

 

Go Play Project: Day 5 | Six Months in a Leaky Boat

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Go Play Project – Day 5

A Split Enz song and an avocado. That’s what inspired today’s collage.

I’ve been in Austin for six years now, and while there’s much that I love about my adopted city, for a girl who’s always lived on a coast, there is a sense of being landlocked that I can’t seem to shake.

I heard a cover of “Six Months in a Leaky Boat” by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists that I’ve had stuck in my head for a while. And that of course led to me thinking about all the coastal waters I’ve lived near and loved—my hometown of Miami and my years spent in Boston.

Today in the grocery store, I found a Florida avocado, and while it pained me to actually pay money for it, because after all, what self-respecting South Floridian pays for avocados—I did, and I was immediately transported to memories of lush fruit-bearing trees, tropical breezes and, of course, all the water—driving over the Causeway to Fisher Island, days spent at Matheson Hammock and on Key Biscayne—I miss them all. But not the hurricanes… I don’t miss those!

Go Play Project: Day 2 | On Killing the Butterfly

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Go Play. Day 2. Killing the Butterfly

I’m reading Ann Patchett’s collection of her non-fiction works, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a gift from my ever-so-thoughtful friend Ellen Kanner. In “The Getaway Car,” Ann writes one of the most uncannily accurate descriptions of the writing process I’ve read, and since this Go Play Project about exercising those creative muscles in new, somewhat painful ways, this seemed particularly apt:

During the months (or years) it takes me to put my ideas together, I don’t take notes or make outlines; I’m figuring things out, and all the while the book makes a breeze around my head like an oversized butterfly whose wings were cut from the rose window in Notre Dame. This book I have not written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book, and faith in it as I track its lazy flight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.

And so I do. When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down on my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure that the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing—all the color, the light and the movement—is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book.

No wonder I was drawn to butterflies for today’s collage. Things of beauty, but ready to be killed off, one by one. For those of you who write, or paint, or draw—or any other creative pursuit— what’s your process like?

 

 

 

 

Go Play Project

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Go Play Project – Day 1

In 2012, my college friend (and brilliant pianist) Cathy Shefski launched the Go Play Project, where she recorded one new piano piece every Sunday night for a year. It was wonderful, awe-inspiring, and, as it turned out, too much of a good thing. She boxed up her music, turned her students over to a new teacher, sold her piano, and discovered that, hey, there is life after piano. It’s a pretty interesting blog post, and I encourage you to read it in its entirety here.

Which brings us to her new take on the Go Play Project: a sketch a day for the month of August that’s she’ll post on her blog. She’s not an artist. Hell, she admits to not even being much of a doodler, and I think that’s pretty damn brave.

Which got me to thinking. I’ve been a writer, since, well, forever. But at least since I was around eight years old. And I love what I do, but the idea of a little creative project—that’s not writing-related—that I could bang out every day for a month… I’m in.

I used to belong to a Soul Collage group, and while I never really fully embraced the entire process—”each card a mirror of self and soul”—what really appealed to me was playing with images and creating small collages. It’s a way to stretch myself creatively. There probably won’t be any writing to accompany the images… at least for now.

So that ‘s it. August. 31 days. 31 cards. Go play.

I hope this inspires you to “go play” in your own way. And I’d love to hear about it in the comments.