Category: books

I’m Back…

Long ago, in a more innocent time, I wrote a post about the potential for procrastination to feed our creativity. I was writing then, as well, to let my readers know, after more than 150 posts, that I was going to take a break and work on some other writing projects. I wrote that final post on February 27, 2020.

As we know, these seven months later, a lot changed immediately after I wrote at the end of February. A lot. I was then coming off of four very intense years of working in eight different churches as an interim music director. I had not had a Sunday off in more than 2-1/2 years and I planned to take February through August off from working in churches and concentrate on writing a book that I thought might be in me. I also had two other part-time jobs, I was going to be taking a choir to sing at St. David’s Cathedral in Wales, and had some concerts planned with my duo partners.

I did not need a pandemic to shut down the entire country in order to find the necessary discipline to work on a book. Thank you, but it wasn’t necessary to be forced to stay home and have all of my freelance work dry up. We can go back to normal now. Really.

My light-heartedness is really only a cover for all the sadness that I feel for those in our world who are suffering so much loss – of health, loved ones, income, seeing family, travel plans, confidence in our government, optimism for the future, all those celebrations of life and death that need us to gather in person…there is such heaviness in feeling loss all around us.

And in the face of loss, we have to look for cracks where the light can come through. There is no choice except to find joy where we can.

I did indeed work on a book. It is a memoir, something of a hybrid that combines memory, reflection, and observation. I have sent my manuscript out to readers who have helped me further shape my thoughts, and its currently out in search of an agent. That seems crazy, but we’ll see what happens.

Meanwhile, I also got caught up with the music of a composer from early 20th century France. Her name is Mel Bonis, and I was really taken with some of her piano music which has been gathered under the title Femmes de Legende. I ended up writing (very) short stories to go with these seven pieces, and putting together an audiobook, which is supposed to come out on Audible one of these days. In order to do that, I also needed to create an actual book, which is essentially my script for the audiobook. I intended to wait until it was available on Audible before sharing it with anyone, but that process is taking longer than I have patience for, so here is the first chapter and a link to the book. Let me know what you think. If nothing else, I learned a lot and had a great time working on this.

Difficult Women…Legends Revised (book)

Chapter 1 (audio)

We have no choice except to find joy where we can, and we also have no choice except to be creative in these strange times. What I see are people cooking more than ever, gardening more bountifully, staying in touch with friends and family more lovingly, talking to their neighbors more often, and finding new hobbies. In my neighborhood, families are out walking together all the time, the sidewalk chalk art is more prolific, and the birds seem to be singing more beautifully too. Maybe that last one is just my imagination, but I’m paying attention to things I hadn’t before, and I’m finding all kinds of light coming through the cracks.

I hope you are too.

Have you voted yet? (speaking of cracks, and much-needed light).

Sonya

Advertisement

Death and Taxes and Procrastination

A podcast I listened to recently considered the ways that procrastination benefited creative thought.  I might have called it “marinating” instead, but the process is the same.  Flickering ideas come and go, never quite landing, but somehow manage to grow in scope during these periods of procrastination.

As I said, procrastination works well for creative problem-solving.  Not a good idea for your taxes, unless you plan to get creative with those, and impossible with death of course. One of the things I had procrastinated on was writing a post about planning your funeral. Following the death of my well-loved 95 year old father-in-law, that seemed like a great idea, but it never jelled. You should go ahead and plan it anyway though!

I’ve enjoyed the discipline of writing for a blog (nearly) every week for the past 12 years,  but am feeling a need to step away for a while. Not from writing, just from this format.  People in different parts of my life keep telling me to write a book, and while a book might not emerge, I have most definitely procrastinated taking this idea seriously and am hereby committing to write with more intention, if perhaps less purpose. The other night I awoke from a dream that was telling me something important, and for the first time I took the leap of writing down an idea that was percolating up from deep within during the middle of the night. My beautiful blue suede-covered journal stays nearer to me these days, and what looks like nonsense on the page at the moment just might be transfigured.

We’ll see what comes of it, but I’m giving myself six months to explore things that might have been marinating for years now.

images-2

Here are some of the things that have been feeding my imagination these days:

Upcoming concerts:

  • Sunday, March 1 at 2:30 – a program with Furia Flamenco.  Very fun!
  • Saturday, March 7 at 7:00 – a house concert with Karin Kelleher playing sonatas for piano and violin by Grieg and Beethoven, raising money for Manna Food Bank.  Contact me if you are interested in attending. (and another one on April 18)
  • Tuesday, March 24 at 12:10 – bassoonist Cindy Gady and I are putting together a program of meditative music to accompany walking the labyrinth at Church of the Epiphany. Read more.
  • Not a concert, but a chance to make music with a wonderful group of singers in residence at St. David’s Cathedral in Wales during August

And books…so many great books are part of my life.  At the moment I have three books in rotation:  a second reading of The Overstory by Richard Powers, listening to On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, and then this week I had to add Philip Kennicott’s new memoir, Counterpoint, after hearing him speak about it. His book explores family, playing the piano, Bach and The Goldberg Variations. Except for the abusive mother part, it’s the book I would have so wished I could write.

There is much that is ugly about our world right now, and while that has probably always been true, the ugliness seems more pervasive, more oppressive than I can remember. What Vuong manages to do in his extended letter to his mother – which reads more as a poem – is to see beauty in between and around all the pain he experiences.  I don’t know if being able to describe the sordid, heartbreaking parts of life with such glorious waves of prose worthy of someone named Ocean works to deny what should be harrowing to read, but the books and music and people I turn to again and again are not an escape into beauty, but rather have clarifying and redemptive powers for me as I wade through all those thoughts that I’ve procrastinated writing about.  After I get our taxes done, and before I die.

Check in with me in six months and we’ll see if creativity does indeed emerge from procrastination.  Until then, peace, my friends.

sonyafirst004

Summer Reading

Somehow, being able to wade into a book and stay there has become a benchmark of mental health for me in recent years. Happy to report then that I must be doing great, because this was a really good summer for reading.  Besides some rather serious non-fiction books about health care in America…sigh, those were depressing… here are a few that I’m happy to recommend for your own very late summer – ok, autumnal – reading.

Children of Men by P.D. James – I picked this out of a bag of books my mother was giving away when she downsized earlier this year, and grabbed it up for a trip my husband and I took in June. It was lightweight and fit into my carry-on bag, the only criteria that mattered in the moment. I had no idea what it was about, but soon learned that, like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, this story too is disturbingly possible. If you saw the movie, you did not experience the nuances and gradual unfolding of James’ story. I couldn’t wait to see the film after reading the book, but I soon learned that the book and movie have almost nothing in common. Honestly, I haven’t disliked a movie so much in a long time. Books don’t always triumph over film adaptations…well, actually I think they probably do.

Bettyville: A Memoir by George Hodgman and The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen 83¼ Years Old by an unknown author: These two books were enthusiastically recommended by friends, neither of whom was really thinking about the fact that they would hit very close to home for me. As my mother journeys into dementia, and I learn to be the daughter she needs me to be, these are both books that gave me insights and a few laughs and reminded me that I am not alone in all of the watching, worrying, and loving that I’ve done these past few years as I travel alongside her into a future that frightens us.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens: One of the most popular books this summer, thanks to Reese Witherspoon, who picked up where Oprah left off. I don’t often enough connect with the rest of popular culture, and this was my chance to do so. The author, well known already for writing about her conservation work in Africa, wanted to explore human nature by writing about nature, and she exposes the dark sides of both. And I used to so love fireflies…

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: This one was given to me by my son, and I was immediately drawn into the story, even though so very little actually happens.  He asked me recently if I had finished it and I admitted that I didn’t completely understand the author’s intent, and wished for a different ending.  He responded by text: “yeah, I know what you mean, but I think it’s about dehumanization of the other in general, and how easily we can see others based on some criteria as less than human, but also it’s about what it means to be human etc… But yeah, so tragic a story in general.” Getting that text alone made reading the book worthwhile.

All of these books are in one way or another about marginalizing “the other,” but as I think about it, isn’t much great art an attempt to explore that theme?

There’s one more, and it’s the truth that gets marginalized in this one: Fake, by my friend John DeDakis, is the fifth in his series of mysteries. The reader is given an insider’s glimpse into the world of journalism, politics, and the all too real experience of being unable to detect the truth amid the posturing and agendas of those we allow to be in positions of power.

Have you seen some of the studies about the the effect that reading fiction has on our brains? Science tells us that it helps us develop greater empathy and emotional intelligence.  Read more. So, no more guilt about escaping the stress of your day with a good book.

Happy reading!

sonyafirst004