"As you take the normal opportunities of your daily life and create something of beauty and helpfulness, you improve not only the world around you but also the world within you." -President Dieter F. Uchtdorf
On the first day of my Creative Writing classes, I always take the students outside. I go to the trunk of my car and pull out my skateboard. This gets their attention real quick as they try to figure out what an old fogey like me is doing with a skateboard. Then, in what I like to think of as a Mr. Rogers-kind-of-way, I start changing from my dress shoes into my skating shoes. This really gets my students going.
The comments I hear from them range from concern for my well-being like, “Um, Mr. Robb, I don’t think you should do that. You’re going to hurt yourself,” to a desire for my demise like, “I hope he falls on his face!” to sheer unbelief like, “No way! Mr. Robb skates?”
Once my shoes are on, without warning or explanation, I run and jump on my skateboard (a fairly simple trick that I think kids are calling a “Bomb Drop” these days). Now my students are really freaking out because they never imagined that their boring English teacher could possibly have any skills beyond correcting essays.
This is not me, but it is a "Bomb Drop" Photo: howcast.com
But I’m not finished yet. I follow my Bomb Drop with a trick called a “360 Pop Shove It”. This is a fairly impressive looking trick that has become second nature to me over the years. I can practically do it in my sleep and I stick it every time. Now the student’s minds are totally blown.
I roll back up to them and ask, “Do you think this is the first time I’ve been on a skateboard?” Of course they all say no. “Why and how was I able to do that?” I ask. Sometimes a student will think that I just got lucky. If that’s the case, I do it two or three more times so they know that luck has nothing to do with it. After a little discussion I get the point across that it took a whole lot of practice. That I’ve worked on that trick about a million times over the course of several years and that’s why I could do it in a way that looked effortless.
Now I head off down the sidewalk on my board again. This time I intentionally try a trick I know I can’t do very well. For me, it’s usually a “Heel Flip”. It’s not even that great of a trick, but for some reason, I’ve never gotten the hang of it. It’s the kind of trick that I can land maybe one in ten times. So I try a Heel Flip and I fall. I try it again and I fall again. I keep trying and keep falling. Some of the falls really do hurt. This isn’t acting. I’m genuinely trying to land this trick and I’m genuinely face-planting on concrete. There’s always a combination of laughter and sympathetic groans coming from the students. Eventually, I always land the trick. Sometimes I even get cheers.
I roll back up to the students and ask, “Why did I fall so many times before I could do it? Why couldn’t I stick that trick just like the other one?”
After a few requisite smart-alecky remarks someone will usually say, “Because you haven’t practiced it as much.”
“Exactly,” I say. “If I want to get better and learn more tricks, I have to practice. If I want to improve, I have to fall down… a lot. It hurts, it can be embarrassing, I might look like an idiot, but that’s the only way to make progress. Even the pros were once beginners who got laughed at for falling on their faces.”
I go onto explain that writing (and all other creative endeavors, for that matter) is the same. I quote Julia Cameron when she said, “Mistakes are necessary! Stumbles are normal… Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves… It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time… Give yourself permission to be a beginner.”
After this little object lesson with my class, we go back into the classroom and do our very first assignment for Creative Writing: Write a letter of permission to be a beginner and sign it. This letter serves as a reminder that it’s okay to write badly so you can eventually write well. I have the students put it right in the front of their portfolio where it will be the first thing they see every day when they open it up for class.
We all need that reminder. I highly recommend you write yourself a letter like this. Write it literally and, more importantly, write it in your core beliefs. A letter of permission to fail, fall down, look like an idiot, embarrass yourself, AND progress, improve, learn, grow, and have a lot more fun and creative life in the process.
My wife and I once had a six-year-old foster son that we took down to Capital Reef National Park. As far as we knew, he had never been to Southern Utah and we were excited to take him camping, hiking, and sightseeing in that beautiful country. We loaded up the car with all our gear and started down the road. An hour into the drive he asked, “Will we ever see our house again?”
“Of course,” I said. I was confused. Why would he think we might never see our house again?
My wife reassured him, “We’re just going camping for a few days and then we’ll go right back home.”
“Oh, okay,” he said and then went back to saying and doing all the normal things six-year-olds say and do on long road trips like constantly needing to pee and repeatedly asking, “Are we there yet?”
But my wife and I were concerned. Did he really think we were leaving our home forever? After we talked it over together, we realized that was exactly what he thought. You see, before he came to us, his family had been homeless off and on for his entire life. When they went “camping” that meant they were living out of a car or tent indefinitely and he would never see the place they had formerly called home again. As far as he knew, we’d been kicked out of our house.
The amazing thing to me was that he’d helped us pack our stuff and climbed into the car without complaint. He was completely trusting and willing to come with us even though he thought we were leaving home forever.
How many of us would be so trusting? How many of us have the faith to so cheerfully submit and take a journey like that? Would we have the courage to wholeheartedly believe that we would be cared for and guided by a loving parent? Would we obediently leave on a journey like this if it was asked of us?
Every creative act is a journey. By emulating the qualities of children like my foster son, we are far more likely to find success on these journeys. Furthermore, it’s no coincidence that the things that make us more creative people are so often the same things that make us better, happier, more successful people in all aspects of life.
Consider Matthew 18: 2-4 which reads, “And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
The words of King Benjamin in Mosiah 3:19 also that teach us that we must “…becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”
Even Pablo Picasso said, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
While it's clear that we need to “become as little children,” this doesn’t mean we should be childish. It won’t help our creativity to throw temper tantrums or pick our noses. However, it will increase our creative capacity if we try to be like my foster son on that camping trip. Namely, trust, have faith, submit, be obedient, and believe.
Trust that you have been given important and useful talents, and you have been given them for a reason.
Have faith that you will be guided and cared for by a loving Father in Heaven as you strive to develop and use those talents.
Be humble and submit to the will of Heavenly Father by doing your best to use your talents as He wants you to use them.
Be obedient to the promptings of your heart as you work so that your Heavenly Father can continue to work through you.
Believe that you can accomplish all these things with His help.
Later on that same trip to Capital Reef National Park, our foster son was filling out a worksheet so that he could earn his “Junior Ranger” badge. One of the questions he had to answer was, “Where do crows live?” The answer they were looking for was in nests. But this six-year-old had a much more profound answer. He said, “In the wind.”
I thought about this for a moment and said, “Yes, yes they do.” Because it was true. Where do crows really live? Where they are doing what they were designed to do: soar on the wind. The same is true for us. We are creative beings. We are given talents so that we can use them. We need only become as little children so that we can begin to live. And where do we truly live? Where we are doing what we were designed to do: using our talents to create and serve.
I just finished reading The Buried Giantby Kazuo Ishiguro. At the end I cried. I was immediately filled with an intense desire to hug my wife and tell her how much I loved her. Unfortunately, she happened to be 1,300 miles away at the time, so I settled for a text.
I was surprised to find myself so affected by the book. It’s about an old, frail couple traveling across early medieval England on the way to meet their son. Not exactly my normal cup of tea. I suppose I cried because Kazuo Ishiguro is a literary genius and wrote in such a way that I was deeply invested in the two main characters, and I cared about what happened to them. But there was something more.
I think the real reason The Buried Giant resonated with me is because I have a worthless long term memory. Yep. I can’t remember squat. Everything just fades to black after as little as a few days. Well, okay, not everything, but, when it comes to memory, I’m somewhere just shy of senile. And it just so happens that one of the major themes in The Buried Giant is loss of memory, so this hit close to home for me. It’s not just the old couple in the book that has lost important memories, either. There is this mysterious collective amnesia that’s afflicting the entire land through which the main characters travel.
The Buried Giant reminded me of one of my favorite children’s books. A picture book by Shuan Tan called The Lost Thing. In this book, the main character finds a strange creature that he befriends. He spends the whole book helping this creature to find the place where it belongs. At one point, after exhausting all his other options, he takes the creature to the sinister feeling “Federal Department of Odds and Ends” where they promise to “find a pigeon hole to stick it in.” While there, another mysterious creature warns him, “If you really care about that thing, you shouldn’t leave it here. This is a place for forgetting. Leaving behind.”
These two books illustrate that we are living in a world afflicted with a kind of amnesia. This is, unfortunately, a place so often used for intentional forgetting. It made me wonder about the important things I’ve left behind, forgotten, lost. Things that would not only help me to be a better writer and artist, but that would also help me to live a fuller, happier, more interesting life.
Together, these books form a kind of yin and yang for things forgotten. The things hidden, and the things missing. The things we are running from, and the things we dropped or lost as we ran. The things we buried deep within us, and the things we misplaced or left behind. I don’t want to turn this into a psychology article, but we all have some of this going on in our minds, and I think we can learn a thing or two from these books that will help us in our creative endeavors.
In The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro warns us of the difficult experiences, painful memories, and unresolved issues we’ve tried to run from. The title itself references the buried memories we’ve hidden deep within ourselves. It almost sounds like an act of excavation is required to unearth these old skeletons. But that’s exactly what we need to do. If we don’t, they begin to fester within us inhibiting our creativity. This is the “cellar” I talked about in my blog post “Navigating the Labyrinth with Brian Kershisnik”. You know, the one where the monsters live.
The point is, these buried giants often prevent us from doing our best creative work. They make us feel that we aren’t talented enough, people will make fun of us, or our ideas are just silly. All the things that prevent us from reaching our full potential or make us fail before we even start.
So how do we excavate these giants? Well, a good place to start is by reading The Artist’s Wayby Julia Cameron and follow her advice. She specializes in “unblocking” artists after “creative injury”. There’s not a person I know that hasn’t suffered a creative injury at some time or another in their life. These injuries often get buried within us and begin to poison our creativity. Julia Cameron’s book provides the tools to help us to heal. It’s a beautiful and powerful book that says it all far better than I can. Go check it out.
So what about the other missing things? The things that make uncomfortable holes deep in our chests once they are gone and leave us wondering what might fill them? How do we recover these lost things? Well, Shaun Tan’s book can help us with this. It was also made into an Oscar winning animated short film that you can watch below. (If it doesn't work, you can watch it on YouTube here.)
I have an eleven year old that is constantly losing things: shin guards, socks, jackets, you name it, he’s probably lost it at some point. Every time he loses something, he looks for it for about five seconds and then gives up, throws his hands in the air, and says, “I can’t find it!” My response is always the same. “Well, you’ll only find it if you look for it.”
Shaun Tan gives us this same simple, yet profound advice in The Lost Thing. The story begins with the protagonist out looking for “bottle tops” for his collection. If he hadn’t been out wandering around with his senses open and alert, he never would have found the “lost thing”. You have to be looking, noticing, trying to see the things you’ve missed. I’ve talked about the fine art of noticing before in a post called "Wondering at Weasels". It’s a talent we all once had as children before we lost our sense of wonder with the world. Somewhere along the way to adulthood, most of us misplace it and have to go looking for it again.
This is probably because, as Shaun Tan points out in his book, there’s something about growing older that makes us want to make everything fit into a category, stereotype, or classification. We want everything numbered and filed in its proper place in our head. In The Lost Thing, you notice that everything has a number (even the people), there are signs directing people where to go and how to get there, and there’s even the huge, ominous “Department of Odds and Ends” designed to sweep under the rug anything that doesn’t quite fit.
Image from the animated short film "The Lost Thing".
The TV and camera-headed sculpture says it all!
Admittedly, this desire to organize everything is a side effect of trying to make sense of a very complex world, but what is lost when we do this? The magic of the world, whimsy, the beautiful complexity of human beings, and so much more. Tan’s story teaches us that we need to embrace the “objects without names”, the “troublesome artifacts of unknown origin”, and the “things that just don’t belong”. By giving up our desire to pigeon hole and simplify, our creative work will become more enlightened, rich with texture and depth, and sparkling with originality.
In contrast, think of the achingly real characters in books like To Kill a Mocking Bird, Of Mice and Men, or even Harry Potter. These are the characters that feel so real I wouldn’t be at all shocked to see them walking down the street or sitting on the couch in my living room. They were written by authors who were unwilling to number and file the world away. We have to find the lost thing if we want be able to write this way.
Consider the two iconic photos above. The one on the top is by famed Depression era photographer Dorothea Lange and the one on the bottom is from Vogue Magazine. Both are undoubtedly masterful photos in their own right, but while the Vogue photo merely seduces the eye with its surface beauty, the Lange photo invites us to feel the profound struggle of a migrant mother during the Great Depression. It, too, is beautiful, but its beauty comes from its depth, texture, and reality, not the illusion created by the perfect makeup, hair, and pose.
So what exactly is “the lost thing” we need to help us write like Steinbeck and take photos like Lange? I would argue it’s our childlike fascination with the world that keeps us alert, interested, present, and noticing. It’s the ability to see through the innocent and fresh eyes of a child and perceive the magic, uniqueness, and complexity of the world without trying to categorize, classify, and pigeonhole. It is, quite frankly, the ability to better grasp and understand reality. It’s funny to think that we intentionally lose this ability as we “mature”.
These two seemingly very different books, both teach us about the impact of things forgotten and how important it is to rediscover them. Taken together, these books show us that as we strive find what was lost, we will necessarily uncover what was buried. Likewise, as we struggle to excavate the buried giants within us, we will find many of the things we’ve lost along the way to adulthood. If we can recover these memories, if we can remember how we once were as children, we will not only become better writers and artists, but better human beings.
Albert Einstein said, "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." I think that about sums it all up.
His mom must have read a lot of fairy tales! (Photo: Arthur Sasse)
Here's the final part of "The Locket". I know I'm no Grimm, but I hope you're a little more intelligent for having read it.
The Locket: Part Four (If you want to read it from the beginning, click here)
The little girl wiggled and squirmed slowly down his throat. It was hot and cramped and she could barely breathe because of the awful stench. Along the way she had to crawl past rusting nails, a broken glass bottle, and even a garden rake, but no locket.
After what seemed like hours, moving only an inch at a time, she reached the stomach. It was full of foul, burning slime. The little girl realized that if she wanted to get her locket she was going to have to dive beneath the filthy liquid and feel around in the darkness. She paused for only a moment and then slid from the constricted opening of the throat into the frothing and filthy bile of her father’s stomach.
Her skin began to burn, but she held her breath and groped blindly for her locket. She found old bones, half digested roots and mushrooms, and the long lost pair of scissors, but no locket. She pushed back to the surface and gasped for air. Her skin was burning worse than ever and her eyes felt as if they were on fire. Before she could catch her breath, everything began to lurch around and she heard the muffled voice of her mother scream, “He’s waking up!”
“I don’t know what to do! I can’t see anything!” the girl wailed.
Her shadow said, “Close your eyes. I will help you to see in the dark.”
The little girl did as she was told and, just like in the pond, it was as if someone had lit a lantern. She could see clearly, but she almost wished that she could not. All around her strange and frightening objects were swirling around in the frothing stomach juices like someone stirring a stew. She saw the leg of a goat with the hoof still attached drift past, a rotting log bumped into her with a still living rat clinging to it like a life raft, an old leather boot surfaced for a moment, and even more horrible and unusual things.
She quickly dove beneath the surface before she could see more and looked about for her locket. There in the deepest corner of the stomach was her locket looking as polished and bright as ever. She put it around her neck and pushed back to the surface. The whole place was shaking and shifting and the slime of the stomach was tossing around like a sea in a storm. She could hear the muffled screams of her mom, but couldn’t tell what she was saying. Her father must have stood up because the opening to the throat was now directly over her head. There was no way to reach it and no way to scale the greasy walls of the stomach. There was no way out.
“What do I do now!” she yelled.
“Find the scissors,” said her shadow.
The page from my journal where I wrote the end of "The Locket"
The little girl groped around until she felt something sharp bump her leg. “I found them!” she yelled, and she reached down to catch the scissors before they were swept away. Then she began to cut her way out. They were still razor sharp and it didn’t take long before she cut an opening big enough to fit through. Her father howled and clutched at his stomach as she spilled out and onto the floor in a wave of bile like the yoke of an egg out of its shell.
No sooner had she hit the floor than her mother grabbed her by the hand and they ran from the house. They ran and ran without looking back. They ran right out of the forest and all the way to a neighboring kingdom where they lived happily ever after.
Whenever we think of fairy tales, it's hard not to think of Cinderella. The human race never seems to tire of this ancient story. The earliest version of Cinderella was recorded in 7 BC although there's good evidence to suggest that the story was circulating for hundreds of years before it was written down. One of the most compelling things about Cinderella, is that there are hundreds of versions of the story from cultures all around the world. Historically, many of these cultures had no interaction with each other and no way to share the story. So how did it spread?
In their introduction to Jungian psychology, Donald Kalsched and Alan Jones wrote, “Once upon a time does not mean once in history, but refers to events that occur in eternal time, always and everywhere.” It seems that the Cinderella story is so ingrained in our human nature that almost all cultures everywhere have come up with their own version independent of each other. I don't know about you, but I find that absolutely amazing.
This beautiful piece by Stephanie Law is of Ye Xian,
a Chinese version of Cinderella dating back to the 9th century.
This is a subject that has been written on extensively by people a lot smarter and more informed than me. If you want the exhaustively researched academic scholarly explanation, you need to look elsewhere. Before you do, however, let me just plant one little thought in your mind: Maybe the reason the Cinderella story resonates with so many people in so many diverse cultures and times is because it reminds us of our divine potential.
The common theme in all Cinderella stories is of a person who rises from a very lowly and humble position to one of royalty and majesty they could hardly imagine. We are all Cinderellas. We are all sons and daughters of a Heavenly Father, and we all have the potential to rise from our current lowly and humble position to one of heavenly majesty if we are true and faithful.
We never grow tired of the Cinderella story because it reminds us of who we are really are. It doesn't matter if the story was invented by a person who had never heard of Jesus Christ or the Plan of Salvation, because their idea grew from a hope and deep longing that resides in all our hearts because somewhere, deep inside, we know we are meant for so much more.
Clearly our love of the Cinderella story is alive and well and continues to take on many diverse forms. One of my favorite modern renditions of the Cinderella story is the book, Cinder, by Marissa Meyer. In this young adult novel, Meyer places her version of Cinderella in the future and, get this, makes her a cyborg. When I read the synopsis on the back of the book, I thought, "That's going to be really cool or really, really stupid." It turned out to be really cool and I highly recommend it. Cinder is part of a series called the "Lunar Chronicles". Each book features another fairy tale character including Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White. The last book in the series, Winter, is due out November 10th and I'm counting the days.
Cinderella and these other popular fairy tales survive the test of time because they poke and prod at something primal sleeping deep inside each of us. Maybe you've faced a few wolves in your time or maybe you feel trapped in a tower. Or maybe, just maybe, you lost that golden locket you were born with, and feel a desperate need to go looking for it.
If you have nothing better to do while your waiting for Winterto come out, you can read part three of my fairy tale, "The Locket" below:
The Locket: Part Three (you can go to part one by clicking here, or part two by clicking here)
The little girl tiptoed slowly up to the tree expecting at any moment for the serpent to leap out and bite her. The flowers swayed and bobbed all around her making it impossible to see any movement before it would be too late. She was just about to turn back out of fear when her shadow said, “I will go before you and, when the serpent strikes at me, you will know where he is and can run past.”
Hardly were the words out of the shadows mouth when the serpent lashed out, but its fangs sunk into only the empty air where the shadow walked. As soon as the little girl saw the serpent strike, she leapt over it and ran for the tree. She snatched an apple from a low hanging limb and ran in the opposite direction of the serpent. When she reached the edge of the pond, she worked her way carefully along the shore back to where the old woman waited with the raft.
A page from my journal where I first wrote "The Locket"
The girl tried to hand the old woman the apple, but the old woman could no longer even speak, much less eat. The little girl grew desperate. If the old woman didn’t eat the apple soon, she would surely die.
Her shadow said, “If you want to save her, you will have to chew the apple into a soft mush and then feed her by hand. But be careful not to swallow any or you will be turned into a helpless infant.”
The girl took a bite of the apple, chewed it into a soft mush without swallowing any, and hand fed it to the old woman. With each bite the old woman gained strength until she was able to take the apple from the little girl and eat it herself.
Another page out of my journal from the first draft of "The Locket"
When the old woman finished, she stood and tossed the core into the pond. Then she reached up with both hands and grasped the sides of her mouth. She pulled and pulled and her lips stretched and stretched until she was able to pull them right up over her head as if she were turning herself inside out. But from within the old woman’s mouth emerged the head of a beautiful young woman. She continued to pull the skin of the old woman down over her shoulders and struggled to wiggle out of it like a dress that’s too tight. With an effort, she continued to push it down over her hips. Finally, she was able to drop it to the ground and step out of it.
There before the little girl was now a beautiful young woman. The young woman reached down and scooped up the little girl into a tight hug. “You saved my life. Thank you. How can I ever repay you?”
The little girl said, “Could you take me back across the pond on your raft?”
“Yes, of course. Climb aboard and tell me why a little girl like you is here in this dark forest in the middle of the night?”
The woman began to push them across the pond with a long pole and the little girl told her how she was here to get the seeds to make her father sleep so that she might crawl down his throat to retrieve her locket.
“Tell me, little girl, is your father prone to eating strange things?”
“Yes. I have seen him eat coins and bowls and spoons and even a pair of scissors once.”
“And tell me, were you born with this golden locket around your neck?”
“Why, yes,” said the little girl. “How did you know?”
“You are my daughter! Seven years ago, I gave birth to a baby girl with a golden locket around her neck. Your father, my husband, was a very strange man who would never let me see him sleep. He would always sleep in a separate room and was careful to lock the door so that I could not get in. Also, he would eat the strangest things. Eventually, I grew suspicious and hid behind the curtains in his room when he was preparing for bed. I watched and as he drifted off to sleep he transformed from a man in to an ugly ogre. I was horrified, of course, but it was too late, he was already my husband and the father of my baby. What could I do? I lived with this horrible secret for months until, one night, I caught him crouched over your cradle as if preparing to eat you. I tried to take you and run away, but he caught me and cast an evil spell on me that turned me into a frail old woman. I have been searching the forest ever since trying to find the enchanted tree so that I could return and save you. And now you have saved me!”
The raft reached the shore and they both climbed off. “Come,” said the woman, “I will help you get your locket.”
The two of them spent the remainder of the night and long into the next day getting home. As they walked they gathered roots and mushrooms from the forest. When they arrived at the house, the woman said, “Take these roots and mushrooms and make him supper, but before you serve it to him sprinkle in the flower seeds. I will hide outside until he is asleep.”
The little girl was frightened to go inside by herself now that she knew her father was an ogre, but she thought of her locket, and she knew her mother was nearby, and she was brave. When she went inside, her father eyed her suspiciously and said, “Where have you been?”
“I have been in the forest gathering roots and mushrooms for your supper.”
He looked at her apron full of roots and mushrooms and his stomach growled long and loud and he forgot to be suspicious. “Well then, get started,” he said. “I’m starving!”
The little girl ran to the kitchen and prepared a soup of roots and mushrooms and, just before she served it to her father, she sprinkled in the flower seeds. Within minutes, he began to doze off, and as he fell asleep he transformed from a man, into an ugly ogre. He snored so loudly that her mother came in without having to be called. With a great effort, they laid his enormous ogre body out on the floor. Then, while her mother held it open, the little girl climbed into the ogre’s mouth.
I'll post the final part of "The Locket" tomorrow.
Many of Christensen's paintings directly depict fairy tales and fairy tale creatures, but even the non-fairy tale work evokes in the viewer everything a fairy tale should: a sense of mystery, wonder, depth, and something akin to childlike playfulness. This is in addition to all the wonderful symbolism that permeates his work.
Of all the symbols you can find in Christensen's work, the most common is a fish. Usually this fish will be weightlessly swimming though the air for no apparent reason. Christensen was asked about these fish in a December 2010 interview with Mormon Artist. He said, "I’ve done it because it seemed whimsical and magical and it transports us and reminds us that this is another place...This painting isn’t 'here.' Fish don’t float around 'here,' so you are immediately transported to somewhere else."
Below is part two of my fairy tale "The Locket". I dearly hope it transports you... "somewhere else".
The Locket: Part Two (You can find part one here.)
Guided by her shadow, the little girl found her way into the darkest part of the forest to where there was a large pond shining in the moon light. The water was muddy and murky and choked with weeds and moss.
“How will I cross it?” the little girl asked.
“You must swim,” said her shadow.
It looked to be an impossible task. The little girl was very frightened, but then she thought of her locket and she started wading out into the water. The mud sucked at her feet and the weeds tangled around her legs making every step difficult. Soon the water was up to her neck, the mud at her feet was even deeper, and the weeds tangled around her whole body. When the water became so deep that she could no longer touch the bottom, she took a deep breath and tried to swim, but the moss on the surface of the water was too thick. It was impossible to move forward.
"What do I do?” she shouted to her shadow in desperation.
“You’ll have to hold your breath and dive beneath the surface,” said her shadow.
“But I won’t be able to see! I’ll drown!”
“I can see in the dark,” said her shadow. “I’ll let you see through my eyes.”
The girl took one last breath and dove beneath the surface. Her eyes were open, but no moonlight could penetrate the thick moss. She could see nothing in the complete blackness. The weeds clutched like greasy tentacles at her face and arms. She kicked and clawed at the weeds and started to panic. Then she heard her shadow say, “I am here. You must close your eyes and see through mine.”
The little girl quit thrashing and closed her eyes. Immediately the underwater world came into view as if lit by a lantern. She was able to weave her way through the weeds and beneath the moss. Just when she thought she could hold her breath no longer, her feet were able to touch the bottom and she pushed her head up through the thick moss. She tore the moss and weeds from her face and gasped for air. The island was now only a short distance away. She slowly dragged herself onto the shore, and collapsed.
When she finally regained her strength, she looked around. The whole of the island was covered in flowers that glowed faintly red in the moonlight. Their heads swayed and bobbed as if in a soft breeze even though none could be felt. At the center of the island was ancient looking tree all twisted and gnarled and hung with shining ripe apples.
This is a page from my journal where I first wrote "The Locket"
She hadn’t eaten for quite some time and the apples looked delicious. She quickly gathered a handful of seed pods from the flowers and then started for the tree when she heard a faint voice say, “Be careful.”
The girl turned to see a boney old woman propped up against a raft made of tied sticks and logs.
“Be careful of what?” the girl asked.
“That tree is guarded by a serpent,” the old woman wheezed, “whose venom will cause your flesh to burst into flames if you are bitten.”
The girl moved closer to get a better look at the old woman. She was so old and withered that if she hadn’t just spoken, the little girl would have thought she was dead.
“What are you doing out here?” the girl asked.
“I came for an apple from that enchanted tree.” The old woman tried to gesture to the tree but lacked the strength to even lift her arm. “Anyone who eats one will have the years fall from them with every bite.”
The little girl knew that the old woman would die within the hour if she did not get her an apple. She was terrified of the serpent that could be hiding anywhere in the grass and flowers, but she said “Don’t worry, old woman. I will get you an apple.”
Lately, I've been reading all of Shannon Hale's books over again. I was first drawn to her books because of my love for fairy tales. Hale has the enviable ability to take the essence of the Grimms' fairy tales and then weave them into beautiful and entertaining novels. She does this in books likeGoose Girl and Book of a Thousand Dayswithout losing any of the charm and mystery of the original story. (If you want to read fairy tales in their original form, SurLaLune Fairy Tales is one of the best resources on the internet).
Later, I found out that Hale is also a local (Utah) writer and that she's L.D.S. It's always exciting to see a local author of my faith succeed. It's even better when you read her books and discover that she manages to keep all the dog poop out of her brownies (that last sentence won't make any sense if you didn't read my last blog post, "Keeping the Dog Poop Out of Our Brownies").
Reading Shannon Hale's books got me excited about fairy tales, and that got me excited to read more of the original Grimm fairy tales, and that got me excited to write some fairy tales of my own, and that got me excited to share one of them here on my blog. So I have posted part one of my story The Locket below. I'll post the next two or three parts over the next few days. Much like the last fairy tale I posted (Truenda), I wrote this in the traditional Grimm style, and it is not a Disney type fairy tale. Maybe don't read it to your four-year-old unless you want them to have nightmares.
The Locket (Part One)
There once was a little girl who was born with a golden locket around her neck. She wore it always and cherished it more than anything else in the world. Her mother disappeared when she was still a baby and so she lived a very lonely life with only her father. This might not have been so bad except that her father was very unkind and very strange. He forbade her from ever seeing him sleep and would lock his bedroom door at night. He was also prone to eating all sorts of strange things. Once she saw him eating silver coins one by one like strawberries and then lick his fingers when he was done. Another time she watched him slurp the last drops of broth from his bowl, eye it carefully, then shoved the whole bowl in his mouth spoon and all. Still another time, he spent an hour sharpening a pair of scissors. When he had honed their edge until it was razor sharp, he tipped his head back and dropped them in. This was one of the reasons she never took her locket off.
Her father knew that the little girl cherished the locket more than anything else in the world, and this made him hunger for it all the more. As the years passed, his desire for the locket grew and grew. One night, when he could bear his throbbing hunger no more, he snuck into her room while she slept and crept up to her bed. He paused to be sure she was asleep and then carefully unclasped the locket, slid it off, and swallowed it whole.
This is a page from my journal
where I wrote the first draft of "The Locket".
Notice that when I get stuck with my writing, I doodle.
This always gets the ideas flowing again.
When the little girl awoke the next morning, she was horrified to discover that the locket was gone. She searched the house sobbing all the while, and when at last she could not find the locket anywhere, she knew where it must be.
“Father,” she said, “have you seen my locket? I had it with me when I went to bed, but now it is gone.”
“You mean the tasty-looking one that you were born with?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“The one made of the mouth-watering gold?”
“Yes.”
“The most delicious and appetizing one that you cherished more than anything in the world, wore everywhere, and never took it off?”
“Yes.”
“I snuck into your room last night while you slept, crept up to your bed, carefully unclasped the locket, slid it off, and…” he licked his lips “swallowed it whole.”
The girl started crying and ran from the house out into the forest. Blinded by her tears, she did not look where she was going and soon became lost in the woods, far from any trails. Finally, when she was worn out from crying and running, she fell to the ground and slept. She awoke shivering and cold in the middle of the night. The rising moon fell upon her and cast a long shadow. When she thought of her locket and what her father had done, she once again began to cry.
“What’s wrong?” asked her shadow.
“My father snuck into my room while I slept and swallowed my locket that I cherished more than anything in the world.”
“Oh dear,” said her shadow, “that is bad. There’s only one thing that you can do. At the darkest part of this forest is a deep pond. At the center of the pond is an island on which grows a field of swaying red flowers. The seeds of these flowers will make your father fall into a deep sleep. Once he is asleep, you will have to crawl into his mouth and down his throat to retrieve your locket. But be careful. If he awakes before you can get out, you will surly perish.”
“Is this the only way to get my locket back?” the little girl asked.
“Yes,” said her shadow.
Shaking with fear, the little girl said, “I will do it.”
As you probably already know, I stole this analogy. I’m not sure who originally came up with it, but it sure is a good one. It’s usually used to explain to teenagers why their parents don’t want them listening to music or seeing a movie that only has a little bit of bad stuff in it. The idea is that if you won’t eat a brownie with a only a little piece of dog poop in it, why would you listen to a song or watch a movie with only a little bit of immorality?
I think this same analogy works for us as artists and writers. Over the years, I’ve often found myself tempted to drop just a little piece of dog poop in my work. It sounds ridiculous when I say it like that, but it’s true.
You see, I most often write fiction and most of my characters are teenagers. I’ll be writing along and ask myself, “What would a real teenager say or do under these circumstances?” The answer is often that they would respond with profanity, vulgarity, and immorality. Not all teenagers, of course. There are some amazing adolescents out there that keep themselves clean even in the most difficult of situations. But I’ve taught high school for eleven years. I’m not even remotely naïve to what spews from many teenager’s mouths. There have been days at school where I wished it were possible to remove my brain and bleach it to get the memory of the things I heard out.
Does that mean that because a real teenager might say or do these awful things, I should portray it that way in my work? Of course not. Ephesians 4:29 tells us, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” This applies as much to our work as it does to our conversations with our family and friends.
Anyone can see that they don’t want to have anything to do with the dog poop on the back lawn without having to go out with a knife and fork to eat it. Likewise, it doesn’t take a very talented writer/artist to find a way to show how debased a character might be without making the reader/viewer ingest filth.
I will be the first to admit that in the past, I have sprinkled a fair amount of dog poop into my work under the pretext of “keeping it real.” However, in more recent years, as I’ve learned to rely on prayer and the Spirit more and more in my work, I’ve found that it’s quite possible to keep it real and keep it clean. They are not mutually exclusive ideas no matter how much some writers and artists might try to convince you otherwise. We can tell the truth, even difficult and disturbing truths, without resorting to profanity or graphic scenes of any kind. In fact, I would argue that it will make our work stronger, more unique, more profound, and certainly more palatable as we strive to keep the dog poop out.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s dreams. I don’t mean the kind of dreams that are synonymous with goals and aspirations, of course. Those kinds of dreams are vital to progression and a happy life. I mean the kind of dreams you have at night while you’re asleep. I can’t stand them. I don’t usually have bad dreams, but they’re almost always very vivid, very real, very memorable, and very exhausting. And sleep shouldn’t be exhausting! For once in my life, I would love to sleep all through the night with no dreams.
A few years ago, I started keeping a dream journal in a desperate attempt to understand why I’m so plagued with dreams. I discovered some interesting common themes. The most consistent theme that is in almost all of my dreams is a labyrinth of some kind. It’s never a literal labyrinth or maze, but more like something complicated and difficult that I’m trying to make my way through. These labyrinths usually take the form of complex buildings, caves or tunnels, city streets, or trails through mountains and forests. All the other factors in my dreams change, but this one thing stays consistent: I’m always struggling to find my way.
Detail of "Theseus and the Minotaur" by Master of Cassoni Campana
As frustrating as this can be in my dreams, I suppose it’s only fitting since that’s what writing, art, and, I suppose, life in general are all about. So it’s always nice when we find a guide or some good advice to help us along. That’s where guys like this come in handy:
Brian Kershisnik is an artist living in Provo, Utah who has already traveled much of the artistic labyrinth. In a video made by Steve Olpin, Kershisnik shares five great insights for the rest of us who are struggling to move forward. Though he is an artist, his ideas are equally valid for writing and other creative endeavors. (If the video isn't working, you can watch it on YouTube here.)
I listed each of Kershisnik’s ideas below and added some thoughts of my own:
1.Work Hard:
One of my favorite quotes by any artist has to be Michelangelo when he said, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.” It’s so easy to forget when we look at beautiful art or read an amazing book that the person who created it didn’t just whip it out on a whim. It took them untold hours of hard work and effort. (At least 10,000 hours if what journalist and researcher Malcolm Gladwell tells us is true). If we want to aspire to be like these amazing people, then we too must put in the work.
What’s interesting about Kershisnik’s point on hard work is that he’s really talking about developing our own personal style (I also think these same ideas apply to the even more elusive “voice” for us writers). In what at first seems like a paradoxical statement, Kershisnik tells us that if you directly try to invent your style, it will be inauthentic. It sounds almost like a Zen koan. Maybe it would go something like this:
Artists and writers over the millennia go on pilgrimages to find their own style and voice. After many years of desperate searching, they finally arrive at the top of a mountain where a wise old monk sits meditating beneath a cherry tree. They ask him, “Master, where can I find my own unique style and voice?” The master says, “If you seek style and voice you will not find it. You will only find it only when you no longer seek it.” The artist/writer pilgrim then exclaims, “What? You’ve got to be kidding me! After all this searching?” Then the master adds, “Oh, and did I mention it’s only after lots and lots of hard work…maybe 10,000 hours or so?”
I imagine my monk to look like Mater Shifu. (Artwork: "Inner Peace" by Misty Tang)
Kershisnik’s tells us that style will emerge on its own after, not 10 or 20 pieces of work, but more like 50 or 500 pieces. Not one or two novels, but five, ten, or 100. We just have to be patient, try not to think too much about it, and have faith that it will eventually happen.
2.Follow the Thread:
Most of us have heard of the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In case it’s been awhile, here’s a very fast refresher: Theseus needs to navigate a labyrinth to find a big scary monster called the Minotaur and kill it. He also needs to find his way back out. Like all men, he can’t do much of anything without help from a woman. In this case, the woman is the local princess, Ariadne. She helps Theseus by giving him a sword and a ball of thread. She tells Theseus to unravel the thread as he winds his way into the labyrinth so that he can find his way back out after the nasty killing business is all done. Long story short, it works and Theseus returns as a conquering hero…thanks to Ariadne.
"Ariadne Giving Theseus the Thread..." by Pelagio Palagi
Kershisnik is telling us to follow our own threads in order to navigate our own creative labyrinths. What are these threads? Well, Kershisnik explains that no one can actually tell you. It appears that the labyrinth is different for every individual. In what appears to be another Zen-like paradox, we learn that we have to find your own way through our own unique labyrinth following our own threads on the paths we need to be on.
I think the reason no one else can tell us what these threads are, where to find them, or where they will lead exactly is because these threads come from within us. They are our own ideas, interests, curiosity, and whimsy which we follow according to our individual creative instincts and aesthetic intuition. Kershisnik is saying that we should follow our ideas and interests as long as they seem to be getting bigger and better. How do we know if they’re getting bigger and better? Well, we use what he calls our “internal sense”, our instincts and intuition. When we come to a dead end, we back track and try again. Slowly, with lots of hard work, we make our way through the labyrinth and create something beautiful and meaningful (and maybe even slay a monster while we’re at it).
3.Enjoy Yourself:
Kershisnik says, “An artist’s work is stained by the circumstances from which it emerges…If an artist isn’t enjoying himself, the work can’t help but reek of that.” On the flip side, he says, “If the artist is enjoying themselves, that essence comes through.” Does that mean I have to be cheerful all the time when I’m writing or my work will stink? No, of course not. I think we need to recognize the broader and deeper meaning of the word “enjoy”. We can enjoy something even if we’re not always having fun and feeling all hunky-dory.
For instance, one of my hobbies is canyoneering. This is the sport of exploring narrow slot canyons like the ones commonly found in southern Utah (think: “127 Hours” minus the amputation). This sport involves hiking, climbing, rappelling, swimming, and crawling through dark, narrow labyrinthine slot canyons. Most often canyoneering is fun, but sometimes it just feels like work and sometimes it’s downright miserable and scary. However, I always enjoy it. That’s because enjoyment is more profound than just fun. It can encompass things like struggling to overcome challenges, perseverance, and intellectual and physical exertion. We can enjoy many things that are not necessarily fun at all.
Me exploring a slot canyon in Zion National Park. (Photo: Gary Davis)
So when Kershisnik says we should enjoy ourselves, I don’t think he’s saying we have to always be having fun while we work or our creative projects will end up stained and reeking. No, I think he’s saying we need to focus on the work that fascinates us, that we find meaningful and important, that we feel drawn to, that we revel in. Not the work we think will make us the most money or bring us the most fame.
If we are doing the work that makes us feel complete or whole or like we are doing what we were born to be doing, then we will be enjoying ourselves in the deepest possible sense of the word and “that essence will come through.”
4.It’s Important to Feel:
My parents own a house near Bear Lake, Idaho. It was originally built in the early 1900’s and then later added onto. The oldest part of the house has a cellar. A dark, cramped, cluttered cellar. Let’s go in, shall we?
To get to it, you have to go through a hatch hidden beneath the carpet of the back bedroom. Most people who visit never know there’s a menacing cellar right beneath the pillow where they lay their head to sleep. You roll away the carpet and find a trap door. There’s an old metal handle that rattles as you grab it and the hinges groan as you lift. A puff of cool, moist air hits you in the face. Air that makes you think of earth worms, tree roots, mold, and… grave robbing. You brush away the cobwebs and start down the narrow, wooden stairway careful with each step, feeling the old planks flex and creak beneath your weight. You hear other sounds as you make your way down, sounds of scurrying feet and long tails disappearing into dark holes. The darkness is palpable. It feels like cold, blind hands groping at your face. At the bottom of the stairs, you find a dirt floor, soft and spongy underfoot. Why is it so soft, you wonder, what frightening mysteries might I uncover if I was to dig? You reach out blindly, feeling for the string hanging from the light in the middle of the room. At first you feel only spider webs breaking across your fingers, but after you fumble around for a while, you feel the string, almost greasy in your hands, and pull it. The cellar lights up with the glaring yellow light of a single bare bulb. It’s like the interrogator’s light, swinging slightly back and forth making the room rock and casting deep shadows into every corner. You feel the room almost flinch. The light feels alien here. This is a place without eyes, comfortable with blackness, used to hiding things, and unused to the light. But you’re here, and the light is on, so you look around…
Just to be clear, I don’t think Kershisnik is saying we should all write confessional poetry and air our dirty laundry for the world to see. Not at all. But we can fill our characters with genuine emotions, make them face real issues, add a sense of sincerity to our work by tapping into these often difficult to face feelings that we have personal experience with. Kershisnik warns us that this can be dangerous, slaying monsters always is, but if we process these feelings in a productive way, it will “lead to profundity” in our work.
5.Don’t Force Symbols:
Kershisnik advises us to let symbols emerge naturally and organically as we work. They should have a life of their own. He warns us not to come up with a symbol first and then “impose it on a canvas and inflict it on the world.” That would be like bringing your date a bouquet of plastic flowers. The flowers might look real at first, but she’s sure to notice that they feel wrong, they lack fragrance, they lack the innate vitality we all sense in a living thing. Sure she will get the idea, she knows what the plastic flowers stand for, but I doubt you’ll get a second date.
This last idea of Kershisnik’s surprised me. Not that I don’t agree with him, because I do. I just didn’t expect it to be so high on his list of important advice to give. But it makes sense when we look at how his way of discovering symbols fits in with the other four ideas he presented.
They are all about finding our way through our individual labyrinths. How do we do this? We listen to Kershisnik’s advice: We follow Ariadne’s thread.
Since this thread is made up of our own curiosity, interests, and ideas, we will naturally enjoy ourselves as we follow it. If we are enjoying ourselves, it will shine through in our work.
Sometimes the thread will lead us into dark places. Places where our personal minotaur is waiting. That’s okay, every labyrinth has a dark cellar we must pass through and a monster we must slay. We kill him by looking him in the eye, listening to what he has to say, and really feeling. Then we continue along our way, holding to our thread. Only now, we notice that our work is glowing with an inner light of profundity.
As we continue to travel our labyrinth, we will stumble onto symbolic flowers growing naturally along the path. They’re ours to take. We can present them in our work to whoever will accept them. Maybe it will even cause them to fall in love with us.
At some point, a long, long way into our labyrinth, after we have worked very, very hard to get where we are, we will pass by an old monk meditating under a cherry tree. There’s no reason to say anything to him. He will look up at us and nod knowingly as we pass because he can see that, without necessarily meaning to, we have developed our own unique style and voice.
Now that we have a voice and something worth saying, we can truly speak.
I admire William Blake for being both an artist and poet. He illustrated his own texts by engraving copper plates and then finishing each page by hand with watercolors. He claimed to have learned this technique from his dead brother in a vision! My favorite poem of Blake's is his introduction to "Songs of Innocence".
William Blake's illustration for the introduction to "Songs of Innocence"
William Blake's introduction to "Songs of Innocence"
In case you're having trouble reading from the picture above, here is the same poem:
Introduction to the Songs of Innocence
by William Blake
Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me.
Pipe a song about a Lamb;
So I piped with merry chear,
Piper pipe that song again—
So I piped, he wept to hear.
Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear,
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear
Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read—
So he vanish'd from my sight.
And I pluck'd a hollow reed.
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear
This is not the type of poem I'm usually drawn to. I think the reason it resonated with me was because when I first read it in 2001, I had recently become a father. Below is the journal entry I wrote after reading this poem for the first time:
A journal entry I wrote about Blake's introduction from when I was in college in 2001.
I love that there is a sense of progress from selfishness to selflessness in this poem. It begins with the piper playing music only for himself. He progresses from this selfish piping to singing for just the one child. From there he writes his words down so that "every child my joy to hear." There's this sense that the piper finally realizes his talents are meant to be shared for the benefit of everyone.
It's interesting that the child that asks the piper to sing and write his songs comes to him "on a cloud" and later "vanished from [his] sight". We can only assume the child must be an angel, a messenger from God. And it's fitting, isn't it? God wants us to use our talents, the talents He gave us, to serve others. He sends his "angels" to encourage this all the time in the form of family, friends, and church leaders.
The other thing I love about this poem is that the child asks the piper to "pipe a song about a Lamb". The Lamb is, of course, the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. The child asks the piper not just to pipe any song, but a song about our Savior. I'm not suggesting that everything we write, draw, paint, or sculpt needs be overtly about God. I am, however, suggesting that we should strive to make all of our creative works uplifting and positive in nature. The 13th Article of Faith for the L.D.S. church states, "If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things." If we use that as a standard for the kind of things we try to capture in our work, then we will have, in essence, "piped a song about a Lamb." And maybe, just maybe, when we do it really well, our readers/viewers will "weep [with joy] to hear."
As I mentioned in my journal entry above, this poem is a call to action. The piper is told to write it down "in a book that all may read." Spencer W. Kimball, former president of the L.D.S. church, said, “Get a notebook, my young folks, a journal that will last through all time... Begin today and write in it your goings and comings, your deepest thoughts, your achievements and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies” (October 1975 New Era). And I would add your sketches, stories, poems, and more. Think about what "songs" you need to write, paint, or draw so that your children, or all of God's children, "may joy to hear." Do this, "and maybe," President Kimball tells us, "the angels may quote from it for eternity."
This is the angel I like to imagine reading from my book. Sculpture by Roman Shustrov, located in St. Petersburg
