creativity – Page 2 – Barbara Froman

Therapy

Posted on March 9, 2019 by Barbara Froman

Have you ever noticed a scent coming back to you hours or days after you inhaled it, as fresh and as potent as it was? And have you noticed that memories associated with that scent come rushing back as well? And that the same thing happens with objects you may see? Or sounds you may hear? A train whistle fading as it passes, a siren rushing to an emergency? Wind chimes warning of an approaching storm?

My head has been swarming with thoughts and memories, dredged up by sensory overload. I could drown out the noise by focusing on yet another volume of fictional angst and fury that dwarfs my own, as I have been doing the past month, but today I yearn only to bake bread.

There’s something wholly satisfying about proofing yeast, the stringent, heady vapors it produces, blending ingredients, small batches at a time until they form a dough that can be twisted, pounded, and kneaded into a satiny mass, rolled into a greased bowl and left to rise, only to be worked again. And when the dough is ready to bake—having been dressed with beaten egg or butter, its aroma rises from the oven, saturating the air, replacing all the other offending scents and sights and sounds with the knowledge that nourishment and pleasure are in the future, along with the joy of that first warm bite, slathered with honey or butter or nothing.

How sweet to look at that glistening, golden braid, or round, or loaf, and say, I made that. How thoroughly soothing; how incomparably delicious.

creativity, fiction, writing

Bones

Posted on August 11, 2018August 12, 2018 by Barbara Froman

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I’m not going to talk about writing.

There are these bones, you see, almost 32,000 of them, strung together in a fairly reasonable order.

I think they will function well. All the joints are properly connected, in the right places—foot, ankle, shin, knee, and so on. It took a bit of effort. A few bones didn’t seem to fit, and had to be moved. Bones do have their logic.

And now that they’re properly fashioned, as bones should be, they look, well, skeletal.

They need padding.

I can’t put a suit or a dress on them yet. It won’t hang right. A skeleton need padding first, and then layers.

There’s a long list beside me, getting longer by the minute. I leave the desk, and five new items for the list occur to me, and five more, which will layer nicely on those bones.

But for now, I plan to let them hang around unbothered for a couple of weeks, so they can get used to their assembly, settle in to their identity.

Bones like that.

Yes, they do.

books, creativity, fiction, music, Shadows and Ghosts, writing

An Imperfect Stitch

Posted on January 10, 2018January 10, 2018 by Barbara Froman

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There is an error in Shadows and Ghosts.

During occasional battles with an ongoing obsession over symmetry and accuracy, I’ve considered correcting it…but only momentarily.

~~~

In 1975, Leon Redbone released his album, On the Track, which contains a rendition Of “Ain’t Misbehavin” (lyrics by Andy Razaf and music by Thomas “Fats” Waller and Harry Brooks).

Redbone’s interpretation is slightly off-kilter: the intonation struggles in places, and there are extra beats sprinkled throughout. But I love it. Its off-balance rhythmic irregularities, the nasal grit in Redbone’s voice, the imperfect instrumental tones and pitches feel fresh and authentic. They transform a great song into a greater one.

~~~

My mother was a perfectionist. Today we would likely say her attention to detail was compulsive. But that compulsiveness got her far, made her successful at everything she did. Although I’ve spent most of life as an unapologetic underachiever, I have no doubt that some of her “perfectionism” rubbed off on me. You can’t spend hours practicing scales and arpeggios, isolated musical passages over and over without being at least a little compulsive. It’s the only way to train the brain, develop fine motor skills, make the muscles remember.

But it’s not always enough.

Along with compulsive tendencies, creation demands an oblique and often fractured perspective, a willingness to look at subject matter, construction, sideways and through a prism.

~~~

When I think of the thousands of books I’ve read, pieces of music I’ve played, I realize most of them contained errors and/or irregularities, some degree of strangeness in small or large ways that established the works as fresh and unique, that transformed and elevated them.

So I keep my error in place, because in important ways, it acts as a type of cipher. And to reinforce its importance, I put a prism in plain view.