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Hi Hi-
Last week I mentioned to you (here) that I’m rereading HEATING AND COOLING, 52 Micro Memoirs, by Beth Ann Fennelly. I promised that today I would bring you a prompt based upon her work. And I will, but first…
I again attended an art class at MUSÉE D’ART MODERNE DE COLLIOURE and this time, rather than en plein air drawing, we had a brief lecture on the virtues of copying as a path to learning, and then we traipsed through the galleries. The importance of copying is something Austin Kleon speaks about a lot in his book, STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST and in this post, Copying is How We Learn.
The French lecture (I understood about every 5th word) implored us to leave our cameras off and use our imaginations and hands to capture the art. We were invited to select a piece, stare for about five minutes, and then to begin to copy the art. Rinse and repeat, from painting to drawing to sculpture for about 90 minutes. What a gift, the instructor said, to make a museum from our imagination.
With scant art supplies, I used what I had to make what I could. When I pulled out my phone to snap a picture of the original art I felt so guilty, peeking over my shoulder to be certain no one spied my digressive act! And, I took the photo just to show you.
By staring, by copying, I developed a different relationship with the work than I would have if I’d merely snapped a photo or let my gaze briefly roam over the surface. I created intimacy with the work.
…
Which brings me to Beth Ann Fennelly. Her micro memoirs are a great starting point to bring you close to her work and to launch you into your own writing. I dog-eared many pages to return to when I feel I have nothing to say, nothing to write.
For example:
In an essay called, A Reckoning of Kisses, (and please do click the link) Fennelly remembers a legion of kisses, good, bad, and surprising. Here are just a few in no particular order.
—He placed his beer on the pool’s lip, then pulled me into his. I’ll wager that on a scale of kiss-taste, a drag of Marlboro followed by a swig of Bud in a forbidden pool in the chlorinated dark still ranks pretty high.
—Years before, my sister and I practiced on each other in a hotel bathroom. We also critiqued each other’s “sexy walk.” We never spoke of this again.
—Curled around my firstborn’s body, flesh-drunk, I kissed her chins and cheeks and tiny soft lips which parted, and for the briefest of moments we soul-kissed.
—Today is our daughter’s fifteenth birthday. These days, she and I rarely kiss.
Does this inspire you to track your own legion of kisses? Or perhaps to track something else. A legion of breakfasts-in-bed? of shoes? of break-ups? of teachers? clandestine meet-ups? soups? dogs? The possibilities are endless. What might you write about?
Thanks for reading. I hope your day is filled with amiable companions.
If you missed the last few jewels… no fear! Here they are: cookies. melon salad.
a novel. dance. poem. cake. friendship. school shopping. drawing. coffee cups.
To stay in the loop:
Tell your people you love them, and take care of your skin!
Oh Natalie. Even from the other side of the world you enchant me. I am lying in the dark, reading on my phone so as not to wake up Banjo, my sweet 15 ib poodle, and now I want to write my own history of kisses and pick up my charcoals and draw again, my acrylics to paint, and to speak French as I did in college. Thank you for all of it!!❤️❤️❤️
In grades 6-8 at a small Catholic school in a small Midwestern city, we had no art teacher so our nun would hand out postcard sized copies of great art pieces and we were tasked with "drawing extensions" of them. Place them anywhere on the paper and extend them. I still remember my Starry Night (van Gogh). At the time, and since, I thought how bogus this was, but on reading your bit on copying, maybe it was brilliant and not bogus. Hmmmmm.