in training
stop apologizing-start creating, a side of beans to come, and how our mood forms our world
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Hi Hi!
You can put Americans in France, but can you put France in Americans?
We made a big (to me) gaff in planning our trip to Toulouse. We took the train from Collioure to the nearest larger town, rented a car, and had a little road-trip.
We had plans to visit a remote village. (It was wonderful including a tour of a chateau, an impromptu duck dinner, which I’ll tell you all about on Sunday…) So we’d definitely need a car, but why did we not train all the way to Toulouse?
It’s such an American thought that one needs wheels for flexibility and freedom. In point of fact, when years ago I tried to convince my husband our family needed only one car, his argument was basically this… if/when we get in a fight, how am I going to storm off guilt free if I peel out in our only car— leaving you stranded at home? Dear Reader, we now have just one car. He does however have five bicycles from which to choose when he wants a speedy getaway!
The rental car was a burden. Once in Toulouse, on market day no less, we had the most stressful morning, inching along narrow passages of brick and stone, pinched between facades of wrought iron lacework and cafe tables erupting beyond the sidewalk. We bobbed and weaved, trying to avoid oblivious teenagers laughing and shoving each other, women carrying market baskets—frothy greens flopping from the brims—and dads with toddlers high on their shoulders. Was this even a street? We leaned toward the windshield scanning for a place to abandon the fucking car!
My husband is a cool cucumber and I am a nervous co-pilot. We did find a garage. So remote from centre ville we worried of ever retracing our steps of find the car when it was time to go. How in the world do any of us survive without google maps?
A much better plan, train to Toulouse, rent the car there for the visit to the petit village, just two days vs. five, and then train home. What we ended up unnecessarily paying for:
3 extra car rental days
2 full days parking fees
all the hearty tolls for driving on French highways, which are very worth it… smooth roads, few cars, lovely aires de repos
gas
STRESS
All because we are not schooled in the language of reliable and flexible public transportation. Oh Cher United States, please give us trains! What a joy. Read. Relax. Pee without having to pull over. Drink coffee. Chat with people around you. Nap.
Live and learn!
Tell me a gaff you’ve made when traveling in another country?
view art/watch a film/read a book:
Don’t Apologize/Don’t Settle/Take Up Space.
Earlier this year I shared a post about my time in Chicago. Particularly about the Art Institute of Chicago and the odalisque, that painting trope that finds a woman in the center of the canvas, stretched out on a bed, surrounded by sumptuous fabrics, nude or seductively draped, sunk in pillows, gazing beyond the frame, there for the pleasure of the painter and the viewer. I sought paintings through the museum looking to see how the odalisque form has been co-opted and reinvented.
Well, imagine my delight at stumbling into Mickalene Thomas’s, ALL ABOUT LOVE, show at the Musee Les Abattoirs in Toulouse. Thomas upends the odalisque further, placing black women in the center of their own claimed world, celebrating queer love and identity. The show was phenomenal. The subjects powerful. Thomas is fully in dialogue with canonical works of art, recontextualizing work by Manet and Matisse, thus taking copying (which we talked about a couple weeks ago!) to the next level. She takes the odalisque form and makes it completely her own through collage, painting, photography, and bling! Yes, I said bling… tons of rhinestones! These portraits are about black femininity and power. These women do not apologize for taking up space. They do not bend for anything which isn’t theirs to carry.
Also in the exhibit, this quote from bell hooks, a deep inspiration for Thomas’s show:
Find more of Thomas’s work here.
…
Watch a film:
Do you know about the outsider artist, Maude Lewis? She was a woman stricken with debilitating arthritis, who turned to painting in her small Nova Scotia village to bring joy and delight to her life, and eventually her town. I stumbled upon this quote from Kurt Vonnegut and it speaks to Maude Lewis’s raison d’être.
“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
Do check this wonderful film, MAUDIE, about her life. She is the queen of not settling. The queen of seeking creative expression, of squeezing it out, anywhere.
…
Read a book:
LEARNING BY HEART, Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit, by Sister Corita Kent, and Jan Steward. This book is incredibly inspirational. Full of ideas of projects and ways to bust you out of your thought patterns… (like, maybe don’t rent the car!!) Corita Kent says:
“We can all talk, we can all write, and if the blocks are removed, we can all draw and paint and make things….Doing and making are acts of hope, and as hope grows we stop feeling overwhelmed by the troubles of the world. We remember that we, as individuals and groups, can do something about those troubles.”
Here are Corita Kent’s rules for making art:
…
My hope for you is that you have a creative, and inspired week. My hope is that we take up space!
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write:
My note to you last week was all about being sad in France. Our emotional temperature of course colors our perceptions of the world. Another way of saying that is: we build our world by the lens through which we view our days. And so, here is a prompt from the writer John Gardener from his book, THE ART OF FICTION:
Describe a barn as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in a war. Do not mention the son, or war, or death.
The wonderful writer,
gives a corollary:Describe a barn as seen by a man whose true love has just said yes to his proposal of marriage. Do not mention the woman, or love, or marriage.
Additionally Karbo says, “If you don’t fill in the emotion (without stating it, but showing it) for the reader, they will fill it in themselves and the writer will lose control.”
I challenge you to choose a landscape, be it a grocery store, a children’s playground, your main character’s kitchen, and choose an emotional lens from the emotion wheel PDF. Now, write the scene and setting without mentioning the emotion. Practice revealing emotion without telling the reader what to feel.
PS An idea if you’re feeling a particular way… sad, mad, disgusted… perhaps put on a lens of comfort, or happy, or surprise, and see if looking at the world through that emotion might shift your mood. You’ve got nothing to lose, right?
…
In the after-party🎉… this week there is no after-party! I’ve got everything in front of the pay wall. You’re welcome! My hope is that those of you who regularly read the newsletter will pitch-in to support my work. I spend a chunk of time sharing ideas with you and I’m grateful you’re here. Won’t you consider upgrading to a paid subscription to make the gratitude reciprocal?
eat:
Come back Sunday for a fantastic bean recipe from the SW of France! Meanwhile enjoy the picture and the spork.
Thank you for reading!
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Stanley!
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