(no subject)

[lenora_rose]

On a whim, i asked vilashna to peg with with 5 things she wanted me to talk about that she associates with me. Here goes.

Creating art in its many forms.

I honestly believe there isn't a human being in the world who doesn't have at least the potential for some kind of outlet for imagination or art. For some it's subsumed into something they have to do anyhow: cooking for the kids, for instance, or making ad copy, or interior design. And they then claim they don't have any kind of imagination or any of that frivolous stuff. For others, it's a hobby whose higher artistry isn't often recognized, or even necessarily practiced: sewing or knitting, carpentry. My grandmother has been sewing most of her life, but never without a pattern, and rarely anything other than practical clothes. But she's done decorative touches that showed imagination, and even her choices of fabric reflected imagination and ideas beyond strict necessity. Or, an old favourite of mine, doodling in the corners of pages. In the right circumstances, playing in a role-playing game definitely does fill the same need (Though that partly depends on the people involved, the synergy between them and you/their characters and yours, and the GM's own bent), and creating or adapting rules for one even more so.

I create art in at least four forms, with at least five different levels of skill: I write fantasy stories, little published yet because of my love for length, but I think of a reasonably high quality. I do pottery I have sold in quantity enough to be fairly confident I have some skill; journeyman level, at least, though I know I'm far from master at any skill. And I do music, mostly by singing, though the mandolin is coming along, at a clumsy amateur level, the singing to a degree that has given others some enjoyment, though I am far from even music student levels. I also do renaissance dance (And English country, most of which is slightly post-renaissance but has been adopted by the SCA as close-enough and documentable both), which involved following a strong pattern of steps, and I do reasonably well when I keep in practice. I'd like to do more art by way of sewing (costuming), illumination/painting, and dancing freeform, as these are all things I used to do. (I guess I also still draw/doodle, but mostly either to keep my hands busy, or copying pattern and plans for future clay-work.)

I also believe that most art is unsatisfactory without an audience, even if that audience is, for most hobbyists, little more than family and friends. Doodles in the corner of a paper don't fulfill anyone. A few pleasant landscape watercolours gifted to family, or needlepoint projects hung on one's own wall, or hung on one's own walls, however, do fill a need.

I also think that every art or talent needs practice. But that many people don't recognize the time they put into it as practice, if they do it in their spare time, or for fun. I do think many people make a jump in skill the moment they realise that even the boring parts they hate and go through as fast as possible need that extra practice (For example, in medieval and English country dance, drilling posture or stepping on the precise beat, rather than just spinning through the rough steps.)

I can think of exactly one person I think I know pretty well who has not, and does not, do something creative that I can identify. And I suspect I'm wrong about him and just don't know how he hides it. I often don't know about co-workers and the like, but I don't know their private lives.

I'd like to say that, barring medical conditions that mess up the brain chemicals, I do see a correlation between a greater number of creative hobbies and a greater contentedness with life, but I don't. It's very possible to be creative and miserable (Though, NO thank you, Romantics, it is NOT prefereable, or better for Art, to suffer.) However, I do suspect a correlation between one particular kind of stress - job dissatisfaction, where job can include home-making/house-spousery - and a lack of creative outlet in either job or other parts of life. Office work rarely calls on me to be creative, but you know? I don't mind. I have outlets.


The importance of music in your life.

(ETA: This entire entry started with me listening to Vitas, continued through Blackmore's Night, then Beethoven.)

Hmmm. Can I even sum this up? If I'm at the computer or otherwise engaged in an activity that doesn't involve its own sound, I'm playing music, or wishing music were playing. I love to sing along, or just sing.

One of my extra temp jobs one summer involved filing in a back room of a business. Being little interrupted, I decided to go through my musical repertoire. As the days progressed, I decided to challenge myself, by trying to come up with songs I had Not previously sung, as often as possible.

I eventually repeated a thing or two, when I was stuck, but even on the last day, I was calling to mind new-to-that-place material. Though I did lose lyrics halfway a few times. (June Tabor's Shameless Love sticks in my brain for that, mostly because it's not intuitive.)

I use songs memorized to pieces as concentration tricks in archery, when I feel like I'm losing focus and/or technique. I haven't been doing this often enough. It generally does help, though, like every other technique, it's not perfect in itself.

One of the things irking me about this latest throat cold (If it isn't an infection, a discussion I've already had with mom, as I think I caught it the same night I started showing symptoms, which is a Bad Sign.) is, after the last one, it's meant I've had very little time lately where I have been remotely able to sing. Which makes mandolin practice tricky, too. (Learning how to play mandolin is at least as much learning how to accompany one's singing with simultaneous strumming/plucking as it is learning the strumming/plucking itself.)

I have far from excellent musical taste. It's mine, and I like it, and I own it. And I'm not as ashamed as I pretend to be that it includes *some* more commercial things, though i like to think of those as creative people who made it commercially, not commercial people who happened on the right combo to sucker me, because my priorities favour "this is what I do" over "this is what sells" (This is part of my beef with Gowan, actually, who, after saying "Find a good thing and hang on to it for dear life", and writing a song that sure sounded like ti was about beign dedicated to one's own work, kept - by his own admission - changing his sound in hopes for more Commercial recognition {especially from the US}, until the creative, individual bits of his sound, the stuff I listened to him *for* got swallowed in the pop pap.)

But I have, simultaneously, great terror that if I admit my favourites, people will laugh, disagree, or sneer (Borne out by my brother's behaviour more than once, and even my mom's on much rarer occasions), and great enthusiasm for sharing groups I like with other people I think will like them. This has caused some great evenings of music nights, even with my brother, who feels the same enthusiasm about sharing, but whose tastes and mine do not completely overlap. (I have more appreciation for simple and bare-bones and immediately graspable even by musical morons; he has more taste for complexity, in writing, arrangement, and accessibility. Not that either of us *can't* see the appeal, or don't have groups or songs that fit the other's categories better.)

This is also why I take such great offense at the prevalence of something as tepid as James Blunt. Because simple isn't simplistic, and accessible doesn't mean moronic. But it makes me want to apologize for liking simple straightforward singer-songwriters. Although Billy Bragg already made the apology for Blunt's existence, so maybe I'm off the hook.


Gaming.

Gaming, for me, is group storytelling, a drama where someone else is in charge, a chance to flesh out a character who wouldn't fit in any story I wrote alone. I know other people who are more interested in the play of the mechanics than the play of the people, or in puzzle-solving rather than character interaction, or even in planning, and I do believe in munchkins, who just want to game the rules so they can amass everything. (Actually, my husband has some borderline munchkin tendencies. But he also puts points into his characters' hobbies, the ones that virtually never come out as important in game.)

Gaming only works with the right GM and the right group of gamers. There's one person I love to play with if he's GM, but found to take over the game far too much when he played as a character - so much so that he felt like a secondary GM some of the time, which was NOT his proper role. There are people I'd love to see run a game, or write an RPG, I'd hesitate to game with. There are always people in games who seem to get left out, because the players are quieter people, or because they aren't as interested in developing someone else's personality. The current game isn't bad for this, actually, but we're a smallish group (Five players) so everyone *has* to step up, even if it's against their nature. I sometimes think there is a main protagonist, however, (Someone the game would be about, if we were a tv show) and in spite of meta-commentary saying so, I don't think it's my Magda. I have yet to decide if this is good or bad.


Kitties!

Something I feel people talk about enough, really. In fact, that seems to be one of their chief uses; if there is any awkward silence, or need to start a conversation or change a conversation, cats are almost always a safe topic among people with cats, or people who like cats, even if they are cat free themselves.

I love my cats dearly. I do feel the house seems empty without animals in. I recognize their multifarious (and nefarious - Tuffles still gets talked about the most!) personalities. And I do believe at least some of the therapeutic benefits that have been seen in keeping animals, or interacting with animals, when it comes to teaching social skills, empathy, keeping the elderly interested in thew world, etc. However, I also acknowledge that this may not always have been to the domestic animal's benefit. House cats are longer-lived and healthier than wild counterparts. They're also dumber, and more bored. We do it to ourselves, too, and there are advantages to not having to scramble every day to feed oneself (Hopefully counteracting the distance some people feel between, say, meat and the animal it comes from, or grocery veggies and the act of farming) -- but humans can turn that hunt-and-gather-free time to other, sometimes even creative or otherwise brain-expanding pursuits. Cats often can't. Especially cooped up indoors. Not that people don't have stories about what their cats do because they're feeling bored or neglected.

I understand that people who have the time to do so can train their cats to do tricks to keep their brains more active and expand their horizons. I'm not home enough, or free to play with them, or take time with them, enough. (I do love it when other people *want* to spend some time filling that gap for me, but I also sometimes wish I had a little more home time. Except when i do, I rarely spend it with or on the cats.)


Helping others.

I'm not even sure how I got tagged with this. I don't do this enough. Not in real, substantial ways. (And vilashna will promptly point out that we let her stay as a houseguest while she went house-hunting in our city. Which is why I said "enough", not "I don't".)

I like to be there for people when they call on me, but the truth is, these days, I haven't had people call on me much. And sometimes I do fail when I try, or say I'll try. But I like to try, and I hope people forgive me for not being terribly good at it.