cardiothoracic & publicity shot

A new poem in Free Verse.  Don't be too grossed out.  I sometimes write poems about pretty things, though I happen to think that veins and needles and organs are really beautiful.  After finishing two books about trees and flowers, I just completed a little chapbook about surgery, diagnosis, doctors, patients and the weirdness of healing/treating/ministering.

My student Caitlin, a talented photographer, took some photos of me yesterday for my book cover.  Here's one of them.  I think it's the coolest one, but not the one I'll use for the book.  My students liked the ones where I looked happy the best.

xo

Oh My Goodness

If you're too overwhelmed for narrative, write a list. I got inspired by my friend Julie's awesome blog to finally update again.

Here's what I've been doing lately:

1) Teaching my students to write ghazals, haiku, sestinas, and sonnets, which they totally hate. I love the ghazal, especially this one by Shahid, and using my favorite book on the subject, Ravishing Disunities. The Ghazal works with fragmentation and avoids the kind of unity that we look are trained by our English teachers to look for in say, the sonnet. This is why my students hate me and ghazals right now--they're struggling to learn to live with ambiguity, multiplicity, lack of closure, actually things I love the most in poems.

2) Yoga. I'm trying to go four or five times a week in the hopes of not resorting to pharmaceuticals to keep my mental health in check. Nothing against them--I love them and have used them and would use them again if necessary, but I love not feeling dampened by them, and love not paying for them every month, and love the absence of side effects when not on them. So I'm trying not to develop my yearly full-blown depression.

3) Squash--acorn, sphagetti, butternut, amber cup, green hubbard. Roasted, pureed, mashed, and so on.

4) Reading Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches Me and I Fall Down and Berton Roueche's The Medical Detectives in preparation for teaching a writing/ lit. class on medical writing, idea inspired by my friend Teri from Mills who now teaches bio-ethics at Gallaudet and who contributed a chapter in this awesome book on House.

5) Editing and revising my manuscript of poems for this press, forthcoming in winter of 2011.

6) Finishing up fourteen. That's 1-4. Loads of laundry.

7) Revising a new manuscript, tentatively called Gentian Weaves her Fringes and a chapbook Physic at the Table so I can start submitting them.

8) Thinking a lot about finishing the novel I started last year. Totally discouraged about not having enough time right now.

Mo Op

Also, a brief mention of the operas that Christian and I have written together appears on the Mormon Artist Group's website:

http://mormonartistsgroup.com/mag/mormons-opera-and-mormon-operas/

on sunday

An essay of mine appears in this new collection ON SUNDAY:

GLIMPSES--THE MORMON ARTISTS GROUP NEWSLETTER:

What is it like to go to church in prison, or in an Islamic country, or in Africa, Australia, or Asia? We say that the Church is the same wherever you go, but how is the experience of LDS worship different throughout the world?

Mormon Artists Group is pleased to announce the publication of

On Sunday

As part of Mormon Artists Group’s tenth anniversary, we invited authors around the world merely to go to church and write down what they experienced on a Sunday.

We were curious to know what their buildings looked like, how people arrived at church, who were the members, what they did for a living, what they looked like, how they treated each other, what they talked about, what worried them, what inspired them, how they sang, how they worshipped: what went on.

Our authors wrote from their home congregations in Singapore, Australia, Angola, Kuwait, Brazil, and throughout North America, from Harlem to Seattle. There are eleven essays altogether, accompanied by photographs of the church buildings taken by the authors. For the most part, the episodes in the book occurred on a single, ordinary Sunday, March 1, 2009.

Buildings, above, in Angola, Seattle, Harlem, Brazil.

The Authors

The authors of On Sunday are Adam Anderson, Stephen Bennett, Claudia Bushman, Harriet Petherick Bushman, Lara Candland, Mario V. L. Cardoso, Glenn Gordon, Stanley Hainsworth, Thomas Holst, Glen Nelson, and Astrid S. Tuminez.

Each of the essays is a journalistic snapshot. Some of these stories come from turbulent landscapes: the aftermath of civil war in Angola, a raging wildfire in Australia, expatriates living far from home and family in Kuwait and Singapore. There is economic turmoil everywhere as well as the issue of equality of race and gender.

Tough individual choices are faced: will a mother risk arrest to take her children to a Christian church in an Islamic country, should a woman leave her husband and children in the Phillipines to work and send money back home, can forgiveness come to those in prison, can we care for those around us in need?

Flowing through the writings is a undercurrent of hope and a declaration that the social communities of LDS worship—whether the members gather to eat Jell-O, collard greens, or camel—work miraculously, joyously well.

The stories are of common people. A Brazilian native tells of his first Sunday as a missionary, a Provo author writes about the uneasy pull of utopia, a Californian describes a wealthy community in transition, a visitor to Harlem tries to put race in perspective, men in Mesa and Seattle compare their current, suburban lives with their former congregations in Japan, Denmark, New York, and Mexico. Together, the essays form a composite of real LDS life on a global scale.

The Church is the same everywhere you go. That is what we say. To us, it means that wherever one goes in the world, stepping into an LDS church house is a welcome and familiar act, a good thing.

The Church has thirteen million members at present, the majority of whom live outside of the USA. The eleven authors of this book don’t speak for the world, but their voices offer a hint of what the world of our Church is like and how we are alike (or not) right now.

Buildings, above, in Mesa, Chicago, Pasadena, Provo.

The Volume

Mormon Artists Group presents On Sunday in two formats: a limited edition volume and a digital PDF file edition.

On Sunday – PDF edition - $5

On Sunday – Limited edition - $100

To Order The limited edition is printed and bound by hand over boards with linen tapes, silk headbands, and with an embroidered cover image in thread on natural Irish linen. The image, a hendecagram, is an 11-pointed figure that represents the eleven congregations described in the book. The volume is 9.5” x 6.25”, 166 pages, printed on Mohawk Superfine paper with Fabriano Tiziano endpapers. The digital edition is a PDF file of the complete volume, sent as an email attachment. It is an experiment to determine whether Mormon Artists Group can distribute volumes with extreme speed and cost-efficiency to the reader with payments via PayPal, cash or check. On Sunday – PDF edition - $5 On Sunday – Limited edition - $100 To purchase, reply to this email, and we'll assist you. Mormon Artists Group 457 West 57th Street #601 New York, New York 10019 USA PayPal account: mgknelson Telephone: 212-586-7826 E-mail: mgknelson@aol.com www.mormonartistsgroup.com

stellet licht

Last night in Boise we saw this strange and beautiful movie directed by Carlos Reygadas.  It's set in a Mennonite community in Chihuahua, and has a slow, minimalist feel that reminds me of 80's art cinema.  Christian especially loved the sound in the movie, which substituted for music.  I loved the silence. And the big Van Gogh painting shots.  See it, and let me know what you think of the ending.

unceasing

The family lore puts Christian, at age four, lying under the luscious 1920's nine foot Steinway in Kingston, Ontario while his mother practiced the Bach Partita in C minor; at age seven he decided to become a composer.  As far as I know, he never wavered from that decision, and almost every moment of his life has been devoted to this calling.

Last night at the Madsen recital hall, I saw Christian at what his mother called his apogee.  Two premieres were made, an organ piece performed by Neil Thornock and a piano sonata played by Scott Holden.  And then a set of prepared viola improvisations performed by Christian.

The organ piece was funky and mysterious.  I love organ, Christian's writing for organ, and Neil's playing.  The piano piece was gorgeous, and Scott is so complete as an artist, so expressive, but balanced by a deep intellectualism, and so virtuosic and yet soulful.  

Christian's viola set was mesmerizing.  Grandpa Woody called it a magic show, and he was right.  The exploration of sound was expansive and compelling, suspenseful even.  I loved every minute.

And how does this happen?  Just to dispel the myth of the crazy, romantic, composer, it happens when a person works unceasingly for most of his life.  There were years when Christian arose at four a.m. every day to practice and compose, works an eight-hour day job to support the family and then stayed up late in the night to continue working.  He loves his work and spends every spare minute on it, but even still he manages to be there most nights to eat dinner with us and put the kids to bed.  And then work until two in the morning again.  I've watched him sit at a desk for eighteen hours a day for months finishing a symphony.  

In his student days, he was legendary for keeping a bag of potatoes in his locker that he could nuke and eat while walking across campus so as not to spend any money or time on anything that would take away from his focus. 

Christian's unceasing devotion, his unflagging faith in his calling, and his passion for his work, all astound me.  He is an amazing man and an amazing composer, and you all should get out to hear his music someday soon.

A to Z

Eva, this one's for you. Mark wrote down all of these quotes when he saw the Andrea Zittel show in Vancouver a few years ago, I think. Hey, maybe we could check out her studio while I'm in town?

Which one is y'all's favorite, and why? Or do you disagree with any of them and why?

Andrea Zittel: These things I know for sure:

1. It is a human trait to want to organize things into
categories. Inventing categories creates an illusion that there is an
overriding rationale in the way that the world works.

2. Surfaces that are "easy to clean" also show dirt
more. In reality a surface that camouflages dirt is much more practical
than one that is easy to clean.

3. Maintenance takes time and energy that can sometimes
impede other forms of progress such as learning about new things.

4. All materials ultimately deteriorate and show signs
of wear. It is therefore important to create designs that will look
better after years of distress.

5. A perfected filing system can sometimes decrease
efficiency. For instance, when letters and bills are filed away too
quickly, it is easy to forget to respond to them.

6. Many "progressive" designs actually hark back towards
a lost idea of nature or a more "original form."

7. Ambiguity in visual design ultimately leads to a
greater variety of functions than designs that are functionally fixed.

8. No matter how many options there are, it is human
nature to always narrow things down to two polar, yet inextricably
linked choices.

9. The creation of rules is more creative than the
destruction of them. Creation demands a higher level of reasoning and
draws connections between cause and effect. The best rules are never
stable or permanent,
but evolve naturally according to context or need.

10. What makes us feel liberated is not total freedom,
but rather living in a set of limitations that we have
created and prescribed for ourselves.

11. Things that we think are liberating can ultimately
become restrictive, and things that we initially think are
controlling can sometimes give us a sense of comfort and
security.

12. Ideas seem to gestate best in a void-when that void
is filled, it is more difficult to access them. In our
consumption-driven society, almost all voids are filled,
blocking moments of greater clarity and creativity.

Things that block voids are called "avoids."

13. Sometimes if you can't change a situation, you just
have to change the way that you think about the
situation.

14. People are most happy when they are moving forwards
towards something not quite yet attained. (I also wonder if this extends
as well to the sensation of physical motion in space. I believe that I
am happier
when I am in a plane or car because I am moving towards
an identifiable and attainable goal.)

-Andrea Zittel (as of Spring 2005)