My Creative Journey: Vermont Our Home & othe work

The best part of my creative process can be seen in my daily journals. This year I am weighing in at 680 pages so far. I wake up each day by Blue Heron Pond and write for at least an hour to two hours, and lately, this has stretched out to as much as six hours.

As the philosopher Krishanamurti said, the flame of attention. This is my on-going daily meditation, my invitation to look at the world, to be awed by it with all of its flaws and beauty, and to pay attention to my own creative process.

I included a sample of this in the jAz mU entry below, I left it raw with its certain savage beauty intact. Though I like to make sure my writings are clean and flawless, unfortunately, I struggled with getting precise clean copy.

I feel always at the point between birth and dying. There is such clarity and beauty in the world around me. I will miss this amazing life and world, I will miss the friendships and family, I will miss the joy of waking up at Blue Heron Pond, the loves of my life, and as this moment draws closer – valuing each moment as my senses drink in the memory of this paradise called life.

I leave these words, stories, and journeys of the imagination. I hope they inspire you.

Creativity is freedom.

New works: Vermont Our Home: A Celebration - A show of music, poetry, tall tales, and a bit of history of Vermont. This is based on my last book Vermont My Home on Blue Heron Pond. Vt Our Home is the story of the incredible 5 season magic of Vermont. From all walks of life Vermonters are proud of the land and the heritage of stewardship is omnipresent.
The show opens with GAIA the beginning of the day and the creation of the land. As the "day" begins the trees, the wind, the spirits, and animals roar to life. It is a celebration of this moment of creativity, when god/gods created this jewel of a paradise, blessed it with rivers filled with life, sunrises so glorious it inspired the birds to sing, mountains that converse with the clouds and the sky, flowers ecstatically vibrant with colors, and each part of this land a sensuous and joyful creation.
I love the story not only of the land but the people of Vermont -- the dairy farmers, the farmers, the craftsmen, poets, tennis players and sports people, the hip hop kids, rappers, artists, factory workers, stay at home moms and dads, all of these folks that make up our state. Our state motto is Freedom and Unity, and it has often given me pause to think what this means. It represents the values and traditions of tolerance and respect.
Vermont is a state of first: The first state to abolish slavery, the first state for Civil Unions, and I like to think it is first among states for its care of the environment.
I have travelled to between 75 and 100 countries around the world and to most parts of the US, and time and time again I have found communities are most vibrant when people have a connection to the land and have a strong sense of belonging. In our largely rural state that is about 80% covered with forests and rivers, we all have this powerful connection to the land and its beauty. There is this sense of stewardship and pride in being a Vermonter, even for the many of us who were born outside the state we’re defined by our common love for this Green Mountain paradise.

We are having a ton of fun sketching out the ideas for Vermont Our Home and inviting other folks into the dialogue and discussion. A large project of kites and sails for the Welcome Center and public spaces "Blue Skies over the Green Mountains" is in the design stage.

Blue Skies over the Green Mountains

This is a LONG! term interest of mine and that I had created in the project called "Laundry list of wishes" at www.vermontpoet.com/gallery.` A poem or story speaks when Ï see it, when I taste it, and smell it. Even "classical" poems from the Cavalier period like to "Althea from Prison" or "To My Coy Mistress" you can feel and experience these on a visceral level. In my word/ art creations on banners and cloth/ glass/ other materials I try to add some of these dimensions of texture, motion, and light as they converse with the piece. The interaction and interplay between the pieces' environment shapes the piece. Truly, a phenomenological experience, the discourse between object and viewer.

GARBAGE:
Another project, which I designed, and haven't executed is "GARBAGE." Originally, this was designed based on the garbage dump in Shokan, NY as an interactive, multimedia performance project in the garbage dumb. Now we call these places a recycling center. Our garbage, refuse, trash, detritus, carbon dioxide, green-house gases, sewage, and chemical effluence more defines our era than our creativity. An eco-system is constantly engage in this conversation of Eros & Thanatos, creation and destruction

Opus One:
Not Opus Dei, but at Opus 40 in Saugerties New York. In l988 I had this vision of a performance at Opus 40. It was on the full moon on the summer equinox. The performance illuminated by candlelight and torches. It was a pagan/ Celtic offering and service to pay homage to the god of the moon. The vision was clear, almost hallucinatory, and saw the offering and performance in front of my eyes. I never translated the show to text or created it. Strange, I didn’t have the skills, vocabulary or experience to bring it to fruition. Now, as I’ve been creating and producing shows, the confidence increases

Sweet Pond Eco Community
I've been inspired by architecture and design for years, but have done little to bring this perspective forward in a larger way until www.sweetpondecocommunity.com. This is our 9 unit eco-development in Guilford Vermont. I had visited Michael Singer, the sculptor and designer, and was very impressed by his atelier, and how he translated his aesthetic into public projects... www.michaelsinger.com. At around that time we had seen this beautiful 100 acre property and wanted to preserve as much of the natural beauty. So the story of that journey is at the website.
This creative work with the Sweet Pond is an extension of my deeper vision as an artist, not confined by one medium or another, one convention, or style. The artists/creators who always inspired me with this boldness are Dali, Picasso, Da Vinci, Edison, Singer, and others who were/ are amazingly bold and refuse to be hemmed in by an ideology or convention. The world was their palette and the freshest colors drawn from the well of their imagination. Artists/ poets need to be actively involved in creating the world. Though Plato banned poets from the Republic they serve a vital role. I was distressed recently as I saw a project locally designed by a Civil Engineer, it had all the vivacity of a block of concrete. The fusion of form and function is the ideal design.

In this age of fragmentation we desperately need artists, poets, & creators. We rely on politicians, multinationals, military corporations, and oil companies to define our future. Though I am not sure that poet’s are the unacknowledged legislators, but poet’s need to take up the mantle, not only for their own personal aesthetic, but an aesthetic that embraces the social context they live in.

I am growing into a broader definition of who I am as a creative person and this is sometimes disorienting. We all like the certainty of our craft, but art is breaking down the certainty and expectation.

jAz Mu:

Installation Projects and Multimedia:

The jazz Mu installation project is called: jAz in a minor key of love. This is a 3 x 4 meter jagged board, fragments of glass, torn fabric with the jAz in a minor key of love.

On one side is the narrative and on the other are fragments on paper and parchment of the story. I was probably inspired by Dali’s work at the Montmarte Museum with his shot gun explosions of paintings.

It poses the question? What is story? What is narrative? How much depends on the reader? How does sound and texture influence our perception of story? What is a poem? Does it always need to be linear to “make sense”?

jAz Mu Journey:

This is a wonderful exploration and journey. This can be viewed at www.thejazzpoet.com and the www.thejazzpoet.blogspot.com. I had performed this in NYC not too long ago and in various venues. It is the direction of word, sound, art fusion.

It is jazz improvisation in the key of Ku, afflatus in the minor rifting of mU ology, the dance of Eros, the 4 car collision of Kali on cosmic cocaine, bits of stellar dander from a dying super nova, and ordinary madness that poses as revelation. William Blake with a hookah smoking opium with Tennyson, the Emperor Kublai Khan, and the Mad Hatter himself. Blake as the minor cool kat of kwa, Tennyson posing as a photon in charge of the light brigade, and the Mad Hatter needing no disguise – came in his usual drag of self-revelation. Blake was lying low and thumping on the bass, fingers deftly discerning the G minor of the key of ku.

The sweets fumes of the opium pipe sauntered in like a frail wearing a rhinestone evening dress and seduced by her own voracious charms. The reflective nature of love, the pool that narcissus drowned in, the oceans of desire, the infinity of sound, and the realization that the notes Charlie Parker played in l947 at Carnegie Hall are now reaching the periphery of the galaxy.

How could love be so cold and strange?

How could desire offer so much promise and never find its way to redemption?

I didn’t mean to rift, wander or leap through the window – suddenly appearing and dancing in the world of ku. The parting of the foam and sea, waiting for Venus to appear on the crest, dance beneath the harvest moon on a June bright night, morning howls in the rapacious excitation of a new day in Kauai, and the minor keys of love itself decided to repose in a hammock made of gossamer wishes.

Inka Dinka do said the sailor by the Winken.

Binken and Nod slipped away into the evanescent stream of reverie. Too much of the madness in the world would compel any of us to tumble into that space of dream.

We are of clay and music, ash and start dust, and we dream and dream in the dream time world that defies order and sequence. The key of ku opens the immutable transformation of mU to unlock our souls. Released from our bondage what would we create? Would we create the paradise of madness? Could we bear the exquisite beauty of looking at the beloved face of god? A scarlet purple azalea as exquisite as the face of a new born child.

The world of jAz mu as tangible and tantalizing as the first spring tangerines that come to the markets of Rabat. The souq is filled with the smell of tangerines and flowers. I sit at the edge of the old city, by the graveyards and mausoleums, with a half a kilo and peel a tangerine, a morsel tart and mouth watering, the high tides come in, the ocean is less than a 100 meters from where I’m sitting, and a skiff with three cats comes up the estuary. One with a penny whistle, the other a hand drum, and the last singing an aria

of farewell from Madam Butterfly.

Jaz mU:

It is altogether too easy to slip into the stream and river of mU.

Transition:
Poetry is la lingua de mi madre, my first language, it is how I process and see the world. Poetry is my lens of clarity, reflection, meditation, and articulation. For a number of years I meditated and sat in Zazen, but I realized my language was poetry, and when I sit by the window at Blue Heron Pond my mind is clear, attention is riveted, and my senses are alive as I engaged.
But my creative energies are expanding. My confidence is growing. My experience always a ragged vestment of a good long and well lived life

This is a bit of my ragged story, unedited, as I am on the way to the airport, but I wanted to leave you a bit of my journey. Please download the music, the poems, stories, pass them on.

A blissful day to you.