Hint: the voices quiet — and you slow down
This piece also appears on Medium
…even more important than the painting we make is what happens to us when we make it. — Jerry Fresia, “The Real Reason We Paint”
Past truths can be nudged out of hiding unexpectedly.
I recently read a piece, “Painting More Details Can Kill It,” by artist Marsha Hamby Savage, and left this comment:
Delightful and informative, I read this piece as a writer — and it all applies. Thanks.
This starts a conversation. I mention in passing that I “once painted pottery” and that it changed me. She wants to hear more. And suddenly I think back to a chapter in my writing life that I hadn’t pondered in years. I take a second look at the “me” who emerged.
Marsha, this is for you.
A Necessary Departure from Writing
In the spring of 1998, I finally turn in the manuscript for Watch Me Fly, the autobiography of civil rights activist Myrlie Evers Williams. I am — please pardon the oxymoron — Myrlie’s “named ghost-writer.”
Translation: I outlined and wrote the book. My name appears on the cover, in smaller-sized type, as a “with.” We shared the advance.
Over the course of two years, we meet at her home base in Bend, Oregon, and at mine in Northampton, Massachusetts. We travel together to see her old stomping grounds in deep-South territory near Jacksonville, Mississippi, including the all-Black town of Mound Bayou.
Myrlie calls me her “shrink” — sometimes gratefully; more often, annoyed. I constantly ask questions and, worse, I try to excavate thoughts and feelings she doesn’t like to unearth.
It is an emotionally, intellectually, and physically draining project for both of us. Adding an extra layer of complication, the editor doesn’t just want Myrlie’s “story.” He wants “us” to write a how-to-be-like-me memoir.
Myrlie wants to tell her story her way. She isn’t interested in crafting “lessons” or, worse, pigeonholing her experiences to fit some psychological paradigm.
“Do you think it was rage turned inward?” I once suggest when she confides she battled depression in the wake of her husband Medgar Evers’ murder in 1963.
“Or…” says Myrlie, pausing for dramatic effect — a life in the spotlight does that to a person.
“Or, Me-lin-da…” she continues, slowly and deliberately articulating each syllable of my name. Her diction, by design, is clipped, clear, and carefully enunciated.
“…. or… maybe I saw my husband gunned down before my very eyes with our three young children standing next to me.”
Point noted. No way a white, privileged New Yorker can walk in those shoes.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret a moment of our sometimes rocky collaboration. Myrlie is a treasure of living history, a character larger than life — a true one-of-a-kind, the first woman elected to chair the N.A.A.C.P. She is also a good woman, incredibly brave, and amazingly resilient.
But by the time I hand in the manuscript, I need a break — something to rejuvenate my brain.
Discovering Claytopia
While writing Myrlie’s memoir, I stumbled on Claytopia, a paint-your-own-pottery store in downtown Northampton. Kids and adults sat around tables, applying color with brushes and sponges. It looked like fun. Can’t be too hard.
I make a mental note to return… once I have time.
When I finally hand in the manuscript, Claytopia becomes a second home. The world fades away as I sit there day after day, week after week. I even take the place over for my 55th birthday party and order pizza for my guests.
I am still at it nine months later when Myrlie again comes to Northampton — this time on tour, giving a talk about the book. I present her with a hand-painted ceramic airplane emblazoned with the words “Watch Me Fly.” It looks like the work of a sixth-grader, but I’m proud and she seems pleased.
Naturally, I write about Claytopia, calling myself “The Accidental Artist,” in a piece that appears in the January 21, 1999 edition of The Valley Advocate. The editor is eager to take it — it’s about a local business, a hometown writer, and a burgeoning national trend. He assigns it this subtitle:
A writer finds escape — and obsession — in a new medium.
How Painting Changed Me
When I look back on my “Claytopia period,” as I now think of it, I remember how profoundly it changed me — only for a time but definitely for the better:
I enjoyed being a novice. Blank page or untouched bisque — both are tabula rasae. But my ego isn’t as involved when I paint. I’m not “a painter.” Not a professional. I have nothing to prove, no track record to live up to. I loved it because I just allowed myself to be.
Working in a new medium got me out of my comfort zone. It’s humbling to be a sixth-grader again, a beginner. It’s life-enhancing to take a risk and not know the outcome or even what’s coming next. I went in with no expectations of how “good” — or amateurish — a piece might look when it was finished. And that was just fine. I would learn from experience. Next time, I could try something different — or perhaps try harder.
Painting slowed me down. I was patient with the process: designing and then applying colors to a white, raw “bisque,” never sure what it would look like after the store owner “fired” it. Voila! a few days later, a shiny artifact to show for my time: a salt-and-pepper set, a platter, a butter dish, a bowl. Ultimately, a set of dishes. I allowed the process to unfold in a more organic and gentler way than when I sit at a keyboard.
I became a more visual person. I traffic in words, not images. I don’t notice how a shaft of sunlight hits a building at a particular angle — unless my photographer friend brings it to my attention. I’m convinced that’s because I was blind as a bat throughout childhood and wasn’t given glasses until fourth grade (age 10). I stopped bothering to look. Even though I later wore contact lenses and eventually had vision-correction surgery, inside I was someone who couldn’t see. But once I started painting, shapes and shadows attracted my attention the way a good story always had.
My dreams changed. While working on a book or article, I often wake up in the morning with an idea, fully formed in words. I have a notepad on my night table to capture last night’s bounty. During my Claytopia period, I dreamed in pictures. I’d wake up seeing an image, a design, or particular colors. It was disarming; my brain was processing differently. I couldn’t wait to “get it down” — on pottery, not on paper.
I re-discovered that creativity loves calm. I never took an art class, but I’ve always loved “art” projects. I once painted a 3-color backgammon board on a piece of plywood. I sculpted an undulating blob lady out of my children’s clay, let it harden, and painted it a la Niki de Saint Phalle. I collected my “doodles” in a notebook. Anything I’ve ever created with my hands — even Play-doh with the grandchildren — quiets my brain. In contrast, writing fills it — sometimes overfills it. Pesky, sometimes unrelated, new ideas creep in, interrupting, insisting. Maybe you should write about me, it says, trying to pull my attention away.
I accepted and moved on. With my writing, I erase, scratch out, delete, ball up a piece of paper when I’m exasperated with the inadequacy of words. I think of things I’ve left out, could have said, should have researched more. I’m more accepting of what emerges when I paint. Whatever comes out feels like it was supposed to. Tomorrow is another day.
Perhaps “real” artists, the ones Marsha teaches and writes about, tend to over-working their paintings, as I might do with a written piece, but I never obsessed with my pottery pieces. When I painted, I was content to accept what “finished” looked like. I could live with what I had.
If only I could do that with everything.
Since writing is “unnatural” to me, I find that when I log in my dream journal, or add another vignette to my never finished blue haired ladies- the same way. It slows me down and fills me with the satisfaction of creating something, even if it is just for me! I particularly love this piece!
Thank you so much, for the compliment and for the sharing. This is why I write: It’s all one long, ongoing conversation.
I’d love to see a portion of your blue-haired ladies.