Merciful Cthulhu, conservatives, that’s not how art works. Here, let Wallace Stevens explain it to you:
I
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
It does not freaking matter if Bartholdi used his brother instead of his mother as the model for the statue.
Let me repeat that for the hard of thinking: It does not freaking matter if Bartholdi used his brother instead of his mother as the model for the statue.
He did his sketches, and he MADE THE THING THAT IS NOT. Those of us who are sane, who know that art is newness, and that it is not in service to your ideology, know that it does not freaking matter if Bartholdi used his brother instead of his mother as the model for the statue.
How art works has nothing to do with your fear of other people’s dangly bits.
No, I haven’t written any more on Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, and no, I haven’t done any more work on the book proposal. But I did establish a new front in my battle for world domination.
As I posted the other day, I bought the domain name for Lichtenbergianism.com and started a trial website at Squarespace. Within 24 hours I had ponied up for a business website; within 48 I had a new email address and a MailChimp account. Soon I shall have a new Twitter account.
(The MailChimp account means you can sign up to have a digest email of the week’s blog posts sent to you every Saturday, i.e., you can procrastinate about learning how to make procrastination work for you!)
Now if I only had actual content for the website. Hey, I’m working on it—every day is a glorious flood of SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION as I figure out what it is I have to offer and how to put that before the public.
Why have I done this thing? Because if I am seeking world domination, I have to have a platform. Yes, I already have this platform, but I want to keep my private thoughts on a separate plane from my benevolent despot thoughts.
Here is the problem, though: WHAT THE HECK AM I SUPPOSED TO PUT ON THIS NEW PLATFORM? Talk about an ABORTIVE ATTEMPT. Just jump in there, man, and don’t count the cost.
As has been often noted, it’s not the jump that kills you, it’s the SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION.
So let’s think this thing through.
If Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy were ever published, of course we would want to tie it in to Lichtenbergianism.com as a marketing ploy.
The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published [EGGYBP] encourages you to have an online presence before your book is published.
I can begin to promote the idea of the book and any auxiliary services such as speaking engagements, workshops, etc., as part of the book proposal.
Especially if I were able to begin doing workshops and such even without the book being published, Lichtenbergianism.com would be the appropriate base.
With the new domain, I can keep emails about Lichtenbergianism separate from my other personas, e.g., my personal life, my burner life, etc.
This would also give me a separate Twitter account with which to begin seeking my minions for world domination.
Filling the new domain with… what, exactly?… would force me to concentrate on exactly what: blogposts, linked articles, tweets, etc.
Arrrgh!
You should tell me what to put on the new site in comments. We’ll call it focus group testing.
In other news, I have done some serious work on getting the book proposal done. Next up: get serious about finding an agent/publisher.
Now someday it may happen that a victim must found you will find yourself hosting a little soirée for a friend’s book launch, and you will think to yourself how nice it would be to have those little plastic plates with the event printed on them. But you don’t have them, because a) they’re expensive; b) you only need a couple dozen, not 500; and c) you waited too late to even try to get them.
So you make your own:
Here’s how.
Open your favorite program to make posters/brochures/labels/bookmarks. I use Apple’s Pages because it has everything I need.
Create a rectangle the size of your label (clear mailing labels are what we’re looking at here.) I got 2″x4″ labels. To make it easier to select the rectangles later, make sure that the rectangle is filled with white. (If you leave it just blank, then you have to click exactly on the border to select the rectangle, and that’s going to be very tedious indeed.)
Now fill it with your text blocks and images and whatever.
One reason I like Pages is that when you’re in “canvas” mode, little blue lines pop up to show you when objects are aligned/centered/etc.
Pro tip: once you get your one label made to your satisfaction, select everything and GROUP THEM so that nothing slides out of place.
Here’s the critical step: flip that sucker horizontally:
Think about it: you’re going to be peeling these off and putting them on the bottom of the clear plastic plate. You’re going to be seeing the label from the other side.
Now:
Duplicate your label across.
Align the labels.
Group them.
Duplicate that row and position the new row.
Measure your label sheet and position everything to land on the labels. My labels were edge-to-edge, but if there are spaces between yours you will have to ungroup the row of labels to position each one.
Print on a piece of paper, then hold it up to the light behind a label sheet to see if you got the positioning right.
Adjust if necessary.
Once you get all the labels where they need to be, here’s the tedious part:
UNGROUP everything down to the level where you can select each rectangle and turn off the border line. In Pages, it’s called the stroke of the object. Your mileage may vary. You’re doing this because you don’t need or want the lines, just the contents of the rectangle.
I wouldn’t delete the rectangles themselves, because one day you’re going to want to do this again and will need those borders. If you’re clever, you can LOCK the position of each rectangle so that they won’t slide around by accident and all you have to do is duplicate the contents.
Print the labels.
Apply them to the bottom of your plates.
Have your soirée.
your host, the author, some rando
And don’t forget to make your bar as hipster as you can:
And bookmarks. Don’t forget the bookmarks:
Swanky!
(The book, by the way, is Another Farewell to the Theatre, by Marc Honea, pictured above. It is published by The Lichtenbergian Press and was designed by me.)
You might have been expecting further posts about Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, and you would be justified in thinking that surely I had either a) written more on the book itself; and/or b) whined my way further into The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published [EGGYBP].
However, I had a deadline, which I have met by ignoring all those other creative bits.
Miss Ella is a performer extraordinaire who hails from New Orleans.1 She was a chanteuse at her own nightclub, the Kingfisher Club, and was forced to flee back in 2005 during that “unfortunate storm,” as she refers to it. She managed to save her neon sign and her piano player and headed out into the world to share her gifts.
She herself was saved only through a miracle, and during the storm and ensuing events she found that she had been gifted with extraordinary shamanic powers, you guys, powers that she is now committed to using to the betterment of mankind. Plus the singing.
I cannot tell you how honored I was when she asked me to write an opening number for her act, one that would serve as an introduction and explanation for her beautiful, empowering story. I wrote one version for her, but she gently spurred me to try again2 and I’m glad she did, because this time I got it right.
When she told me last Friday that she had a show coming up and expressed a desire that the new version be in her hands STAT, I set to work. One never wants to disappoint Miss Ella.
Here then is “The Ballad of Miss Ella,” subtitled “The Spirit Is Coming in Me”: score [pdf] |
—————
1 Actually she’s from Pascagoula, MS, but she does not often refer to those early days.
2 I believe her exact words were, “Here’s a YouTube. I really like it, don’t you?“
I am not procrastinating. I’ve traveling. And despite my best intentions to get something done, that doesn’t really happen on the road, does it?
I mean, if I were on a book tour for Lichtenbergianism and all alone in my hotel room at nights, then sure, I could be working on my next book or the new opera, but this is a family visit so my attention is otherwise engaged and rightfully so.
That’s all. Just wanted to make sure that everyone understood that I was not getting anything done by procrastinating; I’m just not doing anything.
In an admirable display of both TASK AVOIDANCE and ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS,[1] I have not worked on Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy today. Instead, I have forced myself to crank out about two minutes of abortive musical ideas for a new piece that’s been on my mind for a year and a half now.
What I’m posting today is a textbook example of ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS: it makes no effort to be complete or even good. What you will hear is multiple “false starts,” just plopping out some images and ideas without regard to whether they are any good or not. I put “false starts” in quotes, because the whole point of ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS is that there’s nothing false about them: they are just starts, period.
Some of these bits are way wrong. But they exist. Some may find their way into the finished piece; most won’t.
Here’s what you’re listening to.
I have an idea for a programmatic orchestral (maybe concert band) suite inspired by series by one of my favorite young adult authors, who shall remain unnamed here for copyright issues obviously. There are two ideas I’m futzing with here (in a piano score): 1) a landscape of surreal majesty; 2) a theme for our hero, a 1930s radio serial style whiz kid. (If you have tumbled to the secret, keep it to yourself, thanks.)
Each abortive attempt is only a couple of measures, followed a measure of silence.
landscape ideas: just harmonies, to be fleshed out later + fragments from an earlier attempt, also landscape related
sketch for our hero theme
another hero theme
chase music motif, mostly harmonic
another hero theme
a landscape sketch
a chase fragment
one more hero theme
You will note the appalling unfinished sound of nearly all of it. But that’s how it begins. Check back when if I’ve finished the piece.
Liberal rants are fun and all, but I want to refocus my efforts here on the original purpose of this blog: whining about my creative efforts. (Don’t worry—the liberal rants will continue. How could they not, with so much to rant about?)
This series will be a combination of excerpts from the book, moanings about my progress, and meditations on the advice offered in The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, which I picked up last weekend in Athens in my old friend Janet Geddis’ marvelous bookstore, Avid Bookshop. Really and truly, if you live in the Athens area, you need to make her bookstore a regular stop on your route, because it’s lovely. (There’s also a surprise about that purchase that I didn’t discover until I got the book home and started reading it; more about that later, much later.)
For those joining us from Facebook, please feel free to leave comments here rather than over there. Your first one has to be approved, but after that it’s clear sailing.
I would start with some background, but since that’s Chapter 1, I’ll hold off. So let’s start with the Introduction.
(For the record, this is a very scary thing for me.)
Cover.
(I just spent 20 minutes futzing with this image in order to avoid publishing this post. See how it works?)
Title page.
Copyright page.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One: Introduction to Lichtenbergianism
Chapter Two: Framework
Chapter Three: 1–Task Avoidance
Chapter Four: 2–Abortive Attempts
Chapter Five: 3–Successive Approximation
Chapter Six: 4–Waste Books
Chapter Seven: 5–Ritual
Chapter Eight: 6–Steal from the Best
Chapter Nine: 7–Gestalt
Chapter Ten: 8–Audience
Chapter Eleven: 9–Abandonment
Chapter Twelve: 10–The Tenth Precept
Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dale Lyles. I am, for lack of a better word, retired.
Before that, I was an educator for 37 years. Most of that time I was a media specialist, teaching kids how to find and use information both at the high school and the elementary level. For my last two years, I was the director of the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program, a summer high school gifted program where I had worked for most of the 30 summers before that, about half of them as assistant director.
During all that time I was the artistic director of the Newnan Community Theatre Company for 20+ years. I directed, designed and built sets and costumes, and acted with more than 100 shows there.
I was a choir director for more than ten years.
I sing and I dance.
I paint and I draw.
I compose.
I write.
I design.
I program. (Yes, I can build and program a FileMaker Pro™ database to do amazing things.)
Overall, therefore, I think it’s fair to say that I am a creative kind of guy. (I also create cocktails, one of which—the Quarter Moon—ought to be in every bar in America.)
None of this is to say that I’m any good at any of the above (except for the Quarter Moon—it’s really really good, you guys) [1], but that’s not the point. The point is that I have spent my life both creating and guiding others through the creative process, and I’ve learned a few things.
A lot things, actually. I’ve learned a lot of things, and all of them point to my main idea here: you can do this too.
Who’s telling you can’t? Let me give you a piece of advice right up front. I call it the Lyles Eternal Truth About Actors, and I give this advice to any uncooperative or fearful actor: “There’s no such thing as an actor who can’t, only an actor who won’t.”
So if you want to write a symphony, who’s going to stop you? Getting it performed is another thing entirely and is outside the scope of this book, but no one can stop you from writing it.
No one can stop you from writing that novel, or forming a band, or creating a cocktail better than the Quarter Moon. [2] No one can stop you from blogging or taking photographs or painting or landscaping or whatever it is you would love to do but have been to afraid to start.
And the good news is you don’t have to do it today. Or even tomorrow. Procrastination is your friend.
By the way, it’s pronounced lish-ten-BERG-eeanism.
————— [1] The Quarter Moon Cocktail: 1.5 oz bourbon, 1 oz Tuaca, .5 oz Averna Amaro. Stir over ice, strain into old-fashioned glass over ice with orange peel garnish. (You may also do it straight up in a martini glass.) The orange peel is essential.
When last we checked in on my progress, I hadn’t actually posted about my progress in writing Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.
So here’s your first real progress report.
If we posit a length of about 30,000 words—not a very long book—then I’m more than halfway there, having scribbled about 19,000 words.
The structure of the book is as follows:
Introduction to Lichtenbergianism
Framework
Precept 1: Task Avoidance
Precept 2: Abortive Attempts
Precept 3: Successive Approximation
Precept 4: Waste Books
Precept 5: Ritual
Precept 6: Steal from the Best
Precept 7: Gestalt
Precept 8: Audience
Precept 9: Abandonment
The 10th Precept
Conclusion
Appendices
The Lyles Scale of Compositional Agony
The Arts Speech
The Invocation
SUN TRUE FIRE
Also, I have begun and have almost finished an actual book proposal to start submitting to publishers, although first I’m going to run it by a friend who’s an editor with one of them fancy New York publishing houses to prevent self-embarrassmentation.
Having said that, though, I have to say that when I started looking at what I’ve written so far in terms of submitting sample chapters, a lot of it is still misshapen and raw. Like the chapter on STEAL FROM THE BEST, what is that even about, Kenneth? I’m thinking that I’ve passed that first gush of creativity and am now starting to hack my way into the real part of writing, i.e., psychic pain. Physical pain. Will the Lyles Scale of Compositional Agony apply to writing? Stay tuned.
It’s time now to post about my Lichtenbergian goals for 2016.
As I’ve discussed before, the process of deciding what my goals will be for the coming year is a serious thing. I don’t want to overload myself, but neither do I want to be the guy who shows up at the Annual Meeting having accomplished all his goals. That would be gauche and liable for Censure.
I will have to say, though, that this year’s choices were tough, as I’ll explain below.
Lichtenbergianism
First and foremost, of course, is to finish Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, the book explaining the Lichtenbergian approach to the creative process. If we presume a word count of 25,000 words, I’ve written a little over half of them, i.e., the easy part.
Now I have to go back in and smooth things out—make sure that I’m not falling into the “ignorance of knowledge” trap, over-assuming my audience’s contextual understanding of what I’m talking about. I need to keep refining my idea of who the audience for the book is. I need to start making sure it flows and doesn’t just lurch from topic to topic.
3 Old Men
Once again, I want to expand our theme camp to include the “yelling at the hippies” area. Brief recap: it’s a 50-foot square defined by our old ropes and tent stakes, with a tall chair (like a deer stand) on one side. One of our camp sits in the chair with a megaphone and shouts instructions to any hippies who have gotten inside.
These instructions include contact improv/InterPlay/Twyla Tharp kinds of movement and play, so that we have an impromptu performance of sorts.
Recently, at Scott’s Antiques, I came across these:
Carefully labeled FOR OUTDOOR USE ONLY, they’re sturdy plastic flipcharts for scoring events, and they were only $1 each! Suddenly our arena got more interesting—we can put up three to five chairs on the sidelines where hippies can choose to sit and score the efforts of the performers. This has led to the description of the project as “ludicrous totalitarianism, with judgment—but in a good way.”
Part of the project will be to compile a list of commands that will create a neat-o experience for participants and for onlookers. That should be fun.
I also want to continue working with Flashpoint Artists Initiative, the nonprofit which runs Euphoria/Alchemy, as a small-time volunteer on various projects.
Backstreet Arts
Local artist Kim Ramey has a vision to establish a venue for an art studio for homeless/underserved populations here in Newnan. I want to become more involved in helping that to become a reality.
My personal agenda is to provide within the facility a space for writing and publishing, as exemplified by Temporary Services in Chicago. As Kim wants to provide a place for people to “do art,” I want to help people to tell their stories.
???
For lack of a better word, I’m calling this the Undefined Universe Project.
I was actually stuck on deciding what else to do for a goal, and here’s why: after years of writing music that has never been performed, I just didn’t have the spirit to attach myself to Seven Dreams or to SUN TRUE FIRE again,1 nor to start Simon’s Dad or anything else new when I know it’s not going to get performed.
I know full well that that’s part of being a modern composer, just writing your heart out and then hitting the pavement to try to sell it. And I’m going to work more on that aspect of the business, both for the music and for Lichtenbergianism. But in the meantime, I want a little validation, you know?
So my goal is to allow the Universe to send me a project which is attached to actual production. I will help it along by putting myself and my work out there (#playdalesmusic, anyone?), but I’m going to start by using my woo skills to put the Universe on notice that I’m open and receptive.
I’ll keep you posted.
—————
1 Which is not to say that I won’t be futzing around with those pieces or even something new, just to keep myself flowing.
