Category: Arts & Letters

PENDLE HILL PAMPLETS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Some of the most helpful or inspiring writing I’ve encountered has come in short volumes. In poetry these are typically called chapbooks, while in prose they’re often pamphlets or booklets.

Among them, the rack of Pendle Hill pamphlets in our meeting library presents an astonishing array of Quaker wisdom. Published by subscription (currently five volumes a year) at the retreat center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, the series now numbers more than 400 titles. Admittedly, there are some duds among the jewels, but somewhere in the collection is likely to be a reasoned answer to your nagging question about Quaker faith and practice.

Some, like Margery Mears Larrabee’s Spirit-Led Eldering and Sondra L. Cronk’s Gospel Order: A Quaker Understanding of Faithful Church Community, focus on vital aspects of Friends’ community. Others, like William Taber’s The Prophetic Stream and Four Doors to Meeting for Worship, serve as guides for the experience of our hour of open worship. John Punsheon’s Alternative Christianity finds in Quaker practice itself a different expression of Christian faith than is found elsewhere (that is, he looks at the results, while I’ve been looking at foundations). Peter Bien’s The Mystery of Quaker Light parallels some of what I’ve been uncovering in the revolutionary aspects of this central metaphor of our faith. Brian Drayton’s Getting Rooted: Living in the Cross, a Path to Joy and Liberation, spring from personal practice.

The series has also included a wide range of social action issues, like Pat Schenck’s Answering the Call to Heal the World or labor lawyer Richard B. Gregg’s A Discipline for Non-Violence, as well as volumes on art and theater, prison work, nurturing children, and Quakers’ experiences in yoga and Zen.

There’s even a Quaker Pamphlets Online project to provide free downloads of classic early issues.

For now, I’d like to take a more extended look at four volumes that came in around the same time:

  • Benjamin Lloyd’s Turnaround: Growing a Twenty-First Century Religious Society of Friends is an exciting and challenging argument of extending Quaker faith to younger generations. Funky interracial ads on the sides of city buses, anyone? With his theater background, Lloyd’s right in contending we need to reach out, vigorously, and shake off unnecessary baggage. He’s right in sensing we need celebration and true community. And he’s refreshingly candid about our weaknesses.
  • John Lampen’s Answering Violence: Encounters With Perpetrators is a hard-nosed blueprint of the author’s work as a peacemaker who moved into a land of engrained conflict. The incidents he relates are difficult, dangerous, courageous, sometimes leading to tragedy, sometimes bridging opponents trapped against their own heart’s desires. Yet he also marks important turning points in the time-consuming drive to pacify Northern Ireland.
  • Framed by an enigmatic old English folksong, Richard Kelley’s Three Ravens and Two Widows ponders the modern Society of Friends through the quite different legacies of his mother, with her urbane Philadelphia outlook, and his paternal grandmother, with a Holiness-based pastoral Quakerism in Ohio. Somehow, they had to find ways to live together after the deaths of their husbands. By implication, so do we, as a diverse community of faith.
  • Brian Drayton’s James Nayler Speaking considers the brief, prolific outpouring of early Quakerism’s most important minister. More articulate, mystical, and systematic than George Fox, Nayler was at the forefront of bringing the Quaker message from the north into London and all the upheaval that followed. No one else has written more powerfully of the Light or embedded its metaphor into Quaker thought so thoroughly.

 

NO NOSTALGIA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

There are people who feel nostalgia for the ‘50s or early ‘60s. Not me – except for the high culture, which was still deemed important — I was glad to see them go. Those decades, despite all of the lofty aspirations in some circles, really were confining and laced with hypocrisy and denial.

What I lament losing most in the decade of civil rights and hippie movements that followed, though, is a side that gave a sense of hope in its spiritual, political, and social justice yearnings. But not the narcissistic or hedonistic excesses that too often accompanied the movements.

To be honest, that stretch of my history had its own pluses and minuses … and a lot of lonely heartbreak. Seeing it honestly, then, means accepting both sides and their lessons. As well as continuing the mission.

GETTING BEYOND LIKE OR DISLIKE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

One of the secrets to living a richer life comes in learning to evaluate experiences beyond a simple like or dislike – especially on first encounter. So many of the delights of living are found in acquired tastes. Returning to a challenge for new insights. The critical examination and perspective.

So it’s been with the opera, so much classical music, visual art, beer and wine, even literature I’ve come to love. To say nothing of Holy Scripture. Or the places I’ve lived. To be honest, there are often stretches in a long hike I might admit I don’t like, especially if the insects are biting and the incline’s steep, no matter how much I’m enlivened by the entire outing.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve learned to distrust what comes easily. In living with a piece of art, you may realize fatal flaws behind the initial flash, or to your continuing delight you may find the revelations expanding.

Part of the transition comes in learning to see value in ambiguity and paradox, or to find riches in the shadings of gray beyond simple black and white. It’s not an argument for self-torture or meaninglessness, but rather a willingness to suspend disbelief long enough to consider many other dimensions.

Yes, I like pizza. But, as an illustration, I never would have discovered the joys of manicotti if I’d insisted on the familiar pie that one night.

At the moment, I’m cracking open the Bartok string quartets by means of repeated listening and finding such beauty beneath their outward gruffness. Any examples you care to add the list?

A NEARLY PERFECT NOVEL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Way back in my senior year of high school, I remember a moment when our English teacher invoked the dictum that all fiction requires conflict – and my immediate contrarian reaction blurted out, “No, it doesn’t!” My objections were gut-level rather than coolly reasoned and certainly wouldn’t have held up to the novels that were capturing my attention at the time – Brave New World, 1984, and Animal Farm. Yet seeded somewhere in my aesthetic, the low-key, nonviolent approach to a story lingers. Few of us, after all, are parties to a murder, which is a key component of so much fiction. And Kurt Vonnegut’s advice to take a nice character and inflict the worst possible calamities on the poor soul still offends my spiritual proclivities, never mind so many passages in the Bible. Yes, I’ll now admit that true character can be shaped and revealed in intense confrontations and struggles. That is, conflict.

Still, my own entries to date have focused on day-to-day realities drawn from my own observations – attempts to comprehend contemporary social interactions, even if they appear to be history by the time the words finally appear in public.

~*~

In retrospect, my admiration of so much of Richard Brautigan’s output probably arises in the laid-back meandering of his hippie-era characters and their encounters. Think of Trout Fishing in America for starters.

~*~

More recently, Nicholson Baker has emerged as my favorite embodiment of the nonviolent sensibility. You could argue that nothing happens in the first 50 pages of The Incredible Story of Nory, and yet the tension is already mounting. To construct a successful novel on a father’s bottle-feeding session of an infant (Room Temperature) or a short escalator ride (The Mezzanine) is artistically courageous. Book of Matches, meanwhile, takes off on the simple premise of sitting by a fire in the predawn hours of deep winter – it could almost be blogging.

His latest volume, Traveling Sprinkler, pretty much slipped under the radar, yet impresses me as a nearly perfect example of the no-major-conflict novel. His main character, the minor-league poet and anthologist Paul Chowder, faces nothing more challenging than the question of whether his ex-girlfriend will return to him as he muddles through middle age. Yet along the way, Baker weaves in ruminations about the American health system and public education, the advantages of rhyming in song lyrics in contrast to poems, aspects of recording technology, basics of bassoon performance, collectors’ perspectives on lawn sprinklers and related outdoors gear, experiences of Quaker worship, and some travel pointers for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Billed as a sequel to The Anthologist, it stands well on its own as a rich and deeply personal tapestry. What could be better? Even without a slew of dead bodies?

DESPITE MY USUAL OBJECTIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’ve previously posted on my distaste for art that cloyingly celebrates artists as geniuses. Too often, I simply find these to be self-pandering and incestuous, even before we get into the reality that many great artists are seriously defective humans, at least in their interpersonal relationships.

But I’ve found myself swept up in two music-related video encounters that prove the exception to the rule.

The first is Amazon’s 10-episode sweep of Mozart in the Jungle, which despite my initial misgivings of the heavy sex-and-drugs emphasis, moved on into an often surreal criticism of the classical music industry as well as a fantasy of its artistic and life-enhancing possibilities. Equally impressive, its increasingly engaging characters are refreshingly cast warts and all – knocking ’em off their pedestals despite their sycophant handlers. I’m anticipating a second season.

Likewise is Dustin Hoffman’s top-flight directorial debut, the 2012 movie Quartet, set in a retirement home for musicians on a lavish British country estate that is in financial peril. Here, the real drama pivots on issues of aging and relationships sustained or damaged over the decades more than the concert hall or opera house itself. Success, as we see, often comes at a high personal cost.

What I love about both entries is the way the stories can be extended to universal experience rather than setting the musicians apart as an Olympian class. Indeed, the charismatic young conductor of Mozart, Rodrigo, moves repeated to take music to the streets and working-class neighborhoods – his people and roots – with magical turns in the idiosyncratically constructed story.

Here’s to people, then, as they are, no matter their field. And to the down-to-earth insights and discoveries we share along the way.

PRACTICE AS A PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

As I said at the time:

Along the way, the “creative process” is a phrase I’ve come to detest. “Poetic” is another, especially when applied to another art. Whatever “creative” really means or as though the resulting work always occurs in a given sequence. Perhaps “artistic problem-solving” or “artistic exploration” comes closer, except that “artistic” still carries too much excess baggage.

“Process” sounds too much like ritual for my taste. Or a formula, “If you add L to M you’ll end up with an original poem.” Which sounds too much like a dogma or a creed to recite. Like a corridor through a shopping mall. Like a secret code to be disclosed, a joke to be retold in some variation.

For universities, “creative process” can even be seen as the teaching of mistrust and technique. “Absolute skepticism is one of the powers,” Richard Foster writes in Money, Sex & Power. “Absolute skepticism is so pervasive a belief in university life today that it must be considered a spiritual power hostile to an honest search for truth. The task of a university is to pursue truth – all truth – and yet precisely the reverse is happening today.” Creation, however, requires a foundation. Affirmation – a critical embrace of what remains holy. However we want to define that.

In the periodicals, the accepted pieces are typically of a certain length and idiom – that is, they are those lacking the obvious signs of amateurism; they’re idiomatically correct. But do they say anything meaningful, especially to the general reader, much less the populace? Do they speak to others’ conditions? I sense not: at least, seldom my own. (Leading to literary journals read by exclusively by other poets or short story writers, a particularly ticklish incest.)

Meanwhile, when I look at Japanese and Chinese art, the Zen/Chan work jumps out in its freshness from the well-schooled stream of traditional art. Thus, with poetry or musical performance that knows living silence: a whole higher dimension. Necessity for revolution here: transformation. Transfiguration. Transcendence. Transparency, too. On into unending depth.

When I first set forth, I believed to be truly creative, something had to spring out of nowhere – a bolt of lightning accompanying work thoroughly unlike anything before it. Similarly, my girlfriend at the time thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a language all our own?” One unlike anything before it. Slowly, however, I realized how difficult it is to understand what’s said and written in an existing language, with all of its nuances and roots waiting to be fathomed. The fact is, creative acts happen through building on existing tradition, evolving at the edges and frontiers. The artist or scientist or inventor or entrepreneur is indebted to all who have come earlier, and is responsible as well for those who will follow.

Often see those who start out are filled with an experience/awareness they want to share but cannot because of deficiencies in technique. By the time they master technique, they’ve lost the freshness. Yet I most admire those who have acquired technique the hard way: hands-on, original, primitive, perhaps without any of the accepted shortcuts.

~*~

The term I’ve come to love, by the way, is “practice.” The way a doctor or lawyer practices. Or even a football team or a choir. It’s never really done. It’s just a way of living.

WHEN LESS IS MORE: THE STRAVINSKY EDICT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

One of the dictums I keep returning to as I consider my own practice of art is composer Igor Stravinsky’s observation that limitations make art. Me, who does not write in formal verse structures, not because they’re too limiting, but because I find they typically dilute the language and its impact. In other words, some limitations strengthen one’s imagination and thinking; others lead straight into writer’s block.

Stravinsky’s limitations, I’m certain, are quite different from the blinders I see imposed in much of the so-called Christian art we see. Dogma of any kind simply inhibits our ability to perceive what’s at hand. (Dogma’s not just Christian; anybody want to address “political correctness,” Islamic fundamentalists, or rabid atheist?)

When it comes to working as an artist – and that includes any field, including comedy – I see a division between those who focus on invention versus those seeking discovery of what’s working within or around them — or even epiphany.

We’re talking about people, after all, wherever they are in their lives. Do they bring us escape or encounter? Either route imposes limitations.

For me, the practice of an art is a way of observing and discovering. It’s a laboratory, in essence. No wonder my literary writing often falls under the label of “experimental.”

I suppose many of the self-imposed limitations arise under the heading of style or method. But they’re deeply imbedded, all the same.

WE’LL NAME IT AFTER HER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Certain select artists seem to elicit a universal reaction from the public. It’s meant as a compliment, except that it somehow short-circuits itself. For example, a certain select actress is so good at getting into the character she’s portraying – and getting so far away from the way we know she normally looks or speaks – that audience members find themselves saying, “I can’t believe that’s Meryl Streep!”

We can name others, of course. Dustin Hoffman has long earned similar kudos.

Of course, it is intended as the ultimate accolade for a theatrical professional to be so incredibly flexible and insightful, in contrast to the TV or movie star who plays only himself. Think of John Wayne, for instance, who was always John Wayne, no matter the name he was given in the latest round.

The dilemma, of course, is that Meryl and Dustin are still being viewed through two separate perspectives that keep them from being completely merged into the character. We begin viewing their impeccable technique, then, at the cost of being thoroughly enmeshed in the story that’s unfolding. In effect, we become aware of being voyeurs.

I suspect something similar can occur in any of the arts. Classical music, for instance, is too frequently measured on the technical brilliance of a soloist or ensemble at the expense of the emotional and intellectual content of the work being performed. Add your own names for visual arts, literature, pop music, dance, and so on.

For now, we’ll simply call it the Meryl Streep Syndrome.

And, oh my, how really good she is at it.

Care to name others worthy of consideration?

THE IMAGE, AFTER ALL, OF A WRITER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As I said at the time:

I suppose every writer will have had an image of what an acclaimed author would look like. Maybe the impression comes down through a tour of one of those great hushed houses of history – Longfellow or Twain or Whittier or James Whitcomb Riley come to mind. Hemingway’s Key West, as well. Or from the book jacket portraits or a magazine interview or critiques. Then there are the novels and movies themselves about literary struggle and the inevitable success. So much for the myth – and myth it is, with the superhuman vision and divine blessing accompanied by the Guide’s intervention and the visitors’ awe. And just where does each of us place ourselves in its manifestations?

My own expectations have changed greatly. When I set forth from college, I still envisioned an urban life – a stylish high-rise or a federal era townhouse or a loft in some variation of Greenwich Village – accompanied by a suitable social circle. Or life in a quaint college town, as an alternative. Within a few years, though, I was willing to swap for a rambling farmhouse in the mountains or on a lake, with my studio set out on a ridge. Shades of Kesey and Kerouac, of course. All the while, however, I was employed full-time and trying to work in serious writing in my off-hours – the evenings and weekends while my colleagues were raising children, picking up overtime (“OT”) to buy the house and car of their dreams, going off to professional ballgames and rock concerts. My frugal sabbatical year changed the vision, and publication of my first novel delivered a hardened sense of reality. Now I realized how many writers with a string of books to their credit still drew their main paycheck elsewhere. When they met for lunch, the discussion was likely centered on mortgages, medical problems, and mutual friends rather than literature. I could still hope that a breakout novel might free me from the newsroom, but there was no guarantee it would suffice. There had to be a crack in the wall, of course, someplace, if I could only find it and break through. None of this has lessened the compulsion to write; if anything, that has intensified as I turned away from the management track and, thanks to Newspaper Guild union membership, could afford to live a modest life away from the basic hours at the office. (No more sixty- and seventy-hour workweeks.)

Now I imagine it intensified in official retirement. At the moment, I do not sense another novel in the works – not with seven or eight still awaiting a publisher, in addition to the volumes of Quaker history and spirituality, the genealogies, and the poems. So there is plenty of revision to do, plus correspondence and submissions. Perhaps there will finally be time to attend conferences and workshops, to travel, to give readings. I see it continuing where I am, in Dover, where I’ve established friends and community. Maybe the loft of the barn will be finished into a year-round space, as I’ve longed dreamed, but even that’s not necessary; now that I can access it via attic stairs, it serves nicely as a three-session rustic retreat with room to spread out papers and manuscripts. Besides, as long as the children are gone, there’s a bit more room in the house.

What has changed is that successful author has become simply an active writer.

~*~

And to that let me add, Thank God for Smashwords! As well as WordPress!

 

AN ARTS AND LETTERS NIGHT IN THE MEETINGHOUSE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

In many Quaker meetings, we have little idea of what other Friends do outside of the meetinghouse. Maybe it’s simply an unfortunate consequence of contemporary life as we live and work at distances from one another and find our schedules anything but simple.

Bridging that gap remains a challenge, especially if we intend, in the words of George Fox, to “know one another in that which is eternal.”

At Dover Monthly Meeting in New Hampshire, we’ve chanced upon what has become an annual event that other members of the Fellowship of Quaker Artists might want to expand on. For four years now, we’ve had an annual Arts and Letters Night – an opportunity for individuals of all ages to share something of their creative lives with the larger faith community. For us, it’s usually come on a Friday or Saturday night in March – a time when we in snowy winter landscapes are ready to start stirring again. (Hopefully, when the worst of the winter weather is behind us.)

While Dover Meeting is large enough to have a number of serious artists of various stripes within its community, other Friends might find the idea to be something more suitable for Quarterly Meeting or a similar occasion. Like Meeting for Worship itself, each gathering has been unique.

Visual artists bring their work into the meetinghouse beforehand. Much of it goes up behind the facing bench (in the “elders’ gallery”), but other pieces have been displayed on easels or even been passed around the gathered circle. Work has ranged from painting to prints to weaving and textile crafts to photography to furniture-making and sculpture – including one child’s Sculpee creations. One year, an attender ran home to bring back examples of commercial designs she was doing for paying customers – and her work was indeed impressive.

We’ve encouraged these pieces to be kept on display through Meeting for Worship the following First-day, so that everyone may have an opportunity to view them – or even revisit them.

The “letters” part of the equation has had Friends reading publicly from their original poems, short stories, or journals – or from pieces they’ve found especially moving.

We’ve also had music – ranging from one violinist’s performance of the “Meditation” from Thais to original songs – as well as children demonstrating their Tae-Kwon-Do martial arts patterns. Lately, we’ve had videos, including one a Friend had made for Public Television showing another Friend doing sculpture – three decades earlier.

Depending on the length of the readings and performances, there may be time to go around the circle, discussing what inspires and motivates us in the work we pursue. Questions seem to arise spontaneously.

And afterward, we’ve enjoyed repairing to the “culinary arts” – a dessert potluck with tea or coffee.

So it’s one idea. An easy program. One Dover Friend has taken on the responsibility for signing others up – and I’ve the pleasure of being emcee and reading a few of my own poems at the end. We arrange it all through our Ministry and Worship Committee, though it could fit under Pastoral Care as well. (We split our Ministry and Counsel several years ago, to lighten the load.) In any event, do what you want with this proposal. As I said, it’s an easy program.

Invite the public. Invite the news media. And then have fun.

Originally published in Types & Shadows:
Journal of the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts,
No. 34 Fall 2004/Winter 2005