Contemplating the Snow

On the value of this present moment

Happy Friday

There was a moment before I hit “publish” on last week’s issue that I thought, “Nobody’s going to care about me quitting Twitter.” I should know by now that when I have that feeling way more people are going to respond than usual. Thank you SO MUCH to everybody who reached out over the past week to share your stories. There are a lot of us thinking about this right now.

I would say that I didn’t miss Twitter for a moment but that would be a lie. I REALLY missed it Wednesday night when I was waiting to hear about the SAG deal. More on that later, but other than a little FOMO that night it’s been great.

For the past two weeks I’ve been overloading my system with new experiences and inspiration in order to speed up my digital detox and rewire my creative brain.

I saw five movies at the theater, including the new MISSION IMPOSSIBLE (stunning). Thanks to the new strike schedule we get done just in time to catch afternoon matinees, which are a) cheap, and b) a great way to cool off on a hot summer afternoon.

I binged the second season of THE BEAR, which continues to be one of my favorite works about, as Stephen Sondheim put it, “The art of making art.” No spoilers, but this season there’s a great early episode that follows Marcus as he stages (interns) for a restaurant in Copenhagen.

It’s a wonderful depiction of something I’ve talked about in a number of issues, about how an experience like that can trigger a breakthrough for an artist. He’s spent an intense amount of time honing his skills, putting in thousands of hours of repetition and experimentation. Now he’s in a foreign country, living in solitude, and having his system flooded with new sights, sounds, and flavors. Like Joni Mitchell before Blue, or Quentin Tarantino living in Amsterdam while writing PULP FICTION.

(The other thing this season has done is make me fully appreciate the genius of the dream sequence that opened the pilot episode.)

Last weekend I took a day trip to Sequoia National Forest with Ellie and walked the Trail of 100 Giants. I’ve become something of an evangelist for them. They’re the biggest trees on Earth, they live to be thousands of years old, and the only place they grow is in the tiniest sliver of the planet just a few hours drive from LA. I find myself craving them every six months now. Standing at the bottom and looking up, putting my hands on that bark, it’s a soul stirring experience for me.  Highly recommend.

(You can see video of that trip here!)

I also went to the Huntington Library in Pasadena, one of my favorite places in town. You can see original editions of Shakespeare, letters from Lincoln and Thoreau, you can see manuscript pages from Pasadena native and sci-fi visionary Octavia Butler, and so much more.

(You can see video of that trip here!)

My favorite piece this time was Autobiography of a Garden, a series of images printed on twelve ceramic plates by artist Andrew Raftery that depict the month-to-month evolution of a garden in Providence, Rhode Island. The artist himself is the star of these images and they’re filled with wonderful little true to life details, like a bent over stop sign on his corner that someone crashed into at some point in the past.

This is the kind of thing I might have skipped over on a busier day, on my way to see some flashier exhibit of impressionists or American pop art. I’m so glad I decided to slow down this time and really take these plates in. Each one tells a story.

The January plate depicts the artist lying in bed reading seed catalogues. In his book The Creative Act, Rick Rubin describes the process of coming up with ideas as collecting seeds. I loved that metaphor. Most nights you can find me lying in bed just like Raftery on the plate, reading through seed catalogues of my own, in the form of books, articles online, watching a movie or TV show, antennae up and out for new ideas. (Many nights over the past fifteen years reading the seed catalogue meant scrolling through Twitter, the results of which bore less and less fruit over time.)

In the next few plates you see Andrew planting seeds, watering the cold frame, edging the beds,  cultivating lettuce, etc. But the December plate was my favorite. In that one he’s standing on the front walk in his winter coat.

The title is, “Contemplating the snow.”

Again, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own situation. The WGA has been on strike for eleven weeks. Nothing is growing, the ground is frozen over. But this is where the plates gave me some perspective and hope.

I don’t know when it happened but at some point over the past couple of years people started using the word “season” to describe difficult periods in their life. Standing in that tiny room, surrounded by plates on every wall, I was aware of how helpful that metaphor really is. And it works for your life, your creative process, one specific project, or making a career in the arts. A garden is a living thing, just like us. And we are in a constant state of evolution. Our seasons change over time.

I always thought the spark of creation, that moment when two disparate ideas intersect to form something new, was the beginning of a project. The “reading seed catalogues in bed” part of the cycle. But that ignores the value of standing on the sidewalk and contemplating the snow.

Thinking about the loss or the end of something that you valued, something that nurtured you, is a necessary and helpful part of the process. You can only do that when the ground is frozen and covered in snow. That’s when you assess what went right or wrong and decide what you will do differently the next time.

I’ve heard from a lot of people who aren’t feeling very creative right now. That’s totally fine, and probably necessary. It’s a time for contemplating the snow.

This morning I stood outside the gates at Disney in the blazing sun, surrounded by dozens of writers and actors, and listened to a Bluetooth speaker broadcasting Fran Drescher’s speech about why SAG is going to join us on the picket lines. They’re probably out there right now, as you’re reading this.

In that moment I felt a profound sense of gratitude that I’m part of this business at this exact moment in time. Yes, it sucks being out of work. Yes, it’s painful for a lot of people. But this is the moment, when the garden is dead and the ground is frozen over, when we get to envision and plan what it will look like come spring.

Not everybody gets to live through a season like this where their body, their voice, their vote, can affect real change. We can plant a garden full of weeds and dandelions that are easily trampled underfoot and forgotten. Or we can plant a grove of mighty sequoias that will be here long after we are gone.

A COUPLE OF ODDS AND ENDS

I’m at 32k words on the novel, well on track to hit my target deadline. One thing I did this week - I started listening to some podcasts my lead character would listen to. It’s been a fun way to “research” and get in their head, learn the lingo of their world, and soak up details that may drive story later.

AT The Huntington I bought a book of postcards based on the artwork of Edward Gorey, who was a huge inspiration for people like Neil Gaiman and Guillermo Del Toro. Click here to read a great story about how my friend Randy Blair discovered that Gorey is randomly buried in our hometown in the cemetery where all of my relatives are buried. (And where teenagers in Ironton practice their driving skills)

BEAR related - I listened to the Thomas Keller episode of How I Built This and it was surprising to me how much of him there is in this season. He says things in the podcast that were almost identical to lines of dialogue in the show, not to mention he mentored the chef who opened Alinea, which I assume was the inspiration for the restaurant where Richie stages. It was a great companion piece to watching the show.

Lastly, enjoy this video my dad unearthed of 10-year-old me popping and locking:

Until next week! Actor friends and fellow writers, I’ll see you on the line!