The Rabbit Room

Mother’s Day

I remember what it was like to want a baby. I remember how it felt to walk through the grocery store watching others dispose so recklessly of everything I ached to be. I remember mothers (or so-called mothers) snapping off ugly words to curly-haired toddlers. I remember mothers (or so-called mothers) sighing in exasperation, ignoring bundles of angel on earth, telling them to hush. I remember seeing from a distance the wonder of ten little curved fingers, dimpled knuckles, wrapped sweetly around a shopping cart handle. I remember small voices saying, "Momma, Momma," and wondering what unforgivable thing I had done to become unworthy of that name. It has been sixteen years, but I will never forget Mother's Day empty-armed, trying to smile politely, running to the church bathroom, weeping the long, hard, labor of grief behind a locked door. Because of this, I define motherhood a little differently than most. I define motherhood as the womb of creativity and breasts of recreativity made full. Motherhood is an idea fluttering and kicking, compassion fluttering and kicking, music birthed, books nursed, social healing held upright on wobble knees until it walks, wounds of the heart and body dressed and bandaged. Motherhood is entrance into dark rooms where fright cries out from sleep, and motherhood is chasing away the monsters. Motherhood is the renaming of the rejected, it is the embrace of the lonely, it is a Saturday picnic packed for the hungry, it is the rocking of the forgotten in the lap of an old, sweet song. Motherhood is the soft, feminine hand of love on the cheek of the world's need. For children are born and tended in a million different sorts of ways. The earth cries out, and here you are to answer. You are maternity, and you are beautiful.

Son of a Gun: A Musical

Just a few posts below this one, you'll find Waterdeep (Don and Lori Chaffer) covering Paul Simon. And that's not all they've been up to. In the last couple of years, Don and Lori have been collaborating with Chris Cragin and Steve Day of the New York City theater company Firebone Theatre to develop a musical called Son of a Gun. They hope to premiere the first fully-stage production in New York City later this year and are trying to raise the money to do so on IndieGoGo. Here's the hilariously awesome synopsis: Son of a Gun is a quirky, darkly comic, folk/rock musical that tells the story of Danderhauler Agamemnon Khrusty, the eldest of three sons of Winston and Elmadora Khrusty, and the heir apparent to the throne of the Khrusty family Appalachian band. Danderhauler’s life is dominated by the charismatic personality of his father, a highly- functioning, highly-entertaining alcoholic. When Danderhauler meets the love of his life, Lucy Sunshine, they conspire to free him of the burden of his father’s addiction, but the surprising news of Winston’s tongue cancer thwarts their plans. In exchange for Winston agreeing to have his tongue surgically removed, Danderhauler steps up as the new band leader. As the events that follow spiral out of control, Danderhauler clings to his love for Lucy to keep him upright. When even that window of hope is shattered, Danderhauler realizes that to save his own life another sort of surgical removal is required. He must find a way to confront both his dead father and his own demons. He does both by means of an old fashioned cowboy duel. If you can help support the project, here's the link.

The Sacrament of Creation

My dad gave me the gift of woodcraft when I was a child. I grew up watching him, and later helping him, make furniture in the garage, and a lot of what he made is still in good use. I expect I'll inherit some of it one day, and it'll go on being of good use in my own home. The craft he gave me has served me well for my entire life. I built a violin when I was writing The Fiddler's Gun, and though it's far from a masterpiece, I'm still proud of it. Every time someone picks it up and plays it, I get a little tear in the corner of my eye. I built two cedar canoes a few years ago and that experience was something very akin to a love affair. It's hard to spend months caressing the curve of a handmade boat without coming to feel a strange affection for it--an affection that's doubled when it's set afloat for the first time. I read a quote once that went something like this: "Happiness is crossing a still water in a vessel of your own making, and landing upon an undiscovered isle." If you've ever built something and seen it put to good use, you'll understand how true that statement is. A few days ago, Dave Bruno shared the following short film from the Christianity Today website. It's about a furniture maker named Harrison Higgins, and I wonder if he might tell us that "Happiness is sitting down in a chair of your own making to eat a well-prepared dinner." The act of creation, the craftsman says, can be either a sacrament or a sacrilege, depending on how we approach our work. The film is only about 5 minutes long, but it's something like a love letter to the art of woodcraft--a subject near and dear to me. Watch it here: Furniture Fit for the Kingdom. And then read this excellent article about it: Artificial Grace: Why the Creation Needs Human Creativity. Special thanks to Dave Bruno for bringing this to our attention on the Facebook Hutchmoot page.

The Shape of the Stories We Tell

[Note: This has been adapted from the Hutchmoot 2011 session of the same name. Click here for a portion of Travis Prinzi's contribution to that same session.] What does the shape of a story look like? A lot of people might say it looks like a Bell curve: setup, rising conflict, and resolution. That’s the typical answer, and there’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, there’s a lot that’s exactly right about it, and there are a thousand and one books on the subject to prove it. But I don’t think that’s the whole picture. The reason for the question is that we want a way to predict whether a story is going to work. We want a pattern for our creation. We want rules to write by. So what makes a story work? Every critic’s got a theory, me included—or you wouldn’t be reading this.

Leonard The Lonely Astronaut Blasts Off

From the beginning of time the night sky has fueled our dreams of traversing the stars, pioneering the final frontier. Deep calls unto deep as we lie on our backs looking into the vast ocean of space above us and feel the vast ocean of space inside us rise and swell. Like a transmission from the furthest reaches of the universe, or perhaps from somewhere further still within our hearts, the questions find us: “Who am I? Who is God? What does it mean to be human? Why am I lonely?” On a clear night we can see beyond the edges of our galaxy, and we are at once belittled and enlarged. Is our longing to touch the stars a wonder-filled embrace of the great mystery of existence? Or is it perhaps a kind of escapism, a desire to break free of the bonds of gravity and the Fall and the falling that goes along with it. Is it part of our romantic hope that the grass may be greener somewhere over the rainbow, beyond Alpha Centauri? Whatever it is, the night sky excites our imagination, confronts us with our humanity, and stirs within us the big questions.

Everything Broken and Everything Beautiful

Since late August I've been co-writing songs with Rebecca Reynolds (aka "Becca" here on the RR). As a songwriter, never prolific, and often completely mired in a swamp of doubt when writing, I have read many books on art and creativity; Art & Fear by Bayles & Orland, The War of Art by Pressfield, On Writer's Block by Nelson, On Writing by King, Walking on Water by L'Engle, The Music Lesson by Wooten, along with books like The Success Principles by Canfield, and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey. In talking with Rebecca I quickly became interested in her research on creativity and how it operates, due to my personal search and frequent sense of lack in certain areas.

National Poetry Month

I spent the better part of last year trying to write a poem a day as a writing exercise. When I began, the first thing I told myself was that it was okay to be bad. I knew there would be days when the best I could muster would be tripe unfit even for a Hallmark convention. And I was 100% correct as lines like the following will surely attest:

"Life’s short in the mouth Of my dinosaur love

But fail early and fail often, I say. Get the dinosaur love out of the way so something better can find its way onto the page. I'm not a great poet, nor will I ever be, but I did manage to wring out about 150 poems last year, and out of those I hope there will be a few gems worth going back to over the years to hone and polish. In early June, though, after writing the first hundred poems, something happened that I didn't expect.

On Background Music

The "Plays" category of my iTunes and Spotify lists fails to adequately represent my musical tastes. While I would claim Radiohead (circa '97-07) as my there's-a-gun-to-your-head-so-pick-one-now musical favorite, it's not even a fair fight between the most-played artist among my list of albums. That title belongs to Ólafur Arnalds.

Sometimes I might listen to Arvo Pärt. Other times, Sigur Rós hits the spot. Mostly, however, Arnalds fits the bill. Any time I write, which these days is most of the time, Arnalds is the background music of choice, the lingering arrangements perfectly framing thoughts and phrases as they come or soothing me when they fail to arrive. For those who are unaware, Arnalds is a mid-20s Icelandic composer and I wanted to pass this along to you as a gift from my background to yours. I've a near-borderline obsession with anything Scandinavian/Icelandic when it comes music, but I believe anyone will appreciate the mood created by the simple recordings of Living Room Songs. All of the tracks are free downloads offering snapshots of the quick takes he put together in his tiny Icelandic apartment. But this is not just a post about free music. Instead, since this is a community made up of so many artists and appreciators, I'm assuming that we all have our favorite background music. To that end, I'd love to hear your favorites. For such a prominent aspect of our creative lives, it's something rarely discussed. Do you have a favorite way to fill the silence or do you prefer to avoid any unnecessary noise? "Þú ert sólin" by Ólafur Arnalds from ...and they have escaped the weight of darkness [audio:http://www.rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/thu-ert-solin.mp3|titles=thu-ert-solin]

Truth in the Guise of Illusion

[I'm reposting this after seeing Studio Tenn's production of The Miracle Worker last week. It's incredible. Go see it.]

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket. I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

–From The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

I sat in the theater, huddled around the stage with a hundred strangers, and watched as the narrator sauntered out of the darkness and smirked at us. Those words, the first of his opening soliloquy, made me nod and smile and whisper to myself, “I’m going to enjoy this.” I’m not sure what it is that keeps me from the theater. Every time I go, I’m glad I did. But it seems I usually hear about productions after they’ve come and gone. There’s no marquee next to the mall to remind me of what I’m missing, and there’s no stage version of a Fandango app to feed me show times and reviews. So, too often, plays by local theater companies slip by under my radar until I hear about them from someone else long after the curtain has fallen.

On Possessing Beauty

On the second-to-the-last day of September, in the year of our Lord 2011, I came into possession of a hill in the English countryside. I marked the event that evening with all due solemnity and appropriate honors. My husband and I had ostensibly walked out in the late afternoon to watch the sunset from a neighboring slope, but with a few quick modifications, and all the young joy of a first-time hill-owner, I adapted it into a celebration. I cut a few swinging strands of ivy that hung over the rutted path we took from our cottage, and as soon as we had spread our blanket on the grassy prospect, I sat down and began weaving them into a coronet. Philip grinned a little ruefully as I studded it with tiny thistles—the bane of any pasture-keeper’s existence; the amethysts and jasper of the woodland lapidary. But when I opened our tea caddy and produced, not the expected and well-traveled thermos and tin cups, but a bottle of champagne, his smile registered genuine surprise. “This is a momentous occasion,” I said gravely, attempting to loosen the cork and then passing it to him in a sudden fear of flying consequences. “It’s not every day you come into property.”