Category: Creativity

Creating something every day for 365 days

A column (Day 291/365)

Posted on by Dale

Spent all day rearranging the media center, moving my desk out into the main room, generally preparing for the arrival of my Promethean board in a couple of days.

Near the end of the day, I checked my Moleskine notebook and realized with horror that I had not actually written my column for the Big Ideas website over the weekend. I put many stars by it and swore to make it top of the list tonight.

So after a brief Masterworks rehearsal, I came home, put on my “contemplation” playlist in iTunes, fired up WriteRoom, and set my mind to snark mode. In an hour and a half, I had knocked out a not-too-rambling piece entitled “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?,” taking potshots at standardized testing, the privileging of logico-verbal intelligences, adult smugness about knowing “stuff,” and E. D. Hirsch.

My favorite lines? “Of course I’m smarter than a fifth grader. I outwit them every day.” And (in the riff about multiple intelligences) “I think I could beat them in kickball, but only if I didn’t actually have to run the bases.”

74 days to go.

Day in the Moonlight (Day 290/365)

Posted on by Dale

This morning I finally re-read Mike Funt’s A Day in the Moonlight and took my first steps towards turning it into a play with music. That’s not the same as a musical, and we’ll discuss that in a moment.

Mike wrote this play in his junior year of college, and it was produced his senior year as part of Valdosta State’s regular season. It’s a resetting of Rostand’s The Romancers as a Marx Brothers vehicle, and quite clever and silly it is, too. Groucho is one of the parents on one side of the wall, and Margaret Dumont is on the other side. Their children are in love with each other, and as in the original the parents have built the wall and pretended to feud in order to provoke just that. The added twist is that Groucho and Margaret are themselves a couple, hiding that fact from their children.

Harpo and Chico are the two actors that Groucho hires to adbuct the girl so that the boy can be a hero and the wall can come down, as it does right on schedule at the end of Act I. Etc., etc.

So a couple or three or four years ago Mike asked me to write some songs to insert into the action, since he had a couple of theatres waiting for the show if it were a musical. Needless to say, I haven’t gotten around to it. But now, with William Blake on hiatus for an indefinite period, I’ll be tackling this project.

It will not a be a musical. It will be a play with music, i.e., the songs are just sort of inserted into the action rather than swelling from the action itself and moving the plot along. This is partly because the original Marx Brothers movies were themselves structured like this, and partly because the action is so slight that we would have to rewrite a lot of the script in order to make it a true musical.

So step one was to re-read the entire script this morning and decide where might be good places to stop the play cold in its tracks and stick in a song.

Preliminary research indicates twelve such songs:

“Sheer Poetry,” wherein Garrison, our hero, sings one of “his” poems to Elizabeth, our heroine. It is in fact made up of snippets of famous verse: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/Let me count the ways.” That kind of thing. Bouncy 1930s leading man flirting song.

“Rationale for a Wall,” sung sequentially by both Thurgood/Groucho and Alexandra/Dumont, explaining to their respective children why they hate each other. Needless to say, the reasons are completely bogus and completely different.

“The Love Song of Thurgood [whatever whatever],” the slightly creepy/loony wooing song from Thurgood to Dumont.

“We’ll Run Away,” in which the children sing of their plan to elope and how beautiful their married life will be away from home.

“Catalog,” in which Fedallini/Chico catalogs all the ways that Pinke/Harpo can actually play a death scene. This is in response to Thurgood’s query. Think the Player’s catalog from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead set to music. Fake saltarello.

“What Could Go Wrong?,” maybe, in which Thurgood and Fedallini plan the abduction. If we can work it right, maybe the plan in each verse can end in disaster and they have to start all over.

“Tear Down That Wall!,” Act I finale.

I think the obvious opener for Act II is a song about the party, but the script specifically refers to how no one is there and how dead it is. Maybe that’s our song.

“Novelty Song I” and “Novelty Song II,” the inevitable Chico-plays-piano song. The first one is the Kitty Carlisle song, i.e., Elizabeth sings a cute song about nothing. The second one is our “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady” for Thurgood.

“Florida!,” in which Fedallini convinces Garrison, who’s leaving for adventure, to go with him to Florida for excitement. That’s the idea; what they’re actually singing about, I have no clue.

“Where Did We Go Wrong?,” for Thurgood and Alexandra. Maybe a reprise of “What Could Go Wrong?”

“P-I-N-K-E,” in which Elizabeth sings about how much fun Pinke is, who’s stayed behind as part of Fedallini’s plan to keep her from marrying in Garrison’s absence.

“Back With You,” or something like that: the lovers’ reunion song. We can throw in Thurgood & Alexandra and Fedallini & Pinke for good measure.

“Act III,” the finale, in which the cast sings of what the audience will be missing in the mythical Act III. I’m thinking falling chandeliers and helicopters, myself.

75 days to go.

Yard work (Day 289/365)

Posted on by Dale

In a quotidian reflection of Wallace Stevens’ metaphor of the garden, I spent the late afternoon reclaiming the edges of my lawn. That is, I tore away the growth of grass over pavement and literally re-edged the whole place.

If I had had more time, I would have uncovered the brick walkway. Every five years or so, I’ll get the energy to hack away at the zoysia where it has spread over the bricks and release the walkway from its imprisonment. I think we had been living in the house for five years before I even discovered it.

However, it’s a lot easier to deal with if the soil around it is moist, which at this point in the drought, it’s definitely not. I shall be on the lookout for a good downpour.

76 days to go.

Not nothing, really (Day 288/365)

Posted on by Dale

I have in fact created two margaritas, two superlative margaritas, and I have consumed them, sitting on my front porch in the glorious weather, reading the New York Times and doing the crossword puzzle. In a moment, I will fetch Children of Húrin and read it. And maybe I’ll create another margarita.

If that is not a well-made life, I’d like to know what is.

77 days to go.

Nothing (Day 287/365)

Posted on by Dale

You would think, on a day where I had nothing, and I mean nothing, in particular to do, I would accomplish something. But alas, no.

Part of it is that odd inertia that happens when you don’t have to get busy on the next project, i.e., there’s no deadline looming over you. The old metaphor of that standing time between tides, or between waves, will serve. You just wait for the next tug of the moon to get you moving again.

Of course, I do have a deadline looming over me. Last year I wrote a snarky monthly column for Grant Wiggins’ Big Ideas website, but they sort of stalled out midyear. Now they’re back, with a grand opening set for June 1, and they want a column. I sat down yesterday to start to work on it and realized I had no ideas.

I emailed my editor to see if there were a theme I could leech off of. Actually, I went to the website to see if they were announcing a theme. No, but they were inviting people to submit material for their new and improved site. They had two examples: an article by Grant Wiggins and a snarky column on standards by Dale Lyles. That was no help at all. So then I emailed my editor.

She was heading into a meeting the purpose of which was just that, so later I got a list of topics. By that time, my inertia was complete. I’ll have to tackle it tomorrow.

78 days to go.

Some design (286/365)

Posted on by Dale

Today I designed two little graphic thingies.

The first is for the t-shirt we give out to those students who managed to accumulate 100 AR™ points during the school year:

The other was a quick invitation to the Red Parrot Café, a morale booster I do in the media center: first thing Friday morning, teachers can come in for a nice, cold drink of Sunny D, complete with a splash of grenadine and a paper umbrella.

Not much, but hey, it was creative.

A new thing (Day 285/365)

Posted on by Dale

Today was a little creative in an unexpected way: I started a new blog. And no, you can’t see it.

Mike Mitchell, who teaches PE at Newnan Crossing, approached me a couple of months ago with a proposition: he and I should collaborate on a book, 100 Things to Do Before You’re 60. I had plenty of things to keep my busy and told him so, but still, it’s a good idea.

However, now that William Blake’s Inn has stopped for a moment, I figured we might tackle it. But how? At work, we might go days without seeing each other. How could we possibly keep up with the amount of work it takes to write a book?

And what should this book look like?

Yesterday, I had a scathingly brilliant idea. Mike is fairly conservative, and I, of course, am not. He’s an ex-military PE teacher; I’m an effete intellectual. Why do not do it like a dialog between us, sort of like those silly newspaper columns where two opposing writers take turn making comments? We could tackle serious issues, we could do some funny stuff, we might even agree.

So of course I decided to set up a blog for us to work on together. One of us can post a Thing to Do, and then we can both comment. Great way to get stuff out there, and we can edit later. And no, you can’t see it. It’s our private workspace for the time being.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

80 days to go.

Some thoughts (Day 284/365)

Posted on by Dale

Here’s a quote from a recent article:

“Any show, however classic,” Mr. Warchus said, “is just a document of where the creators got to in the time they had , after which the process stopped, they crossed their fingers and waited for the reviews. If the response was good, that was it. If not, the process continued. As here.”

Mr. Warchus, unfortunately, is the director of The Lord of the Rings, the musical, which flopped in Toronto for $25 million, and is now in previews in London, for another $25 million. Bless his heart.

Still, his point is valid. In my recent post about what we did and did not accomplish for the backers audition, that was my main point: we ran out of time and assistance. We didn’t finish, we just stopped.

And I know that’s the truth no matter what. It won’t be any different even with the fabulously funded world premiere version. At some point we will simply run out of time to accomplish our ideas, even if they were fundamental to the vision.

The difference between us and Mr. Warchus is that none of us are going to lose $50 million and be revealed as ludicrous visionaries to the theatre world.

81 days to go.

More cleaning (Day 283/365)

Posted on by Dale

Today was the study: sorting into piles, shelving, filing, archiving. Clearing off surfaces. Realigning possibilities.

One thing I archived was all the William Blake stuff. This is very strange, not looking at any work coming up that has to do with William Blake. On the one hand, there’s no point in doing any more thinking or creating or orchestrating until we are sure there’s a definite leader for the WBOC. (Which we are not at this point.) On the other hand, it’s a little unnerving to think that all that could start up again, perhaps immediately, perhaps later in the summer.

Still, I have other things to do. I pulled up my Day in the Moonlight folder and took a look at the very little there is in there: the script, some notes from Mike, some midi files from Mike, a couple of lyrics I’ve started. Not a lot at all.

I had decided to sit down and reread the script for Moonlight, but if I ever printed it out, I cannot find it. Add it to my list for tomorrow.

I know I need to make Moonlight next on my list. After all, Mike has theatres waiting for the musical version of the play. Still, I have that orchestral texture running through my head, and it’s pulling me toward the symphony next. Moonlight requires actual songwriting, music and lyrics, and that’s a whole different brain. What’s a busy quasi-composer to do?

Musings (Day 282/365)

Posted on by Dale

Happy birthday to me. In celebration, I only cleaned up the backyard. The bulk of the William Blake stuff, still in the basement, will have to wait until some other time.

I also read: Unspun, and part of Thinking in Circles, and now I’m delving back into Out of Our Minds. A quote from a research consultant has struck me. Speaking of the characteristics of a creative organization, David Liddle says:

“It is first and foremost a place that gives people freedom to take risks; second it is a place that allows people to discover and develop their own natural intelligence; third, it is a place where there are no ‘stupid’ questions and no ‘right’ answers; and fourth, it is a place that values irreverence, the lively, the dynamic, the surprising, the playful.”

Well, I think he just described the Lacuna workshop group. There were only six of us who were there week after week, Marc, Molly, Melissa, Laura, Carol Lee, and me, and I think we did an incredible job of creating the two pieces we staged from nothing. We all contributed, we all took off in different directions, we all built on what the others brought. We took essentially in each case a plotless poem and created a visual staging that I think intrigued and delighted our audience.

Since that was our goal, to surprise and delight our audience, we succeeded wildly. As usual, though, we succeeded beyond anything our audience could expect. It’s like the fact in biology that animals are hardwired to respond to stimuli that go beyond anything they encounter in nature, e.g., a certain butterfly will be attracted to a shade of blue that is brighter/more vivid than any potential mate he might encounter in the real world. Our audience may have been delighted, but there was actually more there to delight them than they were even aware. (Did I just get my analogies inside out?)

The kinds of things we invented, Toast Heads, Ice Sprites, dancing hedgehogs, puppet walls, snowdrifts that turn into banks of flowers, a troupe of traveling sunflowers, stained-glass tortoises pulled by an angel, are truly and totally wonderful. A more polished version of them all will only amaze an audience even further.

This richness is due entirely to the six creative minds who cobbled it all together (with thanks to the other minds who joined in from time to time: Mary Frances, Kevin, Galen.) This bodes extremely well for the workshopping of the entire show, if and when we begin that process.

As Carol Lee said at one point, “This is hard, so much harder than just buying a script and doing that.” But as she also pointed out, what an incredibly enriching experience!

83 days to go.