Dr. Keith Kelly, Music Faculty, performing at the Center for Performing Arts
My first week of consciously committing a creative act each day was spent mostly prone, recovering in my bed from hernia surgery. What a way to start the summer! Ha!!! So here are some thoughts, followed by some creative work.
C U R I O S I T Y / P E R S P E C T I V E
These two things guide my creative practice. "Why is that? What is that? How is that?" are questions that bounce around my mind all day. When I find myself centering, focusing on the act of creation, the first step for me is to (re)discover something about which I'm curious. As I start to develop why/what/how a thing/idea is, as I get sense for the "thingness" of a thing, the most obvious or most common version is the ledge I am trying to jump from. If this is why/what/how of this thing, what elements change by shifting my perspective?
In these moments of approach is where taste - vision - my attempt make the strange more visible - come to bear. It is only the through turning the prism of thought/ideas/action that something is created; only in doing is the (new?) thing made real.
W E E K O N E
Though I don't fancy myself to be a poet, especially given all of the great word-people I know, my first modality of expression was on paper. These are three selections from what I did this week while laying in bed, looking out onto an unseasonably/unreasonably pleasant Phoenix May.
From time to time
Red western edges,
Burnt corners of a tree,
Punched through with gray/blue circles.
Sounds gather closer as
The ice cream truck passes
One last time.
Five kisses, night dada.
Birds call back and forth,
A crescendo of clack-click-clack.
A tiny reminder of the seasons close.
Now green/black leaves,
shadowed. A slow lull of
Light, a sigh, a slow smile
Crust
Learning to love slowly -
to understand the way she is, how she cares,
what catches her eye, and how she breaks - is the only path available.
Her house was ruled by fire and
bits of that childhood smolder
still - in the wild, remote corners.
When the burn takes over
and a layer of char appears,
what first sticks eventually lets go.
Only after a rain
Nothing grows on the road.
It must be on the edges of certainty,
Someplace wild and dangerous.