Creativity | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Creativity

8Oct

Lost Balloon

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Of the four computers in the house, one — mine — has grown surly and recalcitrant as a teenager. One refuses to work unless the voodoo powers that be compel it. One is actually a television. And the fourth, the sluggish, crumb-sticky laptop that Natalie claims for her video games, is suddenly my best option. It has a backspace delay of several seconds (resulting in frequent retypings and gnashing of teeth), and my word processing program scares it into shock, but it’s the best I have. At least until the savings envelope quadruples in size and I can pick out a machine that doesn’t have peanut butter under the shift key.

But this isn’t really about computers. I am plenty familiar with the lifespan of technology, how it goes from chrome to rust in sixty, how new and obsolete are not mutually exclusive. I can’t really begrudge these indispensable frames of LCD and soldered brains, even while I’m mashing the manual reset and muttering bad words. They’re temporal. I get it.

The problem here is that my mind is treating our uncooperative computers as a roadblock. No, not a roadblock… more like an intruder, someone locked in my house keeping my things hostage while I watch bewildered through the windows. I’m embarrassingly helpless without my dear little organization system, my lists at fingertip access, my photos subcategorized and standing at attention. I hate having to wait when a sentence springs to mind. This, my reason mumbles wild-eyed, is why you don’t have a hope of writing. It’s right. Until I can get into some kind of happy routine, my stories will coalesce in the “Snippets” folder. Until I can confidently delegate minutes to exercise and food and fairy tales and playing author, I will continue to feel shut out of my own head. And until I have a trustworthy set-up for all my niggling technological needs, my schedule will keep wandering in a stupor.

At least, that’s how it seems right now. Inspiration formless and void, drifting like a lost balloon… My words temporarily homeless, carving out awkward niches to spend the night… October a quarter gone, still disoriented and unsustainable… It seems the question for this autumn is not how to adjust to a new way of life or how to recoup my fragmented emotions or even how to keep the kitchen floor clean (I’ve got that one covered for once), but how to stop pinning my writing aspirations on the technology that makes them possible.

Okay, so maybe this is about computers after all.

28Jan

The Death of Chipper

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

My mental dialogue lately has been about as opposite from chipper as possible. (In fact, I completely despise the word “chipper” and would love nothing better than taking a sharp, rusty eraser to it. Case in point.) I’m partially proud of myself for not letting this negativity spill over onto my blog and partially guilty for not having the balls to write through the rough times. Either way, I’ve missed you, sweet Internet.

I seem to have come down with a raging case of Incurable Motherhead that has left me flat on the freshly-scrubbed bathroom floor wondering if I will survive the month. The choices do not look good from here: 1) Live in abject squalor, forego cooking, and largely ignore my family so that I can make a foray into the world of writing… or 2) Continue to be a tolerable housewife and mommy while stifling 97% of creative impulses because free time? Doesn’t exist so much.

You mamas whose children are finally in a less-needy stage of life—Was it this hard for you? I feel terrified that if I give up on my daydreams now, I won’t be able to pick them back up once life has settled enough to allow for them. I’m likewise terrified that if I don’t find contentment now, my girls will grow up with an aloof and unhappy mother. Occupied, distant, unfulfilled, absolutely not the kind of parent my little girls deserve.

And now you all need antidepressants. Apologies.

I’m unsure where to go from here—should I redirect my lagging energy away from cleaning or blogging or venturing out of the house or occasional grooming practices?—but I assure you: it will not involve the word “chipper.”

21Oct

Warning: Do Not Scrapbook

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

I’ve caught that little internet cold that makes its rounds during the chilling downslope of seasons. I was hoping, sincerely, to catch the homey enchantment of A Week In A Life instead; everyone’s week looks so lovely in detail, and scrapbooking! What says “I am a fount of creativity and time-management” more than that? (I have a beautiful bin of scrapbooking supplies myself, but it only comes out during weeks my family agrees not to eat or wear clothes or use the floors. So, not often.) I did try starting a Week In A Life post, and it went like this:

Monday

7:30 a.m. – My alarm goes off, even though I don’t remember setting it last night. I kick husband repeatedly until he gets up to turn it off for me (thankfully for our marriage, he understands I’m not accountable for anything before 10 a.m… and sleeps with me anyway). I lie in bed thinking violent morning thoughts, ruing the day I was born, etc. until Sophie’s hungry shrieks become impossible to tune out.

8:30 a.m. – Natalie, who is coughing up bits of spleen, is sent off to the doctor who prescribes antibiotics and staying home from school. We have a solid ten minutes of fun dusting the living room before she deteriorates into boredom as I start Hour #1 of dishes for the day. “Mommy, can you pleeeeease play with me? Mommy, can you pleeeeease read with me? Mommy, isn’t it a struggle not to succumb to the guilt of wasting away my precious childhood by scrubbing windows that will just be grimy again by the weekend?” She hasn’t coughed once since getting back from the doctor’s, of course.

12:30 p.m. – Sophie, who may or may not be teething, is up from her nap and wants to be held. I, multi-tasker though I am, have limits and cannot manage to hold her whilst simultaneously mashing the potatoes, hanging the wet laundry, and washing Hour #2 of dishes before Dan gets home for lunch. Sophie stands in the middle of the room perfecting her Nazgûl scream. Natalie is frustrated with her puzzle and begins to cry. My sanity calls in a sick day.

Technically, the week started with Sunday, but that found me three seconds away from a nervous breakdown at church, complete with bloodthirsty fantasies toward Natalie’s Sunday School class bully and the very near cussing-out of the kindly old people pestering Sophie into gut-wrenching sobs. It hasn’t exactly been a scrapbook-worthy week.

No, the internet cold I got is the one that makes people forget who they want to be when they grow up and lose inspiration for everything from art to regular showering and wonder why they keep blogging anyway. I caught it right in the face, too. It’s a doozy of a mental crisis, and it usually distills down to The House. More specifically, the messes that characterize The House. Even more specifically, the hours upon vain hours I spend cleaning up the messes that characterize The House under some sort of delusion that it will stay clean. You know, at least for 24 hours.

And now you know how much of a pansy I am. Historically significant elections are going on, my nation is teetering on the brink of economic collapse, war and terrorism are flourishing in the Middle East… and I’m falling into pieces over misplaced loads of laundry and smushed carpet peas. Who knows—maybe The House is just a metaphor for some greater mental tableau I can’t adequately process. I hope I’m that deep.

In some ways, it’s exciting to be in the midst of a breakdown. It means that something is happening, that I could wake up tomorrow with an epiphany or a new superpower. On the other hand, it means I’ve written nary a word in days. It means I feel both aimless and harrowed, and my brain tissue by now is mostly held together with smushed peas. And lemme tell ya—that, combined with soap-splattered clothes and my lack of showering inspiration? Is not a lovely thing.

15Oct

Happiness = Molasses

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

This:

is my culinary art supply cabinet.

I tend to bake on the spur of the moment, and I love having a variety of ingredients always standing at attention. For instance, this morning? After waking up from a long insomniac night with a head being clenched in fists of misery, I could whip up some warm molassesey ginger crinkles for breakfast.

Everything is better with molasses.

8Oct

Squandered Therapy

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

The piano and I have a long history, a tabloid-worthy on again, off again relationship. I started lessons at five years old—I remember having to rest my hands on my teacher’s large doughy ones while she played… yeeeesh—and shortly thereafter, my mother took over. Mom was, and still is, a sought-after piano teacher. She’s great at it. But (you knew there had to be a “but,” right?), I was the one student who didn’t “click” with her methods. I learned to play quite well, but it was a lot like me potty-training Natalie: we got where we needed to get, but the journey was decidedly unpleasant.

At the first possible opportunity in high school, I swore off the piano. Years of unwilling sonatas and scales had left me bitter, hating the instrument and hating that I had the weight of my talent hanging over me for eternity. (Um, I’m ever so slightly melodramatic.) Every time I walked by a piano in college, it taunted me à la that guy who keeps popping out at Happy Gilmore to call him a jackass. “Hey there, yeah just walk to class as if you don’t see me, YOU SQUANDERER!”

But toward the end of my sophomore year, my lovely friend Q convinced me to play a song she had written for the Battle of the Bands. I didn’t entirely hate the feel of keys and petals for once. And by my junior year, I was playing multiple times a week in a little campus band. It was fun, man, and bore no resemblance to those stuffy mathematical Bach compositions I had grown up on.

Word leaked out that I was playing again—I’m told my mom cried for joy when she heard—and my husband and parents conspired to give me an electronic piano for graduation. I was stunned, in a good way. Mostly. All except for the little urge to run. That poor piano has sat untouched for months at a time since I got it; I’ve worked on a piece here or there but mostly felt guilty. There is no way I could devote those necessary daily hours to practicing, so why bother? (FYI, I often feel the same about working out. And then I squelch my guilt with a brownie.)

However, something has shifted in the last month and I’ve become a piano addict. I never realized what an effective stress reliever was gathering dust across the room. When I run into writer’s block or need a break from chores, I pull out my colorful Peanuts songbook and channel Vince Guaraldi ‘til my fingers tingle and my mind quiets down. It’s my creative outlet when others fail me.

So now I’m thinking hopelessly grown-up, motherly things about my preschooler who loves, loves music and is the [supposedly] perfect age to stick her toes into music theory. Will she hate it? Will she feel indebted to it? Will it seem like opportunity or dead weight? Will she do better starting at a formative age or when she’s old enough to make an educated decision? Will I make a crappy piano teacher? Will music suck away her life… or turn into a beautiful self-therapy? And how important is this all anyway?

10Sep

Muse Playground

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 3 Comments

I spent a sizeable chunk of today spring cleaning my studio in preparation for new writing hours next week. Dan finds it endlessly amusing (or perhaps endearing? yes, let’s go with endearing) that I claim to have a studio when all I really have is a desk tucked into the corner of our bedroom. However, I take the J.M. Barrie approach. With just a pinch of color and some imagination, I have a magical playground of muses, a bright little world brimming with good ideas and serenity.

Here it is, my corner of the universe where I intend to find magic this coming season:

And here is the view from my window where the muses gather to play:

It may be tiny, but it is sunny, whimsical, and the perfect mix of interesting and organized—exactly what a studio should be. Here’s to good things coming in small packages and to an inspiring fall!

3Aug

Prisoner’s Fancy

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 10 Comments

Do I have to go to bed, do I have to, do I have to?

And of course I do, even though undiluted summer is streaming through my window with its heavy perfume of honeysuckle and ripe peaches. The grass is still leaping upward all across our back yard. The flowers are still awake, all color and careless joy like children, and daylight is still blazing trails through our giant pecan trees. Just beyond that door, the bright and busy mechanism of life is humming Come play! Come play!

But I am prisoner in my pink-and-white bed. Stuck until morning, no hope of escape.

I lie quietly, indignant and imaginative, listening to the cicadas playing tag. There go the bumblebees too, pedaling their bikes around the neighborhood, and butterflies cheering each other down the Slip ‘N’ Slide. The chickadees, of course, are playing hide and seek, and suddenly, I am with them, perched on the rafter of an old barn.

There are no rules in Chickadee Hide & Seek. Just a lot of swooping and soaring, little feathered torpedoes zipping around cows and alighting like bobble-heads on a power line, our own trampoline of copper filaments and sky. I remember to bring my teddy bears—Fred and Katie, who are married but have not yet learned the juicy details of procreation—and we fly together, impossibly high. We hide inside chimney-tops and behind clouds, where Fred and Katie get carried away kissing (no tongue, though). My little brothers would never be able to find me in a million years; I am thrilled.

The scenery shifts, and I am Bride Barbie. Katie refuses to lend her teddy-bear husband to me for the occasion, but who needs a groom anyway? My long white gown is studded with diamond drops and teensy pink pearls. And draped with satin. And fringed with rubies. And covered with lace. And festooned with ribbons. And plated with gold. I am breathtakingly grown up, even if the only ones who see it are my woodland creature audience, come to watch me twirl and twirl until my veil is tangled in pine branches.

I live in my own stories for hours until I finally grow tired and drift to sleep somewhere in the South Pacific. But the next night, I am back. This time, my bears and I must escape a dismal orphanage, and the night after that, we take a tire swing up, up into space. My stories overlap and twist into complicated candycanes, yarn and fancy fraying together into fantastic landscapes. And night after long childhood night, I weave gossamer threads of imagination into a new home for myself, a place to retreat for those lonely times when summer is locked out of reach.

Page 4 of 5«1 2 345 »