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WHAT IT SAYS

The Grand Design: An Artist's Prayer

a song by Kay Pere

My heart is a parchment, my hand holds a quill.

I dip this pen, quivering, afraid the ink might spill.

I long to draw you to me, Great Mystery within.

Move my hands, move my heart, guide my pen.

Though I try to sketch the future, only your hand turns the page.

You erase the stains and smudges of my past mistakes.

So I ask, please, grant the wisdom to know where to draw the line

And provide a clearer vision of your Grand Design.

I could never pen your portrait for I've yet to see your face,

But I know you from your likeness in the beauty of this place.

The pattern of your stillness rests upon my open book.

A still life of your spirit shines wherever I might look.

Though I try to sketch the future, only your hand turns the page.

You erase the stains and smudges of my past mistakes.

So I ask, please, grant the wisdom to know where to draw the line

And provide a clearer vision of your Grand Design.

Great Artist, you arranged the stars and fashioned each small flower.

My heart and hands are yours to move in the quiet of this hour.

So I ask, please, grant the wisdom to know where to draw the line

And provide a clearer vision of your Grand Design.

(c) Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

Sometimes, making a beginning is the hardest part, until you remember that you don't create alone.

I've always felt a bit intimidated by a blank piece of paper, an unplanted garden bed, an unshaped lump of clay, a song waiting to be recorded. No matter how many times I've done something before, successfully or not, beginning anew is always accompanied by a particular kind of internal resistance.

The outcomes of my efforts, past and future, draw themselves vividly before me in that moment when I sit down to begin. Sometimes this feels so daunting that find it hard not to turn away.

I wonder to myself: Will it work out as well as it did last time? Will the result be what I imagine? Or will I repeat my past mistakes? Will my weaknesses of skill, knowledge, character or body keep me from completing what I've set out to do? Will my work be blocked by something I can't foresee?

I lose hope.

Until I remember how many times that errors--both on the page and in my life--have lead to outcomes much better than I ever could have envisioned.

In life, my most painful and costly mistakes have always ushered in periods of the greatest personal growth. Mishaps and mistakes in judgment have taught compassion, forgiveness, resilience, strength, self-acceptance, and so much more.

In my creative work, I can't count the number of times a failure of materials, equipment, skill, or advice has brought me to a place where the things I'd originally set out to do were no longer possible. I'm learning to be more open to accepting change and seeing what IS possible. When I can to do this, the results I didn't expect are always more interesting and original than those I could have planned.

I know I haven't provided specific examples. In the coming days I hope it to write in more detail on my other blogs, sharing anecdotes from my pottery work, songwriting, and teaching. As soon as these interrelated essays are ready, I'll share links to them here.

I hope you'll print out a mini-poster or two, and place it where it can inspire you.

The words are meant as a reminder that there is another Artist who creates along side you.

Take chances, trusting that--one way or another--the outcome of your efforts will be something beautiful.

As we create, so we are created.

HOW THIS WAS MADE

The hand-drawn frame of this MINI-POSTER was doodled on the back of an old 8x10 glossy publicity photo I had taken and duplicated by the hundreds for a press kit about 8 years ago. I have a huge stack of these photos remaining, an error in planning I've been hiding in the top of my studio closet, but that's a story for another time. Now they're becoming the raw material for something much more satisfying, serving as sturdy drawing paper for playing with sharpie Markers.

I doodled the frame 2 days ago with no particular purpose in mind. Decided yesterday morning it needed text in the center. Scanned it. Modified it. Selected my song "The Grand Design: An Artist's Prayer" for the text. Discovered that this song--which I've been working on for the past 3 years--was still missing 2 lines. At that moment the inspiration fairy finally chose to visit. And here it is.

When there's a recording and/or video of "The Grand Design: An Artist's Prayer", you'll find links to these here, as well as on my website.

(c) Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

*These are copyrighted images. PERMISSION IS HEREBY GRANTED to duplicate for personal use, to give as a gift, or to raise funds for non-profits supporting social justice and the environment. Also authorized for academic use. NOT to be sold for personal or commercial monetary gain. Kay Pere and Effusive Muse Publishing retain all rights to "The Great Design: An Artist's Prayer" song lyrics, music, and related sound recordings. Contact Kay Pere for additional information.

POETRY: Autumn Sunrise

AUTUMN SUNRISE

As I in morning stillness stood

Face pressed against the window sash

To watch an endless feathered flock

Dark silhouettes with dart and dash

Flood across the opalescent sky

Dimly on the glass I saw

Inspired Mystery made plain

My breath inscribed a spectral heart

Upon the frigid windowpane

(c)2010 Kay Pere~Effusive Muse Publishing

[Photo taken at sunrise at Gove Hill Retreat Center, Thetford, VT.

Poem written this morning 10/30/2010 from life lived joyfully. I only wish I had taken a picture of the foggy heart that appeared on my window as I gazed out at birds and sunrise, breathing deeply of beauty.]

A Salute to All Who Nurture

A Salute to All Who Nurture

A salute to all who nurture on this day we set apart!

To every step-mom and meta-mom, every giving mom-at-heart,

To all the mystic mothers of music, dance & art,

To each green-thumbed earth mother who gently does her part,

To the soul & body's healers, beside us from the start,

Happy Mothers' Day!

You are remembered and loved.

(c)2010 Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

BOOKS: Library Sale

Today's fabulous finds at the library's annual used book sale:

• "Larousse Gastronomique" [!!!!!!!] by Prosper Montagne, 1961 Edition
  
• Chambers Murray Latin-English Dictionary
  
• "The Poetry of Robert Frost: All eleven of his books-complete," Edited by Edward Connery Lathem
  
• "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder," by Richard Louv
  
• "Between Jihad and Salaam: Profiles in Islam," by Joyce M. Davis
  
• "Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment," by the Dalai Lama
  
• "Reader's Digest Merry Christmas Songbook"
  
• "Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey," by Lillian Schlissel

Total=$22

QUOTES: "Miracles" from "Leaves of Grass"

WHAT shall I give? and which are my miracles?

Realism is mine—my miracles—Take freely,
Take without end—I offer them to you wherever your
feet can carry you, or your eyes reach.

Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the
sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the
edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in the
bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a sum-
mer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of stars
shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new-moon
in spring;

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread
with the same,
Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of
men and women, and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

~ Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, 1867 edition

[excerpted, read the poem in its entirety HERE]

Nuked Peeps S'mores

Ode to a Purple Peep

a poem by Kay Pere

A bland expression on its face,
Upon a paper plate,
A graham cracker beneath it
The peep awaits its fate.

It cannot run. It cannot beg.

Its belly bulge, a chocolate egg,
Like they do in Winnipeg,

The peep that I just ate.

THE END

Does this make me a one ode purple peep eater?

[Microwave approximately 20 seconds. Eat open-faced or cover with another graham cracker while still gooey for the full Peep S'mores experience.]

©2007 Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

Flow Around

Blocked momentum.

My energy and effort dammed up behind an obstruction, or channeled off in another direction without my consent, for someone else’s purposes.

I become a stream, curving around a stone.

Or the pressure builds. With enough force the stone may be pushed over or moved aside, or it may be destroyed in the process.

In that time, I am going nowhere. I must decide, is this a good use of my energy and effort? Is this the best way to get were I'm going, to do what I'm meant to do?

The stone has as much right to exert it's will upon me as I have to choose my own response.

I acknowledge obstruction.

Today, this time, I choose to flow around.

Perhaps, it will be smoothed and reshaped a little by my passing. Perhaps, I will learn something of determination by touching its steadfastness.

©2007 Kay Pere ~Effusive Muse Publishing

Meditation

~ excerpts from today's journal writing

Deep breaths
Calm body
Still mind

Over the years, I've asked for advice and permission far more often than I really should. I need to give myself back the authority I've handed over to others.

My creative work is both hopeful and haunted. I have both strength and weakness and can hold these two, one in each hand, as I work. Passion and detachment. Independence and interconnection. The synthesis of opposites necessary for growth.

Life is filled with unresolvable contradictions. This is fertile ground for creative work.

©2007 Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

SACRED SHARDS: Tools 1

Most of my pottery work, to date, has involved hand building small objects. I've collected an unwieldy assortment of small sculpting tools. So, last year, as a birthday gift to myself, I made this tool roll from scraps of a canvas painter's drop cloth. The design is my own, customized from the features of other tool rolls I've seen in stores.

I personalized it with hand written phrases and mantras composed from my experiences working with clay. I wanted to capture in words the elemental magic I feel as I work.

"Simple tools of transformation . . . hands, mind, imagination."
©2007 Kay Pere - Effusive Muse Publishing

"SACRED SHARDS"
"Artifacts of the Spirit, uneartherd to tell their stories"
© 2007 Kay Pere - Effusive Muse Publishing

"Fire, Water, Wood, Stone / Earth, Air, Silver, Bone"
©2007 Kay Pere - Effusive Muse Publishing

It stands on it's own. The ties that secure the bundle when it's rolled up can be tied through a loop on the opposite edge to make it stand for easy access to the tools.

Pottery is a messy business. Before beginning to cut and sew, I machine washed the canvas in hot water and dried it on high to remove any shrinkage. The writing is permanent, done with a brown sharpie marker, tested on scraps for washability before beginning on the final piece. When the time comes that my tool roll is unrecognizably caked with clay, I can throw the whole thing in the washer, minus the tools of course.
©2007 Kay Pere - Effusive Muse Publishing

Lady of Shalott - Takes Charge

Today I took a long awaited trip to the Wadsworth Athenium in Hartford, CT. I spent the entire day there looking at paintings and reading descriptions. Bliss!

One painting in particular captured my imagination, The Lady of Shalott (1886-1905), by William Holman Hunt (1827-1905), based on the poem (1832) of the same name by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The story originates in Arthurian legends.

The image resonated so strongly that I copied down the description from the wall nearby and on my way out, several hours later, bought a postcard of the image, though no replica does justice to the intensity and impact of the full-size painting.

The caption reads, in part, "illustrates a poem of the same title by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) based on the romance of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. For Tennyson, the story suggests that young love, nurtured in the imagination, must some day come into contact with reality. Hunt, however, interpreted the poem as a moral warning against straying from duty. [The painting] depicts the moment when the Lady of Shalott, doomed to weave tapestries from mirror reflections, glances out of the window to gaze directly at the gallant Sir Lancelot. The mirror cracks. Chaos and confusion overtake her sheltered existence and her work unravels."

Before I write more about my own reaction to the painting, I will read the original poem.

Just in glancing at the text, one phrase catches my eye:
"I am half sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott.

She wants love. She longs to be a part of the world she watches indirectly.

I wonder what magic has bound her there, dooming her to weave images from reflections of the world outside her window.

I’ve chosen to look reality directly in the face. The mirror of my romantic notions has cracked. I deal with the chaos. I'm ready step beyond the confines of an artistic life lived apart.

Very little may change visibly as a result, but I will know. The journey from this point forward will be one of my own choosing. This is the only way to break the curse.

Women often feel bound by duty, creating what we feel we must as reflections of other people's lives. This poem is cautionary.

Lancelot, the hero. The Lady of Shalott has not seen him and fallen in love. She has glanced outside her window and awakened the hero within herself, though she sees it contained within another. She falls to a curse she knows only as a vague anxiety (She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily). Because she has not taken care to weave her own fate beyond that moment, her work unravels around her and she dies before reaching her destination. But isn't she beautiful. God have mercy upon her.

In the painting at the Wadsworth Athenium, she is consumed in the moment with untangling herself from the threads of her tapestry. She appears confused, turned inward, unable to step over the frame of her weaving out into the world beyond, even as birds take flight around her and Lancelot rides away.

In the poem, she finds enough strength to locate a boat, paint her name on its prow, get in and release it to flow in the river. Beyond that, she is passive to her perceived fate. She does not row or steer. She lies in a trance, a seer not a doer on her own behalf. She dies, singing a mournful song, drifting at the mercy of the current, known in the end only as a lifeless body with "a lovely face" and no proper name.

I will not share her fate.

A curse holds no power except that which we give it.

©2006 Kay Pere - Effusive Muse Publishing