Last week for the first time in I don’t know how long I actually managed to sit down and write some stuff on Reason. Its been a really long time coming and was incredibly exciting and fun to do. Working with synth stuff has a slightly different creative process to picking up a guitar and writing a song - yes some elements are similar, but its so much about layering well. So here is a short clip of me working away, along with a sample of what I came up with.

reason being creative from naomilippett on Vimeo.

Click here feb_27_sample to play what I was messing around with.

No one can know in advance how one will be used, or when, or what one’s life will count for in the long run. The young Pablo Casals, while pouring his life energy into years of practice on the cello, could not guess that when Franco came to power, he would stop playing for three years, and that the silence would be heard throughout Spain as if the streets were full of demonstrators….

When the need for bread is met we discover that we have other hungers, and none so deep as the hunger to be understood. The artist helps us to interpret, understand and communicate feeling. When the artist is successful we are led into communion with ourselves and with the world, and the solitary work becomes a communal work. For want of this we walk on parched land.

Elizabeth O’Connor

And so artists keep on wrestling . . . . .

The insert below is happening at my place. Hopefully a space where we can understand and be understood and out of it change occur in us.

“Naomi and I thought it would be good to gather those with serious questions about art and faith for an– everything allowed – time of discussion.  Bring your questions on a slip of paper and we will put them in a hat and whatever gets drawn we will discuss. No expectations, no ready answers, just a think tank to count the cost of true discipleship as an artist.”

Betty Spackman (installation artist, painter and author of A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch)

Last week weekend went into Vancouver to experience some of the Olympic vibes - was so much fun despite the pouring rain. We managed to catch some of the free music at one of the stages and it was the first time that I had seen Wilco perform live. They were incredible.

I know that I shouldn’t have been surprised by the fact that three of the main band members were in their late 40s/early 50s, but I was. I haven’t listened to a lot of Wilco, so the thing that struck me the most about them aside from their great lyrics, excellent musicianship, tight synergy and inspiring creativity, was their ability to create tension in their music.

A piece of music often manages to represent so much of my journey through life. One strong pattern that my ear picks up in music is this pattern of equilibrium, tension and release - that idea of some note or chord becoming unresolved (loosing its equilibrium), creating tension that needs to be released or resolved. A life application of this would be its seven in the morning - you are deep in a dream - the alarm goes off, and your head explodes - after much desperate fumbling, you manage to get your sleepy hand on the right button - a tension is resolved. This pattern is all around us in our lives whether it be waiting for traffic lights to change, to nerves before a job interview to the relief of getting the job etc.

Western music does this a lot. There is a story of one of the great composers (Mozart, Beethoven or Bach) who was up in bed and heard someone play an unresolved dominant chord on a piano, all as a ploy to get the composer up and about. Sure enough, the composer got out of bed, came downstairs, played the tonic chord resolution on the piano and then returned to bed.

Wilco did this so masterfully in their performance of ‘Mis-understood’ last Saturday as they held onto repeating the word ‘Nothing’ for a good 3 min!!! it was insane - the crowd was going crazy! I found myself getting so wound up at times longing for them to resolve the tension they were building - sometimes that resolve happened and at other times they just left you hanging there. Man it messes with your emotions, feelings and just shows how powerful the medium of music is.

equilibrium - tension - release

An observation that I don’t need to unpack - you go figure . . . .

Julie’s when asked why her . . . why did she have to have cancer, was:

“Well why not!”

A haunting answer.

Think it may stay with me for a long long time.

Its her birthday today

WWJD

‘What Would Julie Do?’

The year kicked off with zero creativity - not many songs and no ability to see forward into the year and the projects that I would like to get my teeth stuck into - usually its pretty obvious for me but not this year.

I’d heard about these seasons that sometimes occur in the lives of artists, so wasn’t stressed about the fact that I was in one. Rather, I just kept myself in relationship with those who weren’t in the same place as me (people who were creating, writing etc) and exposing myself to environments that fed me creatively (e.g.natural environment, reading, leading my community in spiritual songs etc). Today I felt like I just got a glimpse of this season ending as I sat down with my great friend Ruth and conversed about the one thing that I had booked in late last year - an artists retreat in October 2010. As we chatted this is what spilled out from it.

Something has changed, shifted, moved (and its more than my beee-hind!) - is today the beginning of something new?

I read Josh’s blog and loved this post that he did - go visit his site - very inspirational . . .

This girl, maybe 9 years old, was sitting alone in the gallery at the Seattle Art Museum, sketching the painting in front of her. It was a gift to be in that room as she sat their silently, sketching, looking up, looking down, sketching.

Keep drawing, young artist, for yourself and for the rest of us.

Death/dying is a subject that I have wrestled with over the last year because of Julie. As I have looked around the society/culture that I live in these are some of the things I have observed about how we handle death and dying.

We medicate ourselves in order to prolong the days that we get to spend on this planet; we put our aged, and those closer to death often on the margins of our lives by sending them to comfortable ‘communes’ where they can get taken care of by others; we pump our bodies with ’stuff’ to help stop the ageing process; we have incredible hospitals and drugs that allow us keep living despite the pain we may find ourselves in; we fear it yet are obsessed with it (the obsession played out on our TV’s).

Julie’s dad, John was telling us how many, many years ago, when he was growing up there was not today’s medication available and the lucky ones died in their homes with their families. He remembers family members leaving their homes as those dieing with cancer were screaming out in pain - it was so hard as there was nothing that they could do to ease or make their loved one comfortable. John was sharing this as we sat around Julie’s bed in her last days with doctors and nurses increasing her pain meds to keep the moaning at bay. I’m not quite sure why what he related struck me so hard but it did . . . .

I sometimes wonder whether in all of this we have removed ourselves so far away from from dying and death (and even suffering), that we loose or miss something in living. Death can be ugly, fearful, because its is a step into the unknown. It takes faith to believe that there is or isn’t something on the other side.

this week our community says farewell to one beautiful life and hello to a brand new little life

the pendleton family will be made up of four people today