Shelf in the Room
Shelf in the Room
Creative Invitation I (aka a prompt)
Change is underfoot: Northwoods Recorder has become THE(slow)POET and Creative Invitations will be a regularly occurring segment, primarily behind a paywall, but this first one is for everyone. More will be divulged in the coming days but my primary hope, beyond the occasional personal essays on life and living slowly, is to support your creative practice using whatever tools I have at my disposal. Engage with them however feels useful to you, or don’t. Only you know what feels good.
Note: I am primarily a writer and I focus on that angle, but freewriting can be useful for makers practicing any medium. Translate as necessary.
Start with Reading
This excerpt, the first few paragraphs of Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting,” attempt to eschew the life our everyday objects behold us to in voluptuous detail as the narrator embarks on a wintery evening adventure to buy a pencil.
We are no longer quite ourselves. As we step out of the house on a fine evening between four and six, we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one's own room. For there we sit surrounded by objects which perpetually express the oddity of our own temperaments and enforce the memories of our own experience. That bowl on the mantelpiece, for instance, was bought at Mantua on a windy day. We were leaving the shop when the sinister old woman plucked at our skirts and said she would find herself starving one of these days, but, "Take it!" she cried, and thrust the blue and white china bowl into our hands as if she never wanted to be reminded of her quixotic generosity. So, guiltily, but suspecting nevertheless how badly we had been fleeced, we carried it back to the little hotel where, in the middle of the night, the innkeeper quarrelled so violently with his wife that we all leant out into the courtyard to look, and saw the vines laced about among the pillars and the stars white in the sky. The moment was stabilized, stamped like a coin indelibly among a million that slipped by imperceptibly. There, too, was the melancholy Englishman, who rose among the coffee cups and the little iron tables and revealed the secrets of his soul—as travellers do. All this—Italy, the windy morning, the vines laced about the pillars, the Englishman and the secrets of his soul—rise up in a cloud from the china bowl on the mantelpiece. And there, as our eyes fall to the floor, is that brown stain on the carpet. Mr. Lloyd George made that. "The man's a devil!" said Mr. Cummings, putting the kettle down with which he was about to fill the teapot so that it burnt a brown ring on the carpet.
But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter!
Now Root Yourself in Your Body
Wherever you’re sitting start by taking a slow, deeeeeeeep breath. And then another.
Count to four on the inhale.
Eight on the exhale.
Focus on filling only your belly as full as it will go for breaths three and four.
On breath five fill your belly and your chest.
Breath six: work the breath into your throat.
Now, if you can, add a pause at the top of the breath for a count of three.
Stretch the inhale and exhale out by two counts, if you can, but don’t strain.
This isn’t a challenge. It is a filling up and a letting go.
Whatever breath you’re now on is the right breath.
Take five more like this.
And when you’ve done that, on your last exhale, return to a no-effort breath, but maintain awareness.
Watch the gentle inhales and exhales.
Scan the body starting with your toes or the top of your head, just bring a gentle awareness to how each body part feels. If you can, allow any remaining tension to release.
Count ONE for the in-breath and TWO for the out-breath up to ten.
Do three to five rounds.
Then slowly begin to bring your awareness back to the room or space you’re in.
Now scan the space you’re in.
Let your eyes rest, one by one, on the objects that surround you.
Spend two to three minutes observing, without judgment: the wallpaper, the paint, the dirt on the walls and light switches, the books on the shelves, the knick nacks that surround you, the office stapler and cubicle plexiglass, the photos you’ve set up on your desk, the dust.
Now Write
Choose one or two items you were most drawn to or that surprised you (surely we all have things on our shelves we’ve nearly all but forgotten) and write the name of that object on the top of a piece of paper.
Begin a free write about the object or set of objects.
Note its color, properties, size. Why did it draw you in on this particular room scan, how did you acquire it, how long has it been in your possession, and more specifically how long has it been in that particular spot, is it meant to be there?
What’s your history with it, what has it witnessed there on its shelf or table or place on the floor?
Who has it interacted with?
Have you learned anything from this object(s)?
Has it learned anything from you?
Write until you’ve exhausted all angles of said object, write things that make no sense, write things that have nothing to do with the object itself. Just keep writing until you feel depleted or empty.
Or, conversely, set a timer. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty. Whatever serves you. And write until time.
Or Draw
Draw the object. Or paint the object.
Paint the scenes the object represents.
Do a one-sheet book sketch answering any of the questions listed above.
Use the colors of the object in colored pencil, marker, or watercolors.
Trace the object and make geometrical shapes based on the object.
Draw the object in a completely different setting.
Paint a representation of the object a radically different color.
Whatever You Do
Use whatever tools you have to hand. Don’t think too much about how you’re doing what you’re doing, and play. If you’re stuck or frustrated take a walk around the block or move to a separate room where you’re no longer looking at the object.
Engage in some other kind of movement your body is capable of: dance, jump, bounce, wave your arms. Wag your tongue. Rotate your ankles and/or wrists.
Write or draw your frustrations.
Say to yourself: “I’m so sorry you’re frustrated. I’m so sorry you can’t write / draw this object.” Use the second person “you” not “I”.
Continue to observe your breath.
Try again. Or don’t.
Either way, you have done the right thing.
And repeat.
Next Steps
In a week, or a month, or a year (put it on a calendar noting the notebook / page number or linking to the document). Revisit these writings / sketches.
Pull out language that feels nice or triggers more writing.
Or, cross out bits that do not feel nice until those things that feel nice come forward.
Rewrite / re-draw things on a fresh page or document.
Rearrange, insert, shift words, play, explore.
Spend a few minutes, but up to an hour coming back to this piece every day for a week.
What’s there, what’s missing?
What’s working; what’s not working?
Where is the heart of the piece? What’s the piece unexpectedly saying? What connections is it making?
If you must, set the piece aside again for another week or month and come back to it.
The separation is good for your relationship.
Have a trusted friend look at it with objective eyes. (We can be so critical of our own work and we are not always trusted friends!)
Is the piece working? Can it work better? Should the relationship be severed?
If so, it’s okay, you have or will have many more relationships in different stages of working that need your attention.
This is not your only one.
Put it in a drawer or a file, a SOMEDAY / MAYBE file, and forget about it until you’re scanning your SOMEDAY / MAYBE files when you might consider the relationship again, or not.
Repeat This Invitation
As many times and in as many rooms as you see fit.
Practice it once a day for the next thirty days (you will have thirty drafts).
Take it outdoors. To coffee shops, roadside cafes, restaurants, the ocean, the woods, a friend’s living room, a lover’s bedroom, your parents’ porch or back garden.
Try it in different seasons and at different times of day when the angle of the sun has shifted.
Or not.
Whatever you do it’s the right thing.
