We watched the movie Man on Wire last night. Jack says he wouldn't recommend it, but I do...with some qualifications--(see below) It was a documentary of Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. This perhaps doesn't sound all that interesting, but it was really the chronicle of one man's obsession ... and the story of a unique artistic performance and artist. Despite it's singularity, I believe the story has generalities for many driven, even possessed and extraordinarily talented and singularly-focused artists. I found myself marvelling at what it would be like to have such all-consuming passion. It was also fascinating to see how many people joined his team -- it had a lot of the feel of a great crime caper, bank-heist type of thing, with many of those dare-devil personalities or rebellious personalities involved.
It was also interesting to see how acheiving the event for this man really changed the dynamics of all his relationships. It seemed like the dream held him to others in ways that the realization of the dream did not.
(This is where the qualifications for recommendation come in. There is one racy sex scene. And nudity. And in general, this is probably not a person who we would want to emulate-- fascinating, talented and driven as he was. Great talent and great vision and passion sometimes seem like another excuse people use to orient their living around themselves. That's not a very remarkable part of his story--how many artists, musicians, writers, actors, athletes, politicians, and on and on have the same proclivities. It's actually more remarkable when an extremely gifted person is not completely self-consumed. The recent movie about Beatrix Potter was one refreshing example of the artist who has found a way to live graciously and with love in the midst of the tension of dreams and gifts that are in some opposition to the culture's status quo. I liked that movie a lot. But... it didn't have high wire walking and espionage. I was surprised to find myself very moved by the beauty and wonder of the high-wire performances--especially the one over the Notredame.
Also as I wondered about this man's personality, I kept thinking about how utterly challenging he must have been for his parents and teachers. This was a person who in my reading seemed only to submit to his own intense desire. But as paradoxical as this may seem, that submission required immense discipline and concentration. That's another thing-- I guess I was in awe of that kind of focus and attention--just the kind I, who couldn't walk along a painted line on the ground, could never muster.
Also, I liked all hearing all that beautiful French-- although, the subtitles not so much. I think that to comfortably read those subtitles, we would probably need a bigger TV. (but don't let Jacky know I said that).
later,
jenny
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Going Off-line
The Wondering Eye Blog is no longer linked to the Oak Hills Church Website.
I'm relieved, a little sad, but mostly relieved. I've been in some unrest about this blog for the last year and a half, plus, ever since I was given the assignment to do a blog about the arts for the church website.
The purpose of the blog was supposed to be to connect artists and to encourage artists and stir up the arts in the church. And I have always thought this was a marvelous purpose. I had some missgivings about my abilities, but it was kind of like all the elaborate recipes or craft projects I have taken on in my life (and there have been a'plenty)... I figured the details would come together somehow and it would all turn out. But much like the queen-sized blue and yellow star quilt I got far enough to have 90-some blocks of varying dimensions--I always had a profound sense that the Blog representing Oak Hills Artists was not what I was writing and I didn't know how to begin to gather the resources to write the blog that I thought should be on the church website...
That blog, I thought, should be by someone who knew a lot about the arts, who knew how to speak intelligently and eloquently about the philosophy and history and theology behind art. But I haven't read enough or interacted enough with the materials to do that.
That blog, I thought, should make connections with the other artists in the community. Musicians and visual artists, actors and playwrites, novelists, photographers, dancers and composers, as well as quilters, cooks and wood-carvers should all find something that helped them in their pursuit of art as incarnational work and worship. But I didn't know how to make those connections. The truth is that although our church is filled with many wonderful artists who are passionate followers of Christ and extraordinary people-- I don't really know them well--we simply run in different circles.
That blog, I thought, could be a venue for the arts community--we could publish poetry, fiction and essays or photographs and other visual art on the blog as a sort of online 'zine. It would be a lot of fun. But again, the thought was overwhelming to me. I didn't know how to begin. And I always thought, no one will want to do this with me. I was very intimidated by the thought of asking people to take me seriously.
So, the blog became simply a place where I felt inadequate. I didn't know how to begin to do what I really wanted with this, and I fell into trying to do something that came close. But it turned out most often to be some kind of TRYING and TRYING that never seemed to measure up in my mind--and I always felt rather lame and impotent.
I thought, what I really have time and ability for right now is a simplistic blog of my own thoughts and musings about things. A blog like the blogging a lot of folks do out there on the blogosphere, but not a blog that belongs on the church website. And so, finally, after months and months of trying to figure out if I could somehow get around quitting...like if my blog might just grow a virus and disintergrate... or if I was going to quit, how I could do it without looking too silly... I finally mustered up the courage to be a goofy quitter, and I quit.
I think I'll still keep blogging--but now instead of the horrible angst about how this is not what it really should be--I'll shamelessly write what's going on in my own head. Not because it's profound or of use to anyone, but because right now, at this moment in my life, that's all I've got.
I have no idea where this will lead... but I have this tiny glimmer of a hope that perhaps this could become a small training for becoming the kind of person, artist and writer who can more fully and honestly and vibrantly serve the church, and especially my beloved church, and her artists with more than "all I've got."
My prayer for all of you readers (if there are any) is that you could find places and people to explore the person that you are, with freedom to use and enjoy the skills and gifts you have right now... with the trust that with prayer and hope God will enter into these small gifts, the "not-trying gifts," and make of them something beyond what we can now ask or imagine.
Godspeed to all of us,
Jenny Jiang
I'm relieved, a little sad, but mostly relieved. I've been in some unrest about this blog for the last year and a half, plus, ever since I was given the assignment to do a blog about the arts for the church website.
The purpose of the blog was supposed to be to connect artists and to encourage artists and stir up the arts in the church. And I have always thought this was a marvelous purpose. I had some missgivings about my abilities, but it was kind of like all the elaborate recipes or craft projects I have taken on in my life (and there have been a'plenty)... I figured the details would come together somehow and it would all turn out. But much like the queen-sized blue and yellow star quilt I got far enough to have 90-some blocks of varying dimensions--I always had a profound sense that the Blog representing Oak Hills Artists was not what I was writing and I didn't know how to begin to gather the resources to write the blog that I thought should be on the church website...
That blog, I thought, should be by someone who knew a lot about the arts, who knew how to speak intelligently and eloquently about the philosophy and history and theology behind art. But I haven't read enough or interacted enough with the materials to do that.
That blog, I thought, should make connections with the other artists in the community. Musicians and visual artists, actors and playwrites, novelists, photographers, dancers and composers, as well as quilters, cooks and wood-carvers should all find something that helped them in their pursuit of art as incarnational work and worship. But I didn't know how to make those connections. The truth is that although our church is filled with many wonderful artists who are passionate followers of Christ and extraordinary people-- I don't really know them well--we simply run in different circles.
That blog, I thought, could be a venue for the arts community--we could publish poetry, fiction and essays or photographs and other visual art on the blog as a sort of online 'zine. It would be a lot of fun. But again, the thought was overwhelming to me. I didn't know how to begin. And I always thought, no one will want to do this with me. I was very intimidated by the thought of asking people to take me seriously.
So, the blog became simply a place where I felt inadequate. I didn't know how to begin to do what I really wanted with this, and I fell into trying to do something that came close. But it turned out most often to be some kind of TRYING and TRYING that never seemed to measure up in my mind--and I always felt rather lame and impotent.
I thought, what I really have time and ability for right now is a simplistic blog of my own thoughts and musings about things. A blog like the blogging a lot of folks do out there on the blogosphere, but not a blog that belongs on the church website. And so, finally, after months and months of trying to figure out if I could somehow get around quitting...like if my blog might just grow a virus and disintergrate... or if I was going to quit, how I could do it without looking too silly... I finally mustered up the courage to be a goofy quitter, and I quit.
I think I'll still keep blogging--but now instead of the horrible angst about how this is not what it really should be--I'll shamelessly write what's going on in my own head. Not because it's profound or of use to anyone, but because right now, at this moment in my life, that's all I've got.
I have no idea where this will lead... but I have this tiny glimmer of a hope that perhaps this could become a small training for becoming the kind of person, artist and writer who can more fully and honestly and vibrantly serve the church, and especially my beloved church, and her artists with more than "all I've got."
My prayer for all of you readers (if there are any) is that you could find places and people to explore the person that you are, with freedom to use and enjoy the skills and gifts you have right now... with the trust that with prayer and hope God will enter into these small gifts, the "not-trying gifts," and make of them something beyond what we can now ask or imagine.
Godspeed to all of us,
Jenny Jiang
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Getting Back Our Vocal Chords
I recently heard a fascinating quote by the band director and composter, John Phillip Sousa. He was testifying before Congress in 1906 about the new recording industry. Apparently he wasn't much of a fan. This is what he said:
"These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."
What Sousa predicted is exactly what happened. We have learned to be entertained, but for the most part we have stopped making music, we have stopped singing. We have stopped telling stories. We have stopped making art. We have stopped making much of anything.
I love to listen to recorded music by the best musicians and to watch movies with the most accomplished actors and directors and to read books by the greatest writers I can find. But the truth is, I have learned how to consume and I haven't forced myself to learn how to create.
And even the creating I do, I spend a lot of time comparing, unfavorably, to the professionals.
Did you know there's a wonderfully vibrant and rich and varied poetry community in the Sacramento area? There are regular poetry readings, poetry workshops, several print and online publications all full of poetry by local area poets.
I am, in fits and starts, and in a very limited degree, a new member of that community.
Sometimes, though, I can get a little jaded attitude about these endeavours. Because the truth is, none of us are Billy Collins or Emily Dickinson. Actually, most of us are amateurs. I certainly am. And most of the writing that comes out of this community is not something that is going to amaze or entertain or impress the rest of the world.
When I'm in my rather pride-filled, ego obsessed state of mind, I think this way. I can feel a sort of cynical contempt about what we are doing.
I'm afraid this elitist or consumeristic point of view is not that uncommon. I wonder if it's another symptom of the destructive edge to our entertainment culture. We have become used to the professionals entertaining us--through their poetry, their movies, their music, their art. Our art doesn't measure up, and it's easier just to be a consumer anyway.
If you read a local poetry journal, or go to a local poetry reading, or a local concert, play, or art show, you will have endure a few more sour notes than if you went to a professional gig. I personally don't like sour notes as much as sweet ones. I like making sour notes, (or mediocre poetry) even less.
But if you go to a local poetry reading or a local concert or play, you will have a chance to know something beautiful and mostly secret about your neighbors and the way they see this world. If you make art and then share it, you will have a chance to know something sacred about yourself. The artist and the audience have a little chance together to think about what is beautiful and what is true.
My deep hope and prayer is that our community could move away from the couch potato mentality. We could turn off the cd player and the dvd and sing to our children. We could make our friends a book of our stories. We could hang a picture we made on the wall.
We are the people that actually exist in our community, after all. With the skill level we actually have. And I think it makes our community far more interesting and healthier when we are making art together.
"These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."
What Sousa predicted is exactly what happened. We have learned to be entertained, but for the most part we have stopped making music, we have stopped singing. We have stopped telling stories. We have stopped making art. We have stopped making much of anything.
I love to listen to recorded music by the best musicians and to watch movies with the most accomplished actors and directors and to read books by the greatest writers I can find. But the truth is, I have learned how to consume and I haven't forced myself to learn how to create.
And even the creating I do, I spend a lot of time comparing, unfavorably, to the professionals.
Did you know there's a wonderfully vibrant and rich and varied poetry community in the Sacramento area? There are regular poetry readings, poetry workshops, several print and online publications all full of poetry by local area poets.
I am, in fits and starts, and in a very limited degree, a new member of that community.
Sometimes, though, I can get a little jaded attitude about these endeavours. Because the truth is, none of us are Billy Collins or Emily Dickinson. Actually, most of us are amateurs. I certainly am. And most of the writing that comes out of this community is not something that is going to amaze or entertain or impress the rest of the world.
When I'm in my rather pride-filled, ego obsessed state of mind, I think this way. I can feel a sort of cynical contempt about what we are doing.
I'm afraid this elitist or consumeristic point of view is not that uncommon. I wonder if it's another symptom of the destructive edge to our entertainment culture. We have become used to the professionals entertaining us--through their poetry, their movies, their music, their art. Our art doesn't measure up, and it's easier just to be a consumer anyway.
If you read a local poetry journal, or go to a local poetry reading, or a local concert, play, or art show, you will have endure a few more sour notes than if you went to a professional gig. I personally don't like sour notes as much as sweet ones. I like making sour notes, (or mediocre poetry) even less.
But if you go to a local poetry reading or a local concert or play, you will have a chance to know something beautiful and mostly secret about your neighbors and the way they see this world. If you make art and then share it, you will have a chance to know something sacred about yourself. The artist and the audience have a little chance together to think about what is beautiful and what is true.
My deep hope and prayer is that our community could move away from the couch potato mentality. We could turn off the cd player and the dvd and sing to our children. We could make our friends a book of our stories. We could hang a picture we made on the wall.
We are the people that actually exist in our community, after all. With the skill level we actually have. And I think it makes our community far more interesting and healthier when we are making art together.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Do you know about Poetry Daily
Some how, my husband-- who is among many more important things both a marvelous combination of someone who knows everything there possibly is to know about computers and someone who wonderously enough seems to like me quite a lot-- anyway, to get back to my point, this aforementioned gentleman friend of mine has managed to put on my web browser "home page" a link to Poetry Daily, and it's really wonderful... I don't know how you do the link thingy, but you can find the site here...
http://www.poems.com/
Check out this marvelous poem by a Spanish poet --http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14187
And may you enjoy your day and the friends that find you in it.
Jenny
http://www.poems.com/
Check out this marvelous poem by a Spanish poet --http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14187
And may you enjoy your day and the friends that find you in it.
Jenny
Friday, October 31, 2008
News From God
I love this children's poem by Robert Louis Stevenson--
The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
I don't believe I'm some naive ingenue--I know the world is also full of a number of things that could and perhaps should make us all despair. But still I love this poem. Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was often tormented by his depression, still he could often see and know that every day had "news from God," even in the clouds, or a little leaf, or in the way the frozen tops of the mud puddles sparkled with intricate beauty.
Today I hope I can give my son and myself a chance to notice and see how wonderfully full this world is of news from God.
The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
I don't believe I'm some naive ingenue--I know the world is also full of a number of things that could and perhaps should make us all despair. But still I love this poem. Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was often tormented by his depression, still he could often see and know that every day had "news from God," even in the clouds, or a little leaf, or in the way the frozen tops of the mud puddles sparkled with intricate beauty.
Today I hope I can give my son and myself a chance to notice and see how wonderfully full this world is of news from God.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
All us turkeys
Self portrait: Wild Turkey
In your lumpy brown suit, red necktie dragging,
shuffling, bowing out of sight.
Behind dusty weeds you find a low hill,
under an oak’s broad tent. Stiffly unfold,
slowly turn your full, dark fan—heavy bronzes
fringed with white. Stretch the blue-creped
skeleton of skull and neck to scream out
all you got—one high note gargle—as if to keep
from drowning in that sack of self.
To those that soar, or flit from branch to branch,
I think you’re crying:
Don’t look. See me. Don’t look. Please see.
My something beautiful.
I wrote this poem a few years ago, when I was just beginning to explore writing again. I still feel in captures some of the internal struggle many artists, including myself, go through.
At the time I was leading the creative writers' group at church, and people would approach me with very sincere questions and concerns about the spiritual formation risks of writing done for others to read. I remember one individual sharing with me that the very fact she had a natural talent made her reluctant to begin writing, because, as she explained, it would be so easy to become prideful. Another person questioned the motives, his included, behind writers wanting
their poems or stories to be read by others.
I personally understand all too well their concerns, as the turkey poem tried to express. I can't casually dismiss them. All of us know that love of acceptance, praise or money have snared artists and caused them to lose the core of what made their work unique and beautiful and true. And as Christians, we want to learn to honor God, to live with humility and to pursue his glory and not our own.
A couple years ago I felt compelled to start writing again, and to bit by bit face a bit of the risk of being known in that writing. And so, I've had a chance to explore some of these issues first hand--and I have found that in fact, though my pride and self-absorption and vainglorious heart are raging monsters--they seem to have almost no relationship to my writing. I have found that my writing, usually, is just something small, really, something like a little beautiful leaf or rock I've found or a sunset that I've seen and want to show others. Usually, it feels very disconnected to this broken hearted, greedy dragon I carry around, the one demanding approval and attention.
I recently read something in Dallas Willard's MARVELOUS book The Divine Conspiracy that seemed to explain this, a bit. He makes a distinction between a God-given drive for significance expressed in our creative impulses and an egotistical, pathological self-obsession born of our broken, lost state. I'll quote it at length below. C.S. Lewis' Weight of Glory also speaks of these things with amazing insight.
I have to confess that I actually deeply dislike writing and speaking about spiritual formation issues. I really understand almost nothing about this stuff. But still, I want to encourage those would-be artists afraid of their own pride to take this risk. In my experience, it could, at the very least teach you a lot about yourself, and even better, give the rest of us some beautiful writing, or art, or music to enrich our lives.
Here's the Willard quote.
"The drive to signficance that first appears as a vital need in the tiny child,a nd later as its clamorous desire for attention, is not egotism. Egotistical individuals see everything through themselves. They are always the dominant figures in their own field of vision.
Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute self-consciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is indeed, a desperate response to the frustration of the need we all have to count for something and be held to be irreplaceable, without price.
Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone's hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. .....
In the last couple years, I have met my self-obsession and even egotism. I have behaved more foolishly than any turkey. But I have also discovered that this is not the final word on my life, or on anyone's life.
And I have also come to feel that my writing is, like I said, just not a big deal. I hope I do get published and read by others, because I think it's fun. I enjoy letting others know this part of me that brings me such joy.
I don't feel like a turkey singing anymore... (at least, not right now).
But I think it was ok, even very good, to go through that time when I did feel so much like a turkey, hoping people saw me and also fearing them seeing me. Though the experience was horribly painful, I had the chance to know myself and my dragons a little more, and even better, I have learned to believe that God can defeat even this oldest and most tenacious monster in me. (I also suspect there will be plenty of chances for me to feel like a turkey again...but I hope I will trust a little faster and easier next time I feel that way!)
I would so love to hear from any artists--to know if you have struggled with these issues at all, and how you have met God in the struggle.
In your lumpy brown suit, red necktie dragging,
shuffling, bowing out of sight.
Behind dusty weeds you find a low hill,
under an oak’s broad tent. Stiffly unfold,
slowly turn your full, dark fan—heavy bronzes
fringed with white. Stretch the blue-creped
skeleton of skull and neck to scream out
all you got—one high note gargle—as if to keep
from drowning in that sack of self.
To those that soar, or flit from branch to branch,
I think you’re crying:
Don’t look. See me. Don’t look. Please see.
My something beautiful.
I wrote this poem a few years ago, when I was just beginning to explore writing again. I still feel in captures some of the internal struggle many artists, including myself, go through.
At the time I was leading the creative writers' group at church, and people would approach me with very sincere questions and concerns about the spiritual formation risks of writing done for others to read. I remember one individual sharing with me that the very fact she had a natural talent made her reluctant to begin writing, because, as she explained, it would be so easy to become prideful. Another person questioned the motives, his included, behind writers wanting
their poems or stories to be read by others.
I personally understand all too well their concerns, as the turkey poem tried to express. I can't casually dismiss them. All of us know that love of acceptance, praise or money have snared artists and caused them to lose the core of what made their work unique and beautiful and true. And as Christians, we want to learn to honor God, to live with humility and to pursue his glory and not our own.
A couple years ago I felt compelled to start writing again, and to bit by bit face a bit of the risk of being known in that writing. And so, I've had a chance to explore some of these issues first hand--and I have found that in fact, though my pride and self-absorption and vainglorious heart are raging monsters--they seem to have almost no relationship to my writing. I have found that my writing, usually, is just something small, really, something like a little beautiful leaf or rock I've found or a sunset that I've seen and want to show others. Usually, it feels very disconnected to this broken hearted, greedy dragon I carry around, the one demanding approval and attention.
I recently read something in Dallas Willard's MARVELOUS book The Divine Conspiracy that seemed to explain this, a bit. He makes a distinction between a God-given drive for significance expressed in our creative impulses and an egotistical, pathological self-obsession born of our broken, lost state. I'll quote it at length below. C.S. Lewis' Weight of Glory also speaks of these things with amazing insight.
I have to confess that I actually deeply dislike writing and speaking about spiritual formation issues. I really understand almost nothing about this stuff. But still, I want to encourage those would-be artists afraid of their own pride to take this risk. In my experience, it could, at the very least teach you a lot about yourself, and even better, give the rest of us some beautiful writing, or art, or music to enrich our lives.
Here's the Willard quote.
"The drive to signficance that first appears as a vital need in the tiny child,a nd later as its clamorous desire for attention, is not egotism. Egotistical individuals see everything through themselves. They are always the dominant figures in their own field of vision.
Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute self-consciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is indeed, a desperate response to the frustration of the need we all have to count for something and be held to be irreplaceable, without price.
Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone's hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. .....
In the last couple years, I have met my self-obsession and even egotism. I have behaved more foolishly than any turkey. But I have also discovered that this is not the final word on my life, or on anyone's life.
And I have also come to feel that my writing is, like I said, just not a big deal. I hope I do get published and read by others, because I think it's fun. I enjoy letting others know this part of me that brings me such joy.
I don't feel like a turkey singing anymore... (at least, not right now).
But I think it was ok, even very good, to go through that time when I did feel so much like a turkey, hoping people saw me and also fearing them seeing me. Though the experience was horribly painful, I had the chance to know myself and my dragons a little more, and even better, I have learned to believe that God can defeat even this oldest and most tenacious monster in me. (I also suspect there will be plenty of chances for me to feel like a turkey again...but I hope I will trust a little faster and easier next time I feel that way!)
I would so love to hear from any artists--to know if you have struggled with these issues at all, and how you have met God in the struggle.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)