Instead of going to see Captain America Sunday (I’ll get there this week) we shifted gears and headed for the Gulleys and Bejosh Farm. It is a bit like visiting Adventureland at the Magic Kingdom. Always something going on. Ed says I am always welcome to drop by, I will take him up on it. He is a good man, a wonderful story-teller, and a great observer of the human experience. Check out the new Bejosh Farm Journal blog. Today, Carol writes poignantly about the pain of farming.
I had a wonderful day with Christopher Schelling my agent, his partner, Augusten Burroughs and my editor, Rosemary Ahern.
Rosemary and I drove to Connecticut together to see Christopher and Augusten’s strikingly beautiful new home in Connecticut. They both are fresh from New York City, and are knee-deep in the country life. All four of us are refugees from New York in a number of ways.
It was a special day, Christopher is a warm, bright and funny human being, I am lucky to have him as a friend and an agent.
I really enjoyed meeting Augusten, a best-selling author, the two are newly-weds and share great love and connection. His new house has seven or eight beautiful acres and a stream around it, we ended up talking about which animals they might think of acquiring, we talked about goats, sheep, Guinea Hens, and then donkeys.
Christopher, the most urban and dedicated of New Yorkers, is a country boy now.
Their grounds are perfect for donkeys, plenty of grass, space and shrubs, a fun house for donkeys. Augusten lit up at the idea, Christopher was skeptical but warmed up to it.
It meant a lot to me to go see Christopher and see his new home. There is a lot of disconnection in the world, in publishing people rarely actually speak to one another any longer, it is something I need. An agent is a powerful figure in a writer’s life, last year I worried about ever writing a book again.
My long-time editor had been pushed out of Random House, the recession hit, my books were pretty much orphaned. Random House made it clear they wouldn’t be heartbroken if I left also. I was at sea.
Christopher rescued me, he got me to my new editor, Peter Borland at Simon and Schuster and Peter immediately bought my book Talking to Animals, which is being published next Spring.
I am back on a good track again, it is a gift to have someone like Christopher in my corner.
Christopher is currently offering my next book idea to Simon and Schuster as well, but we’ll have to see. Haven’t heard yet, and no news is no news. We walked the grounds, played with their great dogs (I was charmed by Otis, their gentle and enormous new Great Dane.)
We went out to lunch and talked some more. A lot of stories, photo-sharing, smartphone searching. Then back on the road. A lot of driving, a long day, a sweet and good day. Odd to be apart from Maria, it doesn’t happen often, it was good to see her again.
It is special for me to touch base with my agent, a lifeline to my life as a book writer.
I learned some years ago that there were many creative women in the world whose confidence and creativity and resolve were diminished or damaged or even completely shut down by men. Joseph Campbell wrote often about encountering this sad phenomenon in his many years of teaching.
I have encountered it in mine, so many women turned away from their zeal and their identity and their call to adventure, so often by men who made them feel small and voiceless.
Sometimes it was a father, sometimes a boyfriend, an editor, sometimes a teacher or brother or boss. Creativity always calls for a leap of faith, an overcoming of vulnerability. “Each time I write on a page,” writes Janet Hamilton on her blog, Along For the Ride, My Journey With Animals, (you have to sign up to read it) “I’m taking a leap of faith that I can and will stand by it whether someone likes it or not. That I must remain true to myself.”
Janet joined the Creative Group At Bedlam Farm recently, a community on Facebook that I launched several years ago for people who wished to share their creative sparks in a safe and encouraging place. She wrote something on her blog this morning that touched me deeply and moved me nearly to tears. Janet is talented, it is an offense to think that she was made to doubt her worth and her gifts.
“How difficult this is to do around men still,” she wrote. In her life, she wrote, almost all of the men in her life have discounted, dismissed or critiqued her writing in a way that was hurtful and silencing.”They have not chosen to honor it,” she wrote. “I know I’m not alone in this. I hear my friends speak of sharing their art with the men in their lives and sometimes I want to shake them and wake them up and when they some of the cruel and indifferent comments the men make about their art. And some women hide their art away. It’s so tragic and sad, but I know how they feel.”
I do, too. So does every teacher or creativity with his or her eyes open.
Janet is correct, she is not alone in this, I have seen it many times, just as Campbell did and many others have. There is sometimes a fragility in creative women that simply needs safety and encouragement, especially at the outset, rather than to be discouraged and diminished.
I have come to see that many women are still shedding the idea that men know more than they do about the spirits inside of them wanting to be free and emerge.
This is why I started the Creative Group, this is why I teach, this is, I often think, why I am here, what I am here for.
Fortunately, wrote Janet, who is a natural and gifted writer, she found the group.
“The creative group has given me so much support, I’ve been able to open up more, be courageous, and write down my heart and soul on paper. Many in the group can see what I’m trying to capture in a picture, in a word, in a thought, an experience, and they let me know.”
“This,” Janet wrote, “has changed my life.”
There could not be any greater words of praise for me.
I was thrilled to read this post. I don’t care to romanticize or generalize, people are different, not all men are insensitive, not all women wish to be creative or are sweet and vulnerable. The three years of the group’s existence has been difficult, often painful for me and others, marked by anger, hostility, conflict, cliques, politics and enough drama for a season of Game Of Thrones.
It is true, I believe, than whenever a group of people gather, they will inevitably be…well, human. That is the lesson for me. There is no perfect thing. I have learned to be patient , committed, determined, to stand for the purpose of the group and, when necessary, fight for it. Many people quit or fled, I almost did myself. I’m glad I didn’t.
We are getting there, closer than we have ever been. Janet gets it, so do many others.
This is the purpose Maria and I share, I have encouraged her, she has encouraged me, every day of our lives. This is our mission, our original connection, I suppose, one of the reasons we are both here. Men had diminished her also, stolen her voice and confidence. Once she was encouraged – by me and others – she took off, and has never looked back. She works every day to encourage others.
I will not quit on this idea of encouraging creativity, and neither did so many of the members of the group, extraordinarily talented people like Janet who have formed a rich and diverse community of support, encouragement and purpose. They seem, like her, to get stronger and more productive every day .They raise their voices in words, images, art, weaving and sewing.
There is a political element to creativity, it is my politics, and in a way, my faith. Creativity is political, perhaps one of the most powerful tools of liberation, voice, dignity and freedom that there is.
Creativity gives voice and identity, it permits us to tell our stories to the world and to remind one another that our stories are important. If there is anything striking to me about the political morass raging on day after day, it is how non-creative it is, mired in old ways and conflicts. Trapped in the angry and warring messes of men.
I am grateful to Janet Hamilton for seeing this and understanding it and sharing in it, it is a glorious thing when it works.
As a man, I work hard to articulate what it truly means to be a real man. We are not about killing or wounding or patronizing or dismissing the hearts and souls of others, especially of the women and children in the world. We are about nurturing, encouraging, supporting and loving. Sometimes, when necessary, even protecting. We need it as much as they do, just look at the news, and women have always supported and encouraged me.
I am eternally grateful that Janet found us, and we found her. I hope there are many more to come.
