Frances Mulinix 12/6/17 Frances Mulinix 12/6/17

#WritingWednesday Writing the Body with Danez Smith

“Poetry, at its best, is our collective diary, not our best tool at saying what happened, but our best way of communicating how the happening felt.”

— Danez Smith

Danez Smith is an African-American, H.I.V.-positive, genderqueer poet and speaker. Their poetry is volatile, spontaneous, passionate, unapologetic. Smith's work shines when spoken as slam or spoken word, but also work sing when read, elegant works of language that leap off the page.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Smith received an MFA from the University of Michigan. They authored two books, Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014); two chapbooks, hands on your knees (2013, Penmanship Books) and black movie (2015, Button Poetry); and have their work published in several magazines, online publications, and literary journals. Smith appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in February 2016. Smith is the winner of the Button Poetry Prize and the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.

Smith is a founding member of Dark Noise collective, a nation-wide, multi-racial, multi-genre poetry collective, and is the co-host of the podcast VS with Franny Choi, funded by Poetry Foundation and Postloudness.

“Smith has a rare talent for mapping the body and its authority onto the page.”

— Dan Chiasson

One of the aspects of Smith's writing that I adore is how they demonstrate that the personal and particular is legitimate to write about, perform on stage, and publish. Some of Smith's references go over my head, but that doesn't lessen my experience of their work. If I have to reach it is not a negative, it is how I enlarge my circle of understanding. It is not seen as problematic to read classic literature that will be entirely out of our realms of experience or to read about different geographies and cultures that we will never witness. Similrly, we shouldn't shy away from work that stretches us:

"My most annoyed thing from workshop in undergrad was somebody saying,'I don’t understand what this is' or 'I don’t know what this is, so you should take it out of the poem.' What that translates too is that you’re creating poems for the most middle-of-the-road, straight, white, Midwestern aesthetic of a person, which maybe poems do. But sometimes I write a poem, and it’s for fat, black, gay dudes who eat too much chicken on Friday. Whoever else shall gather in this poem and find themselves—or get a kick out of it: 'Sure, you come along, too.' But I wrote this with fat, black, gay dudes who eat too much chicken on Fridays in mind. And that’s who the hell this poem is for. We can’t shy away from that, because I think when we shy away from it that’s how poetry becomes bland and uninteresting. It doesn’t move the masses. There’s power in specificity. Once we try to make our poems for everybody is when we make our poems so wack, so damn wack. My book is for everybody, but I really hope there’s young, black, gay, or queer men that get this book in their hands. I wish I would have had this book when I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. I want this book to do for others what Jericho Brown’s Please did for me. I think every poem is for a somebody and the worst poems are for everybody." - Smith

a note on the body - Danez Smith

Danez Smith's back, the text is from Gravity by Angel Nafis; Source: http://tattoosday.blogspot.com/

your body still your body

your arms still wing

your mouth still a gun

you tragic, misfiring bird

you have all you need to be a hero

don’t save the world, save yourself

you worship too much & you worship too much

when prayer doesn’t work: dance, fly, fire

this is your hardest scene

Source: behindthediva.tumblr.com/ — Source: behindthediva.tumblr.com/

when you think the whole sad thing might end

but you live oh, you live

everyday you wake you raise the dead

everything you do is a miracle

little prayer - Danez Smith

let ruin end here

let him find honey

where there was once a slaughter

let him enter the lion’s cage

& find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing

& if not let it be

not an elegy for Mike Brown - Danez Smith

I am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name

his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
until we forget what we are mourning

& isn’t that what being black is about?
not the joy of it, but the feeling

you get when you are looking
at your child, turn your head,
then, poof, no more child.

that feeling. that’s black.

think: once, a white girl

was kidnapped & that’s the Trojan war.

later, up the block, Troy got shot
& that was Tuesday. are we not worthy

of a city of ash? of 1000 ships
launched because we are missed?

always, something deserves to be burned.
it’s never the right thing now a days.

I demand a war to bring the dead boy back
no matter what his name is this time.

I at least demand a song. a song will do just fine.

look at what the lord has made.
above Missouri, sweet smoke.

& even the black guy’s profile reads ‘sorry, no black guys’ - Danez Smith

imagine a tulip, upon seeing a garden full of tulips, sheds its petals in disgust, prays some bee will bring its pollen to a rose bush. imagine shadows longing for a room with light in every direction. you look in the mirror & see a man you refuse to love. small child sleeping near Clorox, dreaming of soap suds & milk, if no one has told you, you are a beautiful & lovable & black & enough & so—you pretty you—am i.

This is a reprint of an interview Mic 50 had with Danez Smith, a profile of the next generation of leaders, innovators, and trailblazers:

What’s the role of a poet?

I write America down. My job is to live and pay attention to other people living around me in order to archive it for whoever may stumble upon it. It's the poet’s job to make sure there is a record of what it meant to live, love, fight, rebel and be in their brief time on earth. Or something like that.

What can poetry do that other modes of expression cannot?

I think, but I’m not sure, that poetry is the best way to archive the feeling or emotions of an era. Film can document, music can sing, fiction can tell the tale, but only through poetry have I gained a sense of what it meant to be alive in its most tender and vulnerable ways throughout history. Poetry, at its best, is our collective diary, not our best tool at saying what happened, but our best way of communicating how the happening felt.

What do you wish you knew at the beginning of your career?

I wish I knew "career" didn't mean "has to be done today." Every day is about showing up for tomorrow.

What major change or innovation makes you excited about the future?

To be real, the future sorta sucks. At least the one our collective imagining is leading to. It’s dry, like no water dry, and sad. I'm interested in ways in which can use the current state of "suck" in the world with the creative innovations in technology and within ourselves to imagine new, better futures. I feel like technology looks more like good science fiction every day. Most science fiction is either a utopia or a dystopia. I hope we can imagine ourselves into the former. And fast.

“My job is to live and pay attention to other people living around me in order to archive it for whoever may stumble upon it. It’s the poet’s job to make sure there is a record of what it meant to live, love, fight, rebel and be in their brief time on Earth.”

— Danez Smith

juxtaposing the black boy & the bullet - Danez Smith

one is hard & the other tried to be

one is fast & the other was faster

                    one is loud & one is a song
                    with one note & endless rest

                     one’s whole life is a flash

both spend their life
trying to find a warmth to call home

both spark quite the debate,
some folks want to protect them/some think we should just get rid
of the damn things all together.

“I think every poem is for a somebody and the worst poems are for everybody. ”

— Danez Smith

Your Turn

Smith reminds us to be personal and to be passionate. Pick something intimate to yourself. What is something that gets you fired up yet can disconnect you to the world whilst connecting you to individuals in it? This is your fuel for the week. The personal is always political, there is no escaping it.

Read one of Smith's poems on this page, borrow one of their books from the library, or listen to a poem performed by Smith on YouTube. Then sit for 5 minutes and feel your body. Listen to what it has to say and how it intersects with the world. Our identities can be complex. Pick one as a lens from which to look through.

Set the clock for 25 minutes and write!

#CreativeInnovative with Anthony Wade-Cooper: A Retirement To The Theatre

Anthony Wade-Cooper on Finding a New Career in Retirement and Learning to Be Confident in Chaos

This is the second in a regular series of blog posts in which I speak with exciting artists, innovators, and entrepreneurs exploring how their creative skills have enabled them to do incredible things in their personal and professional lives.

You can find all of these interviews by searching for the tag #CreativeInnovative.

Anthony Wade-Cooper is undoubtedly one of my favourite people that I have met through working in theatre. I had the privilege to perform in a show that he stage managed. The show was incredible emotionally taxing, and then I was injured in the middle of the show.

His presence brought an oasis of calm wherever he was. A stage manager who can manage technical details while at the same time bringing levity and empathy to the rehearsal space when required is an invaluable skill set. For me, this is theatre at its best: professionals who maintain authority over a project, synchronize with other authorities in the production, and employ an array of interpersonal skills in order to care for the performers.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that Anthony came to the theatre later in life. In his prior carer as a flight attendant, Anthony developed his acting and interpersonal skills, which he grew further in teaching service procedures, as well as the computer bidding and holiday bidding system as they were introduced. Then, his partner encouraged Anthony to consider stage management.

F: Where are you originally from?

A: Long story… I was born in India of a British father and an Australian mother. I grew up in the UK and emigrated to Canada in 1973. I emigrated to Australia in 2015. I know live in Mooloolaba, Australia.

F: Tell me a little about your training in the arts.

Trouble in Tahiti, Vancouver Concert Opera Society, 2011

A: I attended Capilano University for one semester and have taken Meisner acting beginner's level. it's basically been on-the-job training in Stage Management since then. I worked in community theatre, for opera companies, and in some independent productions. Bard on the Beach in Vancouver was my last Canadian gig. Here in Australia, I have worked at the Noosa Arts Theatre, have worked on several professional productions including Noosa Long Weekend for two years, and the staging of a [David] Williamson play with the Sydney cast on tour.

F: Has your art/training taken you to other places? What are some of the most interesting locations you have experienced?

A: Working in Sulmona Italy was the most outstanding experience, stage managing opera amongst palaces built in the Middle Ages! My Meisner training was under Meisner himself in his studio on the island of Bequia in the Carribean. This was an intense course which was somewhat over my head but the island charm and lifestyle will never be erased from my memory.

F: What are the benefits and challenges of collaboration?

A: Collaboration is absolutely essential. Ideas arising out of collaboration often take the work in directions that you hadn’t conceived in the initial stages. I have been very lucky to have learned most from incredible mentors in my field, my partner Stephen Atkins, and some very very talented cast members and technicians. I am not afraid of letting people teach this ‘old dog’ new tricks.

F: What drives you in your work?

A: The love of the end product. The journey to get to the end product. Seeing a page on paper translate into a living breathing piece of art (usually!). The initial ‘GO’ cue to me is so exciting. Watching all the hard work of rehearsals eventuating into a unique performance that is never 100% the same the next time. Watching all the element of rehearsal and production come together.

Midsummer Night's Dream, Bard on the Beach, 2014

F: To what extent have you been able to make your creativity work an aspect of all of your jobs?

A: In the airlines, being creative was always necessary when handling a passenger mishandling. I don't think of myself as creative. I just try and so what I consider to be the most logical way to solve a problem that creates an end result that we are all pleased with.

F: How do you use your performance skills in undertaking “non-creative” jobs?

A: In Canada I volunteered with AIDS Vancouver and did lightwalking for the Vancouver Opera. I also worked as the team leader in the Roundhouse at Expo ‘86. The experience I have had dealing with the public help me. Performance skills are required when dealing with a group of people, be it actors, or people you are working with a group of volunteers in a job. If you are in-charge they look to you for guidance which they expect you to provide. Sometimes you are exhausted and really don't feel like being in-charge but that's when performance skills come into play.

F: What demands dictate your creativity?

A: Basically, as stage manager, the creativeness comes in making sure everything runs smoothly in rehearsal and pre-, during, post-show. Professionally one rehearses at fixed times during the day as per union contracts but in the volunteer jobs rehearsals are done at night usually two or three times a week. Usually, the cast will warm up before a rehearsal, which entails breathing, vocal and stretching exercises… like the ones we did at ZZZ!

Inferno, Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre Company, 2010

F: Anthony, you can boast of many remarkable achievements over your career, but of which creative accomplishments are you proudest?

A: In my airline career, it is the fact that I was chosen three times to work with the Prime Ministers of Canada on diplomatic missions. In my theatrical career my Italian opera achievement was to me the most remarkable. The rest of the cast and crew were young twenty-somethings and there was I at my age keeping up with the lot of them. Bard on the Beach was also one of the most professional and impressive shows I have worked on. I learned so much about professionalism there. I consider myself very fortunate to have had such amazing careers through my life

F: Wow! Anthony, what incredibly diverse adventures you have experienced!

What role does performance have in your life? Why is it important?

A: I am basically a shy person so the ability to communicate and ‘act’ and use my body when I am in a situation in public helps me an awful lot. I might not be feeling confident but if I project that I am, the outcome is inevitably successful.

F: Yes, exactly. A confident but also genuine outer persona can enable you access to many experiences that you would not otherwise enjoy. What do you advise people do in order to mitigate burnout?

A: Professionally, you work intensely for a couple of weeks to achieve the best performance you can give so sleep and nutrition are important. Nutrition, however, must be carefully planned as often one has to eat dinner at 4:00 pm and have nothing else to eat until 11:00 pm by which time you are ready to ingest anything. So sleep, planned meals and if one can meditate I would advise it as it can slow you down especially after an evening’s performance. It is impossible to go to bed straight away – you have to give yourself some time to "come down."

F: Yes, I can relate as I struggled a lot with "coming down" and trying to manage my energy over the course of a prolonged rehearsal process. I get home after rehearsal or a show and my brain is a circus!

Would you agree that having training in voice, performance, and movement can help someone who isn't looking to be a performer?

A: Yes I would definitely agree. The more confidence you have in dealing with other citizens can only make you a better citizen yourself. Voice, posture, performance all go to creating an image that's easier for you to interact with other people.

F: What adaptable skills have you gained through your art form that you apply in other contexts?

A: I think the skill of thinking on your feet is one that I have developed because you have to always think of the next move in stage management, where you are needed next or what prop or set piece you have to have in place. So I find it easy to plan ahead and if something goes wrong then it's easy to adapt.

F: That being said, how do you set boundaries with regards to managing your personal from your creative spaces?

A: I am not sure one does divide ones personal from one's creative spaces. Of course in one’s personal space one tends to lessen the creative side but I feel it is always there in one shape or another.

F: What roles do intuition and aesthetic play in your personal life?

A: I rely on my intuition a lot when working, I think that you instinctively know when you are on the right track with a show or an actor. I think the aesthetic is left more to the creative i.e. set, costume and lighting designers. My job is to make sure their aesthetic is kept intact for the duration of the show.

Anthony Wade-Cooper, Vancouver Concert Opera Society Archives

F: You are multilingual. Do you feel that this gives you a different relationship to language and communication?

A: Interestingly enough when we were in Italy with the opera, we had to learn the Italian stage language and indeed even in Australia the basics are different such as load in/bump in, headsets/cans control booth/bio box. So you adapt but definitely, my languages help me with finding the right word often for the situation. Using one word when you could have used three…

F: Do you have to behave “differently” or be different people depending on the environment in which you are in? What skills served you in these different places?

A: Many years of being a flight attendant has served me very well in dealing with different situations and environments. In this day and age of lack of arts funding, you have to be adaptive and do the best with the tools you are given. In answer to the question yes I do behave differently depending on the situation at hand.

F: Now, you are unusual in that your Stage Manager career is your retirement.

A: I am retired and I work whenever I feel I would like to and with people that I like. I really don't have a business, just freelance and take some paid work if offered and if I feel I can do it.

F: What was the toughest learning curve that you experienced? What skills supported you?

A: My basic skills were learned through the airline, how to deal correctly with a group of people be they clients or colleagues. This took a while but now it's ingrained it comes naturally. There are always ‘prickly’ people and always solutions to their problems. It just day to day dealing with people – sometimes you are in the mood to deal with everything, others not so much but you always have to appear that you are confident in what you are doing.

Lipstick Dreams, Noosa ArtsTheatre, 2017

F: What strategies support you in appearing confident and managing "prickly" people?

A: Preparation, asking questions, consistency, and patience and learning how to get into a problem without complicating the system.

F: How do you go about networking/promoting your business?

A: Just staying in touch with the companies I work for. An occasional email to remind people I exist. I am lucky that I don't have to hustle to work, I work when I want to

F: Has technology changed your work?

A: Most definitely – when I started you used, for example, cassettes or DVDs for sound and now I use Qlab which revolutionized my work.

F: What is the most draining/challenging aspect of your business?

A: The unusual hours – eating requires planning, and I am no good with ladders anymore. The joys of aging!

F: How do you manage burnout/maintain your enthusiasm for your work?

A: I simply take time off if I feel I have bitten off more than I can chew… this year I have had two projects going on at once and another starting the day after the current one finishes. I won't be doing this again as I value my time off!

You can follow Anthony on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram

Whatever your aims, we can aid you in achieving your goals with our individualised approach and flexible sessions. Contact us:

Frances Mulinix 11/29/17 Frances Mulinix 11/29/17

#WritingWednesday with Bruce Weigl

I love to discover a new writer who leaves me feeling as if I have just unwrapped a precious new gift. This is one of the reasons I enjoy reading anthologies of short stories or poetry. It's like speed dating or a tasting menu, you don't have to worry about the consequences of a long-term commitment, trying to find a convenient excuse to go home or staring longingly at your friend's meal.

“Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what”

— Bruce Weigl

Discovering a writer that I had not read before is unwrapping an unexpected and valuable gift. Bruce Weigl is a recent discovery of mine. I read one of his poems, and then another, and I knew I wanted to read all of his work. I see in his poetry an economy of words that belie the richness of images he creates. I like to form an idea of the writer through reading their work, then learn about them. It is essential to engage with the person, their background and aims in order to fully engage with their work.

I formed an image of a poet who contemplates, sees things clearly, and acts with deliberation. The word "Buddhist" sprang to mind. Imagine my sense of satisfaction when, in conducting a cursory research into Weigl, I discovered that he does have a Buddhist practice. According to him, his experience fighting for the American army in Vietnam as an 18-year-old both, "ruined my life and in return gave me my voice” The Circle of Hanh, 2000), and I certainly hear the "wounded warrior" throughout his work, a perspective with which I am familiar as some who has lived and worked with veterans.

In admiration, here are a few of Bruce Weigl's exquisite poems. Look at how Weigl uses language, builds imagery, employs repetition, and evolves his theme over the poem. Pick an element of his writing that you will incorperate into your own this week.

Home - Bruce Weigl

I didn’t know I was grateful
for such late-autumn
bent-up cornfields

yellow in the after-harvest
sun before the
cold plow turns it all over

into never.
I didn’t know
I would enter this music

that translates the world
back into dirt fields
that have always called to me

as if I were a thing
come from the dirt,
like a tuber,

or like a needful boy. End
lonely days, I believe. End the exiled
and unraveling strangeness.

Dead Man, Thinking - Bruce Weigl

i.
Snow geese in the light of morning sky,
exactly at the start of spring. I was
looking through the cracks of the blinds at my future which seemed
absent of parades, for which I was grateful,
and only yesterday

I watched what an April wind could do
to a body wrapped in silk,
though I turned my eyes away,
the way the teacher says,
once the beauty was revealed.

ii
How long it takes to die, in the fifty-fifth year
is what I thought about today.
I told some truths so large, no one could bear to hear them.
I bow down to those who could not hear the truth.
They could not hear the truth because they were afraid
that it would open a veil into nothing.
I bow down to that nothing. I bow down to a single red planet
I saw in the other world’s sky,
spinning,
as if towards some
fleshy inevitability.

I bow down to the red planet. I bow down
to the noisy birds, indigenous to this region.
Only sorrow can bend you in half
like you’ve seen on those whose loves have gone away.
I bow down to those loves.

Your Turn

A valuable way to develop as a writer is to be a voracious reader and devourer of creative work. Take the week to "supplement" your creative diet by intentionally seeking out and soaking up art over the next few days. Read aloud a poem or selection by a writer you admire before sitting for 5 minutes and commencing your writing practice.

Working with Adults

Working with adult clients can be a challenge, but it is immensely rewarding. As adults, we may feel exposed and uncomfortable when tackling our vocal and physical habits. After all, adults are supposed to be excellent at something as "simple" as talking. Right?

Adult_Career_Putting-my-strengths-to-work_Article_10238_man-creative-team_ts_484379462-3.jpg

Authentic communication cannot be faked. It cannot be "muscled through." That's the point. The ability to speak to individuals and crowds with ease, to communicate ideas effectively, to demonstrate leadership and charisma is an increasingly rare, and therefore valuable, skill. It is, therefore, a worthy investment and, with a commitment to mastering it, a skill to last a lifetime.

Adults will seek out my services for some of the following reasons:

1. To advance at their workplace. These individuals have often received performance reviews stating their voice is flat or unclear, that they lack facial expression or interpersonal skills, or that they fall apart when called on to speak, and that, in order to be considered for promotion, they are required to build their skills.

2. To build their professional reputation. Looking to advance their skills in networking, interviewing, and public speaking, these are often entrepreneurs, experts in a specific field, or university students. Entrepreneurs need to be able to sell themselves and their ideas. Experts often build sustain their careers with guest speaking slots on the radio, on television, and at conferences, and students look to acquire valuable skills to assist them in accessing opportunities to acquire experience.

3. To achieve personal milestones. I have worked with men and women wanting to feel more confident when talking to strangers, facing their fear of writing a heartfelt speech to present in front of wedding guests, wanting to build power in their aging voices, and deciding to finally learn how to deliver an entertaining speech.

In addition, there are often gendered stereotypes associated with speech and movement. I have worked with women who trained their voices to be breathy, pitched artificially high for their vocal apparatuses, who take up as little physical space as possible. The result is not being taken seriously in professional and personal spheres, which can lead to being passed over for promotion, being on the receiving end of bullying behaviours, and lacking the feeling of being a powerful participant in one's own life. I have worked with male clients who had taught themselves to hide behind an expressionless facial mask, to stand with knees locked and feet wide apart, to speak in a flattened vocal tone, habitually speaking lower than is their optimum. Regardless of a person's gender, communicating with power and expression, supported by an open and balanced body is an essential and valuable skill set.

Then there are men and women who beat themselves up for not meeting limited gender stereotypes. I worked with a female client who handled a difficult time in her life by lowering her vocal tone and setting her jaw so that nothing could touch her. While it was a protective mechanism, it also frustrated her how she was perceived, that she couldn't connect with others or be seen as her true self. I worked with a man who was fabulous at leading his team but would fall apart when it came time to speak to international management, leaving him feeling weak and incompetent. I have also worked with men and women learning to cross cultural divides, as Westernised Australian, American, and Canadian communication styles are very different to Hispanic, Middle Eastern, South Asian, or Eastern European patterns (to name a few). As our world becomes increasingly global in scope, it is important that we grow an awareness of our own communication style and be able to adapt.

adult-businessman-standing-at-the-board-and-presenting-the-vr-headset-to-the-colleagues_hz4fcwa_e_thumbnail-small02.jpg

Regardless of your aims, we can aid you in achieving your goals with our individualised approach and flexible sessions. Learn more about our adult services here or contact us.

Frances Mulinix 11/22/17 Frances Mulinix 11/22/17

#WritingWednesday - Writing Discipline with Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is going to help me with this one because he is going to effectively be my guest blogger last Saturday.

We are going to talk about the core element of writing - WRITING! Before we can worry about style, plot, subject, narrative, character, your unique voice, editing, or sharing, you must begin putting pen to paper. Or fingers to keyboard. Or crayon to napkin. Consciously and with discipline.

I like the metaphor of textile manufacturing. Whether you aspire to create a breath-taking ballgown, sharply tailored suit, stylish jeans, winsome blazer, provocative lingerie, or practical anorak, you cannot begin without fabric. For example, once cotton is harvested, it goes through the ginning process where dirt, leaves, and stems are removed. Compressed and transported, the bales are opened ("fluffed"), scutched (seeds removed), carded, combed, drawn, spun, and plied before being dyed or printed then cut and sewn into clothing. At several stages, impurities are removed from the fibres and a higher quality fabric results from further processing. However, before we can envision a resulting garment, we need to practice harvesting raw fibre and working it into fabric.

In service of this, we are going to practice 3 strategies this week. Before we worry too much about building muscles, we are going to get into the routine of exercise.

1. Write. Each Day. Every Day.

The mental gymnastics we can put ourselves through in order to avoid writing can be incredible. As Neil Gaiman says, we like to imagine that little elves will do the work for us, finishing or beginning.

We need to take the drama out of the act of writing. Set a timer for five minutes each day this week and write without pause. If you don't know what to write about, pick something from your day (or the one before) and start there. Or write about what it's like to write in that moment. If your mind wanders into another association, follow it there. If your mind gets stuck on an image or word, stay with it, repeat it, add another element to it. There is no way to "mess this up" as long as your pen (or finger, or crayon) is moving.

2. Write. Then Do Everything Else.

We are going to practice discipline. Start the day with your new five-minute habit, or start the major portion of your day (if coffee must come first). After this week, you may choose to put longer writing sessions at a different time of day, but finding a few minutes to start your day this week should not be a major disruption.

It helps to have a ritual around writing - a favourite pen, a fancy notebook, a lit candle, a cup of tea. Pick ONE thing this week that you will use as your ritual element on which to anchor this habit. Otherwise, an involved ritual will become yet another escape and delay tactic. Then, know what you are going to do when you are done writing. Have something that you desire to get done slated for after your writing practice (a delicious breakfast perhaps, or a big X on your calendar to celebrate that you wrote today)!

3. Write Something After Doing Nothing

Commencing day three and for the remainder of the week, add a three-minute conscious daydream beforehand. Set the timer for three minutes to simply. This is not meditation but active daydreaming. It takes practice:

Take a deep breath.
Feel your body in the chair.
Think about your day. Think about the weather. Think about that annoying neighbour.
Let your mind wander undirected for three minutes.
Then set the timer for five minutes and write.

We will check in next week!

Whatever your aims, we can aid you in achieving your goals with our individualised approach and flexible sessions. Contact us:

Frances Mulinix 11/17/17 Frances Mulinix 11/17/17

#CreativeInnovative with Natalie Schneck: Dancing the Bottom Line

Natalie Schneck On Bringing Dance to Every Body, Building a Business, and Achieving Balance

This is the first in a regular series of blog posts in which I speak with exciting artists, innovators, and entrepreneurs exploring how their creative skills have enabled them to do incredible things in their personal and professional lives.

You can find all of these interviews by searching for the tag #CreativeInnovative.

Natalie Schneck is a performer, dancer, choreographer, teacher, and entrepreneur. She is the Founder and Owner of the dance company 123 Steps Ahead. As 123 Steps Ahead's first American partner, Vibrance is very excited to bring this program to the Atlanta area in 2018. Stay tuned!

F: We first met each other in 2004 and were in the same theatre ensemble at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. While we remained friends, our lives have taken us in different paths. However, what is remarkable is how our complementary underlying values have directed our lives. This has led to an exciting new chapter, a partnership allowing us to foster and support each other professionally.

N: Yes, you and I ended up in quite an eclectic ensemble at SFU and what was great about the group was the collective work ethic we created. I feel like that work ethic combined with a strong inclination for innovation and creativity has absolutely brought us to this new and exciting chapter!

F: To start with, tell me a little about your training in the arts.

N: I’ve been involved in creative arts since preschool. I was born in Edmonton, Alberta. As a teenager I performed in several musical theatre shows both in and out of school, and took some dance lessons. I went on to complete a BFA in theatre performance from SFU followed by a year intensive of contemporary dance technique and choreographic training at Concordia University in Montreal. Throughout my training, I was often creating and performing in my own theatre and dance works or in the work of other artists. One of the highlights of my performance career was my very first professional dance contract in French choreographer Jerome Bel’s international hit piece, The Show Must Go On. I also had the pleasure of dancing in a creation by Catherine Gaudet for the 2015 TransFormation program. I have been lucky to have my own work shown across Canada, in Calgary, Montreal, Edmonton, and Toronto. Recently, I created and performed a show in Vancouver with musician and composer Elliot Vaughan, under Iffy South, his band's name.

F: Has your training taken you to other places? What are some of the most interesting locations you have experienced?

N: Yes, I took a trip to Berlin and Poznań, Poland a few years ago and spent time in the underground dance clubs moving to industrial music, eurodance, and dubstep. I also saw shows at small theatres and cabarets. I’ll never forget witnessing the woman dancing alone in a park in Poland, the park was idealistic in its landscaping while she was totally disheveled in her movements. These images and experiences continue to be very inspiring and informative for my artistic work.

More formally, I took dance workshops with Polish and American artists in Portland as part of the TBA festival and I found that city energetic and also soothing, especially during festival time. I also took classes in NYC and that was cool, being taught by former Russian ballet stars in Manhattan and then learning from a contemporary company in Brooklyn, it was a good experience to get both types of work in my body. Then, being chosen to work with Compagnie Marie Chouinard in Montreal for an répertorie intensive of The Rite of Spring. I loved that! So imaginative and open, a lot of release and breath work and you can see this softness and responsiveness in the bodies of her dancers.

F: You have created some incredible projects, many of which are collaborative and call on your ability to communicate.

N: Thank you! Yes, communication really is a skill.

F: What are the benefits and challenges of collaboration?

N: The benefits are that you are working with people and the challenges are that you are working with people! Haha. But in all seriousness, when you collaborate you are able to work with another perspective, another skill set and another sensibility, this can be such a strength if it aligns well. The challenge is separating the actual work from one’s own personal projections and what I call “stuff” while still expressing a sensitivity and openness – it is quite delicate and requires a lot of presence. I always think about laying the most fertile and fun ground for someone else to flourish and for his or her ideas to come to fruition - for each person that looks quite different. A good question I like to remember is, “what does this person need right now?”

F: Yes, I find myself asking the same thing! It’s a totally different mindset when you make it about where the other person is “at” and use that awareness to shape your communication with them.

N: Yes, communication has to be flexible because connecting with other people requires flexibility, people come to the lunch or coffee table with a lot of their own stuff and it’s complicated. Flexibility and knowing when to actively listen is important.

"communication has to be flexible because connecting with other people requires flexibility, people come to the lunch or coffee table with a lot of their own stuff and it’s complicated. Flexibility and knowing when to actively listen is important."

F: For you, what are some of the accomplishments of which you are most proud?

N: First, I am developing a life for myself that is true to who I am (this is ongoing), I have lived where I want to live, I have allowed myself time and space to become and evolve as an artist, I have met amazing and inspiring people from all walks of life.

The second is in creating the 123 Steps Ahead program and seeing the positive impact it is having on people, it really is a feeling like no other.

Third is my education. I think education is so important and I really do have mine to thank as a gateway to a different and beautiful life.

F: How did you decide to take your art in the direction of creating 123 Steps Ahead?

N: I started working in education in Montreal and I saw the benefits of physical educational programming. I also Loved the kids and wanted to be able to take my training and experience in the arts into a program that would benefit them long term.

I am passionate about dance being for everybody and I fundamentally believe in this. This does not mean that I think “democratizing dance” is better than say training intensively in ballet since the time one was three. Rather, it is a different way of seeing a possible dance training trajectory for someone. I have an innate sense of justice I think the 123 philosophy really is an extension of this.

F: Did this require you to take on additional training/encountered learning curves?

N: I did the additional year of training at Concordia in Montreal as a mature student and then it was many workshops and ordering books on fundamentals of creative movement for children and youth that I would draw from in my research and creation of a curriculum, it was also consulting OT’s such as yourself, Educational Psychologists and RCC’s. All of this was necessary for where I am now.

F: Are you able to make your creativity an aspect of all of your jobs?

N: My creativity and rigour is always present. Sometimes it comes out in my ability to hyper-focus and concentrate on a task, or in ow I collaborate on a new idea or come out with innovative solutions to problems big or small. Or just dipping into my sensitivity when I see that a colleague is needing something different from me in terms of communication.

F: Do you have other (non-creative) work that you engage in? How did you make that choice?

N: Yes – I work in development at The Cultch, a contemporary arts theatre and gallery in the city; I chose this particular job because it required a solid combination of skills I already have along with the opportunity to sharpen new skills such as running campaigns and copywriting.

F: And that dovetails with your business education, another way to combine that with the arts and support you own business.

How do you use your performance skills in undertaking “non-creative” jobs?

N: I am an active and present listener with coworkers and clients. I also can read situations quickly and respond appropriately. I am skilled at problem solving quickly, at reading situations and the emotional tone quickly and adjusting. Emotionally intelligence is immensely valuable; reading between the lines of communication and responding appropriately, or knowing that if something seemingly negative happens it is almost always not personal. And also awareness of other cultures, when I am in Montreal I do my best to speak french, stuff like that…it goes a long way.

F: How do you create? From where do you draw inspiration?

N: It really depends. Sometimes ideas come to me quickly and intensely and I have to respond and then sometimes there is nothing for a little while. My inspiration is not consistent but I do know that when I feel inspired I am committed to that feeling and it is almost like I have to respond to it – I have to express something put of it. Lately, it has been music, a lot of music, which aligns well with my program and with my choreographic work; I love how words in a rhythmic form such as a song can fit so well with movements.

F: What role does communication, performance, and using your voice/body to connect to others, to create an impact have in your life?

N: It plays a huge role on a daily basis, my work really only manifests through other people so clarity of communication both physical and verbal is vital and necessary. Also, you can’t do it alone in this world so earning how to connect genuinely and in the present with other people is key.

F: You're juggling two jobs and still creating work! How do you prevent burnout?

N: I take a day off – a true day off and I let myself flow, just do whatever I want in no order and in no set rhythm, this is usually quite nourishing creatively.

F: Oh my goodness! I do the same I need a day or two that isn’t run on the clock, where my brain can just idle and process as it needs to.

Do you set boundaries with regards to managing your personal from your creative spaces?

N: Good question. Personally I am actually quite introverted. I need a lot of alone time and I enjoy being alone. So I suppose that’s a boundary in itself. It’s like when I collaborate it’s social time and I enjoy that, but I know at the end of the night or day I am going home alone and I need that. I also work to keep relationships in the context they are in, if it’s work it’s work, if it’s friends and business then it’s friends and business, if it’s intimate then it’s intimate. However, I think adapting and compartmentalizing too much is not good – it means I can’t be my holistic and genuine self. I am aware that my ability to compartmentalize can be an impediment so I practice flexibility with these ideas as things always change.

F: Yes, I like people and I like finding those who collaborate well, but I also find myself “on” around others and know that I recharge alone.

What roles do intuition and aesthetic play in your personal life?

N: Intuition has come more and more into play as I get older. I just have feelings about situations, both work and personal, and I have started to trust those feelings more and respond or make decisions in accordance. I am always drawn to creating a certain aesthetic; I am really sensitive to space so I like things minimal for the most part. Although one of my dreams jobs is doing window displays! I think it would be fun – maybe 123 Steps Ahead will have a window display one day.

F: Can you give us an idea of what some of the communities with which you are identified?

N: I connect to the artistic community, families and youth, the business community, the philanthropist community, the legal community. I think it informs me in the sense that I take on projects that are both creative and pragmatic. I love meeting new people and I am forever curious about people. Before I go to dinner or coffee with someone I often think “I can’t wait to hear this person’s story!” This excites me. I love people and I am fascinated by where they come from them, all the experiences they’ve had, and how all this has shaped their perspective and what’s important to them.

F: Has your community activism evolved? What lessons have you learned along the way?

N: It really has. I am proud of bringing 123 Steps Ahead to so many people so far and leaving a positive and empowering experience with them. What have I learned along the way? To get really comfortable with failure, to make friends with the idea – when you try something new there’s growing pains, there’s iterations, and there’s problem solving, all these things are OK and necessary.

F: What type of students do you teach?

N: Right now we teach children, youth and adults from 18 months – no limit …we want to pilot a senior’s program and we are currently looking at PEI as a starting place. At all levels. Just be open and imaginative with a sense of humour.

F: What values underpin your teaching approach?

N: I believe in the value of 123 Steps Ahead because our program is graded to meet each client, child or adult, at his or level, developing functional and efficient movement in a creative and fun environment. 123 Steps Ahead is about the democratisation of dance, creating opportunities for children and adults regardless of their circumstance, to experience a dance class and to receive dance training. The 123 Steps Ahead kids are not judged on technique or by living up to a coded dance standard; they are nurtured and encouraged to grow from the level they are at. With 123 Steps Ahead, there is space for everybody, and every person is a valuable member of the class. This ideology works to create confidence in each child that his or her presence and ideas are worthwhile, and regardless of background, everybody has a voice and a valuable contribution to make. This way, we build confidence and social skills.

We have grown throughout Canada, offering our program in community centres, schools, and daycares. Recently, in partnership with March of Dimes Canada, we have been able to offer our program to children who have special needs. This year, we started offering private sessions with children and adults. Now it is time to begin expanding this program into the United States.

F: What do you say to people who claim to “not be creative”?

N: I just don’t agree! I think creativity is a human quality and yes there are varying levels but I believe that everyone has creative ability, it just comes out in different forms and on different scales and that’s actually really cool.

F: What are the moments that reward you as a teacher?

N: When a student take a concept and tries it autonomously; when he or she is able to fully integrate a movement pattern; when we work together to see that “failing” at something actually just created another movement that is more beautiful in it’s authenticity.

F: How did you get into starting your own business?

N: I was in Montreal. I was lonely, uncomfortable, and felt challenged by being an outsider and at a transitional time in my life. Making art in theatre and dance didn’t hold the same meaning for me anymore. I started leaning towards teaching more so then performing and I found this aligned passion working with kids. I loved seeing the positive impact I could bring to them. This started with teaching a sports program to several public and private groups in Montreal, then, because schools and daycares wanted me to stay on board working with the kids, I proposed a creative movement program that I had begun to create - 123 Steps Ahead.

F: What was the toughest learning curve that you experienced? How did you tackle this phase?

N: My very first class of 123 Steps Ahead in Montreal was very difficult, it felt like I was continually failing and it almost caused me to not take a much larger contract which would have been such a mistake! My program ran so well at Garderie Papillon. What got me through was my ability to problem solve and then to incorporate solutions that worked into my next contract. Also being aware that personalizing the situation was not useful.

F: It’s all that creation process isn’t it, not everything works out the first time. The wheels fall off and you think either, “Oh now I know what to do” or, “I have no idea what the solution is but that isn’t it!”

Do you feel that there are unique challenges when ones’s business is so personal to you?

N: Yes I feel highly responsible, which is true – I am, for many things. I think practicing boundaries is crucial. Otherwise it is easy to become overwhelmed. I am also interested in having a business partner; it just needs to be the right fit. I suppose we are doing a sort of model of this, and I like it! It feels right (there’s that intuition!)

F: What are the most useful strategies/tools/devices/programs that support your business and work?

N: Definitely our lesson plan manual and the website. I am actually in the process of transitioning over to Square Space. And then there are our partners, March of Dimes Canada, CPE terre des Enfants to name a few…Vibrance Center soon as well!

F: As an entrepreneur, what creative skills come in useful?

N: Knowing when to be extroverted, bringing form to the chaos, problem solving, emotional intelligence, sensitivity to other people, also knowing when to let go of an idea or a possible contract or partner

I have a sense of humor. Also personality wise I am innately practical and work with “the bottom line” but I also allow myself space for creativity. When I feel myself becoming severe or falling into the anxiety of the high stakes I practice self care, maybe it’s a movie, maybe a bath or a dance class, this always helps.

F: How has the landscape of your sector changed? Have customer’s expectations changed?

N: I think now more then ever parents are looking for programming that will instill confidence and social skills in their children along with physical literacy that will be with them for the rest of their lives. I can speak to the huge benefits of exercise and physical activity as a healthy regulation and coping tool

As my program doesn’t teach traditional coded dance such as ballet and some schools really want defined dance programs – hip hop, ballet, etc. That is just not 123, and it’s crucial that we stick with our branding and our value system, even though it means losing some contracts.

F: Where do you see your business going?

N: Eventually 123 Steps Ahead will be global for children, youth, and families. We will also expand to adults and seniors. It’s really going to open up a “I can do it” attitude in learning dance and break down the notion of elitism. I think we will have a whole new global generation of dancers that are amazing just the way they are. I am excited for this!

You can follow 123 Steps Ahead through the website, Facebook page, and Instagram

Whatever your aims, we can aid you in achieving your goals with our individualised approach and flexible sessions. Contact us:

Frances Mulinix 11/15/17 Frances Mulinix 11/15/17

Neil Gaiman on Why Our Future Depends on Literature

This is an edited version of Neil Gaiman’s lecture for the Reading Agency, delivered on Monday October 14, 2013 at the Barbican in London. The Reading Agency’s annual lecture series was initiated in 2012 as a platform for leading writers and thinkers to share original, challenging ideas about reading and libraries.

It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members’ interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I’m going to tell you that libraries are important. I’m going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I’m going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I’m an author, often an author of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about 30 years I have been earning my living through my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.

So I’m biased as a writer. But I am much, much more biased as a reader. And I am even more biased as a British citizen.

And I’m here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. Which supports literacy programs, and libraries and individuals and nakedly and wantonly encourages the act of reading. Because, they tell us, everything changes when we read.

And it’s that change, and that act of reading that I’m here to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what reading does. What it’s good for.

I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn’t read. And certainly couldn’t read for pleasure.

It’s not one to one: you can’t say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations.

And I think some of those correlations, the simplest, come from something very simple. Literate people read fiction.

Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it’s a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it’s hard, because someone’s in trouble and you have to know how it’s all going to end … that’s a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you’re on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far.

The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children’s books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading. I’ve seen it happen over and over; Enid Blyton was declared a bad author, so was RL Stine, so were dozens of others. Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy.

It’s tosh. It’s snobbery and it’s foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn’t hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.

Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. (Also, do not do what this author did when his 11-year-old daughter was into RL Stine, which is to go and get a copy of Stephen King’s Carrie, saying if you liked those you’ll love this! Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years, and still glares at me when Stephen King’s name is mentioned.)

And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

You’re also finding out something as you read vitally important for making your way in the world. And it’s this:

The world doesn’t have to be like this. Things can be different.

I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?

It’s simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.

And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it’s a bad thing. As if “escapist” fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.

If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn’t you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real.

As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.

Another way to destroy a child’s love of reading, of course, is to make sure there are no books of any kind around. And to give them nowhere to read those books. I was lucky. I had an excellent local library growing up. I had the kind of parents who could be persuaded to drop me off in the library on their way to work in summer holidays, and the kind of librarians who did not mind a small, unaccompanied boy heading back into the children’s library every morning and working his way through the card catalogue, looking for books with ghosts or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders. And when I had finished reading the children’s’ library I began on the adult books.

They were good librarians. They liked books and they liked the books being read. They taught me how to order books from other libraries on inter-library loans. They had no snobbery about anything I read. They just seemed to like that there was this wide-eyed little boy who loved to read, and would talk to me about the books I was reading, they would find me other books in a series, they would help. They treated me as another reader – nothing less or more – which meant they treated me with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect as an eight-year-old.

But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.

I think it has to do with nature of information. Information has value, and the right information has enormous value. For all of human history, we have lived in a time of information scarcity, and having the needed information was always important, and always worth something: when to plant crops, where to find things, maps and histories and stories – they were always good for a meal and company. Information was a valuable thing, and those who had it or could obtain it could charge for that service.

In the last few years, we’ve moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That’s about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need.

Libraries are places that people go to for information. Books are only the tip of the information iceberg: they are there, and libraries can provide you freely and legally with books. More children are borrowing books from libraries than ever before – books of all kinds: paper and digital and audio. But libraries are also, for example, places that people, who may not have computers, who may not have internet connections, can go online without paying anything: hugely important when the way you find out about jobs, apply for jobs or apply for benefits is increasingly migrating exclusively online. Librarians can help these people navigate that world.

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them. They belong in libraries, just as libraries have already become places you can go to get access to ebooks, and audiobooks and DVDs and web content.

A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it. That includes health information. And mental health information. It’s a community space. It’s a place of safety, a haven from the world. It’s a place with librarians in it. What the libraries of the future will be like is something we should be imagining now.

Literacy is more important than ever it was, in this world of text and email, a world of written information. We need to read and write, we need global citizens who can read comfortably, comprehend what they are reading, understand nuance, and make themselves understood.

Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open.

According to a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, England is the “only country where the oldest age group has higher proficiency in both literacy and numeracy than the youngest group, after other factors, such as gender, socio-economic backgrounds and type of occupations are taken into account”.

Or to put it another way, our children and our grandchildren are less literate and less numerate than we are. They are less able to navigate the world, to understand it to solve problems. They can be more easily lied to and misled, will be less able to change the world in which they find themselves, be less employable. All of these things. And as a country, England will fall behind other developed nations because it will lack a skilled workforce.

Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.

I think we have responsibilities to the future. Responsibilities and obligations to children, to the adults those children will become, to the world they will find themselves inhabiting. All of us – as readers, as writers, as citizens – have obligations. I thought I’d try and spell out some of these obligations here.

I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing.

We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.

We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.

We have an obligation to use the language. To push ourselves: to find out what words mean and how to deploy them, to communicate clearly, to say what we mean. We must not to attempt to freeze language, or to pretend it is a dead thing that must be revered, but we should use it as a living thing, that flows, that borrows words, that allows meanings and pronunciations to change with time.

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it’s the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all. We have an obligation not to bore our readers, but to make them need to turn the pages. One of the best cures for a reluctant reader, after all, is a tale they cannot stop themselves from reading. And while we must tell our readers true things and give them weapons and give them armour and pass on whatever wisdom we have gleaned from our short stay on this green world, we have an obligation not to preach, not to lecture, not to force predigested morals and messages down our readers’ throats like adult birds feeding their babies pre-masticated maggots; and we have an obligation never, ever, under any circumstances, to write anything for children that we would not want to read ourselves.

We have an obligation to understand and to acknowledge that as writers for children we are doing important work, because if we mess it up and write dull books that turn children away from reading and from books, we ‘ve lessened our own future and diminished theirs.

We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

Look around you: I mean it. Pause, for a moment and look around the room that you are in. I’m going to point out something so obvious that it tends to be forgotten. It’s this: that everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it was easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on.This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, this city, exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things.

We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. We have an obligation to clean up after ourselves, and not leave our children with a world we’ve shortsightedly messed up, shortchanged, and crippled.

We have an obligation to tell our politicians what we want, to vote against politicians of whatever party who do not understand the value of reading in creating worthwhile citizens, who do not want to act to preserve and protect knowledge and encourage literacy. This is not a matter of party politics. This is a matter of common humanity.

Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. “If you want your children to be intelligent,” he said, “read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.

Whatever your aims, we can aid you in achieving your goals with our individualised approach and flexible sessions. Contact us:

Frances Mulinix 11/11/17 Frances Mulinix 11/11/17

When Breath Becomes Air - Living Courageously Without Closure

I have been very sick over the last few weeks. My body and my mind are in conflict, the former is in pain, exhausted and limited, the latter is ravenous and eager. I have taken some of this time to read not only for education but also for pleasure - an activity that is too rare nowadays.

Paul Kanalithi's When Breath Becomes Air is a short read, stirring, visceral. Here are the reflections of a neurosurgeon-philospher, a man with a promising career, a life cut short by cancer. His writing is from a unique perspective as Doctor and Patient, Surgeon and Poet, a man bent on living as he turns his mind to an early death. Seeking completion and meaning well into the middle of a life.

I found Lucy Kalanithi's epilogue to be the most moving part of this book, perhaps because I relate to her perspective as a wife, and I wanted to hear more from her (see Further Reading below). My love for my husband has brought me into a close encounter with the mortality of the beloved, a loss that I fear more than my own death. And that Is something I sit with from time to time.

Even in the midst of being surrounded by love, I am aware that everything is impermanent. Even as love washes over and through me I am grasping for it. This is one of the reasons why literature is so important - it not only grows our empathy by putting us in touch with the experience of another, it can put us in more immediate contact with our own Selves, our experiences and fears.

“bereavement is not the truncation of married love”

— C.S. Lewis

In my work, I am interested in bravery, in speaking authentically. The writing of this book, the sharing of this book with the public, is a brave act, it explores some of our greatest taboos, sickness, physical deterioration, death. The writing of this book was abridged by the author's death, but its publication was his dying wish. In that sense, it is unsettling. In a desire for an easy narrative arch into denouement, we will not find that here. Kalanithi's legacy is his daughter, his wife's love of him, and his writing. We so rarely get closure but we can always choose courage.

I decided to share some of the gems that stood out for me in this book.

"Even if I'm dying, until I actually die, I'm still living"

“I️ had passed from the subject to the direct object of every sentence of my life. In fourteenth-century philosophy, the word patient meant “the object of an action,’ and I️ felt like one.”

“I can’t go on, I thought, and immediately, it’s antiphon responded, completing Samuel Beckett’s seven words, words I had learned long ago as an undergraduate: I'll go on. I got out of bed and took a step forward, repeating the same phrase over and over: ‘i can’t go on. I’ll go on’ “

“The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time”

“Struggle toward the capital-T Truth, but recognize that the task is impossible - or that if a correct answer is possible, verification is impossible.
In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can only see part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and is still never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them”

"When you come to one of the many movements in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied."

YOU left me, sweet, two legacies,—
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;

You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me. - Emily Dickinson

From Lucy Kalanithi's Epilogue:

"I was his wife and a witness"

"I expected to feel only empty and heartbroken after Paul died. It never occurred to me that you could love someone the same way after he was gone, that I would continue to feel such love and gratitude alongside the terrible sorrow"

Further Reading:

Inside A Doctor's Mind At The End Of His Life - Interview with Lucy Kalanithi

Emily Dickinson Biography and Poetry

The New York Times - interview with Lucy Kalanithi

Whatever your aims, we can aid you in achieving your goals with our individualised approach and flexible sessions. Contact us:

Frances Mulinix 11/9/17 Frances Mulinix 11/9/17

Change and Learning - Become the Active Participant in Your Life

I know that many of us have sat slouched in a sesat in the classroom, muting the instructor's voice down to a Charlie Brown-like drone, watching the clock slowly tick by.

At a point in our work together when things aren't progressing easily, I sometimes see a client's face glaze over, as they will themselves into numbness or surreptitiously check the clock, counting down the moments until class will end.

These are the "make or break" moments, when my client can choose to wake up and fully engage with the work or to try and sleepwalk their way through it.

Which option will benefit you and enrich your life? What do you have to give up in order to gain from your efforts?

Self judgment? (Other people might think this is stupid)
Egotism? (I don't need to practice, I could just wing it)
Impatience? (I should be better at doing this by now)

Instead of fighting against feelings of discomfort or being unsettled, I invite clients to name these feelings, to sit with the questions that these bring up.

“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Steps in The Process of Change

Source: http://blog.prosci.com/ — Source: http://blog.prosci.com/

Change requires that you become self-aware, an active participant in your life.

1. Conscious Awareness

Notice what you are doing now - before we can change our habits these habits must become conscious. I often tell my clients about the four stages of learning (also known as Four Stages for Learning Any New Skill or Four Stages of Competence, initially developed by Noel Burch):

Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence
- I describe this to my clients as "I don't know what I don't know or that I am it doing incorrectly"
Stage 2 – Conscious Incompetence
- This is the frustration stage, which feels like "I am doing this wrong"/"everything is awful"
Stage 3 – Conscious Competence
- This is the feeling of coming through the frustration "I know what to do but it takes effort and energy"
Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence
- This is the victory, "I know what to do and it comes automatically to me"

2. Acceptance

What you are doing you are doing for a reason. In a world where we are fundamentally designed to survive, if you are still breathing, your strategies have served you well within this limited aim. Compensation or an adequate execution of a task may require your to acknowledge an aspect of yourself. Often, adults will tell me about an incident in their adolescent years that set them up for this compensation:

"I was called on to read in class and my words got so jumbled up I realised that I was bad at speaking in front of people"
"I wasn't paying attention and the teacher called on me. I had no idea of the answer and I felt like an idiot"
"The first time I went to a group for lesbians we had to go around the circle and say our name. I hate this, I hated being there, I opened my mouth and this weird, gruff voice that I didn't recognise came out of me"
"When I moved here, no one could understand what I was saying because of my accent"

Whatever it is, it is time to accept and integrate this part of yourself in order for change to occur.

3. Know What You Are Striving For With A Clear Intent

Source: https://www.inc.com/ — Source: https://www.inc.com/

Setting a clear goal will set a concrete pattern in your brain, preparing it to learn and achieve. Send a clear message to your body. This can take many forms:

Use Imagery by visualising yourself executing the actions perfectly or create a visual metaphor aiding you in acessing the technique (eg. your lungs are big bellows, deeply drawing in air on the inhale and emptying out completely on the exhale without strain or tension).
Start from sound principals of movement, voice, anatomy, psychology. You don't need to re-create the wheel or stumble through this on your own. This is why an experienced teacher who can work with you, your body, your learning style, your habits, your goals will save you from wasting time, feeling lost, and getting frustrated. There are no magic fixes but there are principals underlying the how and why of charismatic speakers, successful leaders, effective communicators, creative thinkers - strategies and skills that work.
Engage your whole body in the process. Breathing doesn't just require your lungs to move, breathing is the activation of centre. It requires your whole body to be part of the action. Feel the trachea and shoulders relax as the lungs expand the diaphragm swinging down and out. Feel the ribs and back expand. Feel your hip, knee, and ankle joints shift as your weight rebalances (forward-backward, left-right, upward-downward). Notice where your gaze falls, where your tongue sits in your mouth.
Tune-in to your emotions as you set this new pattern down. Using our bodies in new ways will stir up more than physical sensations, it will bring forward emotions. Instead of ignoring them, witness what you are experiencing. Sadness, joy, power, anger, frustration - these are all likely to come up in voice work.
Be aware of the space around you and work with it - where is your body in the room? Feel your feet pressing on the floor. Feel your spine stretch toward the floor and the ceiling. Notice the light in the room. Can you gauge how much volume you need to use in order to be heard by hearing the "feedback" of your voice off the walls?

Source: http://blog.johnspence.com/ — Source: http://blog.johnspence.com/

4. Practice

Practice in your session. Practice at home. Practice in the car. Practice at work. Practice at the store. Practice in the spaces through which you move each day. When you practice in different settings, you make the skills generalised (as opposed to only accessible in a specific context). Learning diaphragmatic breathing when you are relaxed on the floor with a teacher coaching you through the process will successfully aid you in finding the sensation, strengthening your muscles, and setting down the neural patterns. However, once diaphragmatic breathing it must be practiced in different contexts when sitting, standing, at rest, and at stress.

5. Understand that Change is Process

Change is ongoing. Allow it to be subtle. Allow it to be sudden. Allow it to be incremental. Allow it to be shocking. Releasing tension can create abrupt and significant shifts in our voices! Once you start putting the skills you learn to use, be prepared for change. Suddenly your voice sounds different. Suddenly you are connecting your voice to your message. Suddenly you are requiring that people listen to you. Be prepared to change how you enter a room or a situation. Suddenly you realise how exhilarating it is to speak in front of others. Be prepared to change how you see yourself and for others to react to you differently. Visualise how you will cope with change. Even success can scare us if we aren't prepared for it.

Whatever your aims, we can aid you in achieving your goals with our individualised approach and flexible sessions. Contact us.

Frances Mulinix 11/7/17 Frances Mulinix 11/7/17

#WritingWednesday - Fall Celebrations, Writing About Complex Topics with Specificity

This time of year is an interesting one for me. As this is the first November that I have spent in Georgia, I am seeing how similar things are - but different. Canada is where I am from and Thanksgiving already happened on October 8, and now Americans are gearing up for Thanksgiving on November 23.

Canada's history of Thanksgiving dates back to 1578 when an expedition led by Martin Frobisher in search of the Northwest Passage was beset by storms and disasters, scattering the ships. When the surviving ones collected again at Frobisher Bay in what is now Nunavut, they held a thanksgiving ceremony. In 1604 Samuel de Champlain arrived with his men and they also gave a feast of thanks. When New France was handed over to the English in 1763, the people of Halifax held a Thanksgiving. After the American Revolution, those in the 13 Colonies who were loyal to England moved to Canada and brought with them their Thanksgiving traditions of turkey, pumpkin, and squash. At the time, Canada was comprised of Upper and Lower Canada and both celebrated Thanksgiving on different days. After Confederation, a day of Thanksgiving was held in April 1872 to commemorate the recovery of the Prince of Wales. After the end of World War I, it was decreed that Armistice Day and Thanksgiving would both fall on the Monday in the week in which November 11 occurred. In 1957, Parliament set the date for Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October, giving us the holidays that we use today.

thanksgiving-celebrating-genocide-native-americans-5.jpg

remembrance_day_poppy-andy_everson_northwest_coast_artist_komoks_first_nation.jpg

Whilst the above is accepted as historically accurate, it is not a complete depiction. Context matters and Thanksgiving bears a complex and problematic legacy. These explorers, settlers, trappers, invaders came into a land that was already inhabited by many nations, each with their own languages and traditions. While Thanksgiving seems affirming to some, it serves as a reminder of invasion and colonisation to others. The images of the Europeans and Indigenous Peoples sitting together to share a meal is a comforting fiction that ignores a reality of genocide, of outlawing the traditional practices of the land's inhabitants, and the systematic violation of familial and clan ties.

When we turn our thoughts to November 11, again, it's important to recognise that the version of history that we are often taught is limited in its scope, to the point of being almost dishonest. There is a proud history of Indigenous people of North America serving in the Armed Forces in America and Canada. In fact, American Indians are the "ethnic group" to have served in greater numbers since the revolution.

In Canada and Australia, we celebrate November 11th, except we now call it Remembrance Day whilst Americans call it Veterans Day. At 11 am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month 1918, WWI was officially declared over.

In countries such as Canada and Australia (where I lived for almost six years), the poppy is used as a symbol of remembrance. This tradition began in 1921 due to the efforts of the American Moina Michael when she was inspired by the poem In Flander's Fields, written by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae.

For this #WritingWednesday, we're going to focus on the American poet Yusef Komunyakaa, a poet who takes on the complex realities, who isn't afraid to complicate socio-cultural mythologies widely accepted as factual. Komunyakaa was born in Louisiana and grew up during the Civil Rights era, serving during the Vietnam War. Komunyakaa has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Wallace Stevens Award for lifetime achievement from the Academy of American Poets, and he is a Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University’s graduate creative writing program.

Komunyakaa takes on complicated, difficult truths in American culture as his subject matter, sometimes indirectly in order to extract meaning from seemingly disparate events. His style will often use the syncopated rhythms of jazz and blues, music that created contexts in which to address bigotry and racism, to give voice to pain and heal wounds.

The poem below, "Facing It," was published in his collection Dien Cai Dau (Vietnamese for "crazy in the head"), published in 1988.

“I write on scraps of paper, sometimes in a notebook [....] I write everything in longhand first, and then I will go to the computer because I think of the computer as a tool in the same way a typewriter is. I always have written everything in longhand, then go to the instrument to create the illusion of something finished. It isn’t really finished until I draft many versions.”

— Yusef Komunyakaa

Facing It - Yusef Komunyakaa

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.

“The first poems I ever wrote were all in rhyme. But what I have begun to understand is that sometimes the rhyme becomes anything but natural. It becomes forced and it has something to do with that, I suppose, the possibilities within the context of a language that isn’t a Romance language: In Romance languages the rhymes are just more natural, even when translators translate free verse.”

— Yusef Komunyakaa

“I’ve realized that as a young boy I was so enthused with the landscape around me because I was discovering something new every day. And maybe that’s why this whole journey with poetry still exists, this discovering of something new every day. Sometimes what we discover out there has to do with reflection that is internal, getting into that interior.”

— Yusef Komunyakaa

“Language itself is political. But we don’t necessarily have to have politics on the surface of each poem. I think there’s a whole wide range of subject matter in just being a human being. And some of it is staring us in the eyes, and at other moments we have to search. Sometimes that search is out there, but sometimes it’s in here. Each of us as an individual is so different. Each individual is writing as a person. That’s important. We’re talking about free will, right? Because we are formed by so many different things. Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night,” for example. I realized a year or so ago that I was never afraid of the night, growing up in Louisiana. And that realization was so important to me. And I know so many young people—they are definitely afraid of the night. At this point in my life I realize that I can’t just walk out in the middle of the night. And that realization can be a kind of tyranny.”

— Yusef Komunyakaa

Your Turn:

Sometimes writing about big things (war, the loss of a loved one, holidays, traditions) leaves us blocked. Pick an object. Observe it. Start by describing your experience with it. How do other people interact with it?

Set the clock for 20 minutes. The only rule is to write nonstop until the timer goes off. We edit later after it has had a chance to sit for a bit.

Sources:

Yusef Komunyakaa and Ishion Hutchinson: What Is It to Be an American?

Further Reading:

The Code Switch Podcast: A Code Switch Thanksgiving Feast

Canadian Aboriginal Veterans and Serving Members Association

The Code Switch Podcast, Episode 7: You're A Grand Old Flag

Acquainted With The Night, Robert Frost

Whatever your aims, we can aid you in achieving your goals with our individualised approach and flexible sessions. Contact us:

a note on the body - Danez Smith

little prayer - Danez Smith

not an elegy for Mike Brown - Danez Smith

& even the black guy’s profile reads ‘sorry, no black guys’ - Danez Smith

juxtaposing the black boy & the bullet - Danez Smith

Your Turn

Further Reading and Sources:

Anthony Wade-Cooper on Finding a New Career in Retirement and Learning to Be Confident in Chaos

Home - Bruce Weigl

Dead Man, Thinking - Bruce Weigl

Your Turn

Further Reading

1. Write. Each Day. Every Day.

2. Write. Then Do Everything Else.

3. Write Something After Doing Nothing

Natalie Schneck On Bringing Dance to Every Body, Building a Business, and Achieving Balance

Steps in The Process of Change

1. Conscious Awareness

2. Acceptance

3. Know What You Are Striving For With A Clear Intent

4. Practice

5. Understand that Change is Process

Facing It - Yusef Komunyakaa