Nows and Forevers

Before there was Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages, Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones” and a few years after Donald M. Murray’s writing-as-a-process, Peter Elbow espoused the concept of freewriting and voice in “Writing Without Teachers” and “Writing with Power.”

Elbow died this month.

I follow a daily writing practice, that old Latin aphorism, never a day without a line. Never a day without many lines, most of which have nothing to do with making a living nor may ever see the light of day. I use some of Elbow’s principles just about every time I write. Writing is a process of exploration, of finding your voice, as much as it is a mode of communication, and the two are intrinsically linked. That was one of the key teachings of Peter Elbow.

Elbow wasn’t my entry into free writing. That was picking up “Writing Down the Bones” at a bookstore when I was on vacation in Maine in March 1987, and devouring the book on a snowy evening and going into Ellsworth to grab as many spiral-bound notebooks as I could find and filling page by page, notebook by notebook, with my free writing every day ever since.

Most people who know me either love or hate the fact that when I get into something, I really get into it. So it was with this. I got home and began to find and devour everything I could about writing, finding Murray’s work and Roy Peter Clark and Donald Fry’s “Coaching Writers” and, “Writing without Teachers,” among others.

Elbow was more academic than Goldberg, but as evangelical as Murray. Donald M. Murray, who was both a top flight academic AND a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, loomed larger as an influence because he understood both worlds.

Elbow wrote a lot about the process and lowering the bar at the beginning.

“Make some words, whatever they are, and then grab hold of that line and reel in as hard as you can. Afterwards you can throw away lousy beginnings and make new ones. This is the quickest way to get into good writing,” he wrote.

There’s something basic and yet brilliant in this advice. And in this:

“The habit of compulsive, premature editing doesn’t just make writing hard. It also makes writing dead. Your voice is damped out by all the interruptions, changes, and hesitations between the consciousness and the page. In your natural way of producing words there is a sound, a texture, a rhythm — a voice — which is the main source of power in your writing. I don’t know how it works, but this voice is the force that will make a reader listen to you … But if you abandon it, you’ll likely never have a voice and never be heard.”

Several awesome things happened in 1958. One was the beginning of the beloved children’s series, “A Bear Called Paddington.”

Got to see “Paddington in Peru” at the movie theatre, I am revisiting saying goodbye to the Paddington statue at Paddington Station in my last moments in London last time around.

I love Paddington the books, Paddington the movies (the first two were sublime and “Peru” was better than I was expecting), and Paddington the Railroad Station. Why the station? Well, they filmed part of the first movie there of course. Plus, Paddington is how you get from Heathrow to Wales. I’ve been to Paddington Station six times, actually, and it was nice to see a glimpse of the station again in this movie, too.

They went and moved the Paddington Statue between 2020 when I was there just before Covid-19 and 2022 when I was there last. And frankly, it was harder to find. Not the best way to treat a Marmalade-loving bear, is it?

Anyway, we loved the movie and it’s great. Missed Sally Hawkins as Mrs. Brown, but everything else was as it should be.

I didn’t plan on posting about The Band two days in a row, but its last member, Garth Hudson, died today in Woodstock, New York. They’re having a heck of a concert in Heaven with Levon, Robbie, Richard, Rick and Garth.

We have a lot to thank Garth for: recording and saving all of the basement tapes with Dylan; being solely responsible for the emergence of the funky wah-wah pedal (first in this song); and helping to elevate a bar band to immortality. As Garth and the late, great Levon Helm pointed out in a documentary from the ‘90s, there weren’t a lot of rules back then so they kept trying things.

(A useful creative lesson, actually.)

My everlasting memory of Garth Hudson comes from this performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1969: At 1:40, you see him in his element.

It’s pure joy.

One of the art works that went into the public domain on Jan. 1 is “A Farewell to Arms,” the World War I epic by Ernest Hemingway that was first published in 1929. I actually own a hardcover first edition, sans dust jacket, of “A Farewell to Arms,” which I picked up for a dollar in the ‘80s when I went to a library used book sale in Connecticut.

I didn’t know it was a first edition until, one day a few weeks later, I picked it up and noticed it wasn’t a reprint and it was in great condition for being almost as old as my grandparents. No one else noticed either, although that was in the day when book dealers and others didn’t have instant access to databases on their iPhones.

Turns out I’ve read a lot from 1929, looking at this list. And some of the Marx Brothers’ best, too.

What a really oddly personal snow map. The orange blotches of intensity and projected snow depth — in the Hudson Valley, Connecticut, and northern Maine — are hitting exactly where I spent much of my life. And where most of my thoughts go, even now. #FunWithData

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Saturn in a telescope, and all I could think about is, that doesn’t look real, it looks like a picture book. I’m by no means an astronomer but I enjoy looking up at the sky. I agree with the guy I ran into last year when were both chasing the comet: There’s so much wonder in the world and you can see God’s hand in everything.

One of the best parts of living in northern Maine along the Canadian border was the lack of outside light and the ability to see the Milky Way and the Northern Lights much more often.

Here’s a combination that I wouldn’t have thought of, Burl Ives singing Bob Dylan. Spoiler alert: it’s quite good. Ives is a complicated figure, much more so than his reputation as the host of “Rudolph” would suggest. He was a folk music pioneer who worked with Woody Guthrie and Peter Seeger, really menacing actor (and Oscar winner), and someone who lost Seeger’s respect after testifying during the blacklisting.

I have an odd New Year’s tradition for the past 30+ years tradition: the first song I listen to every year is Artie Shaw and His Orchestra’s version of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Begiuine.”

It happened because in the early ‘90s, my aunt had found a bunch of my paternal grandfather’s records and said I could take whatever I wanted over Christmas break. A lot of big band, some Burl Ives and Roger Miller among the three dozen or so LPs through about the late 60s. I brought home the big band records and this was the first I put in the turntable, a little after I woke up on New Year’s Day.

I was hooked, and the habit stuck. It’s hard to go wrong with Artie Shaw and Cole Porter.