Like Woody Allen, I’ve done some time on the couch.
Unlike Woody though, I didn’t stay supine. I came to the conclusion that I could either spend the next decade analysising my life or, I could get out there and live it!
Allen has always maintained that his own analysis has enabled him to be more creative, not less, which is kind of interesting, and maybe says something about the type of relationship he had with his analyst, a view that was confirmed yesterday at the ICA, who hosted a viewing of Allen’s film, Deconstructing Harry, followed by a Q&A panel in association with The Institute of Psychoanalysis.
To some extent, Allen’s prolific productivity - a film a year, speaks for itself. Either way, I don’t think it’s cut and dried. Working issues through in analysis does give you a deeper and clearer meaning, sometimes even a changed perspective, and occasionally, a revelation. At it’s best for me, analysis did just that.
But at some point, doesn’t the artist have to step out from behind the shadows of the analysis, and put pen to paper, rather than pouring it all out on the couch or, does the couch enable you to generate more ideas for the page, the canvas?
Allen’s body of work seems to suggest that it’s a mixture of the two, and that his deconstruction of ideas is working just fine!
A friend of my husband’s invited us to hear a band called The Plastic People of the Universe. Heard of them? No, I hadn’t either. But they were the Stones of the ’60s in what was then the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Dissidents at heart and in their music, they came to London to perform a set at the South Bank. Tom Stoppard’s 2006 play Rock ‘n Roll was inspired by them. I was a bit sceptical about the music to start with, not being a huge fan of The Velvet Underground, which was a major influence on the band, BUT, what inspired me, was the pure poetry of the music!
I was particularly captivated by Vratislav Brabenec, the Saxophinist who has below shoulder length grey hair, and John Lennon style glasses, and a quiet soulful style. There was something wizard-like about his physicality - I wouldn’t have been surprised had he disappeared off into a grotto, or said, ‘hold on a sec while I just magic in a bit of faerie dust’.
So the following day when my husband gave me a copy of his book, The Center of the World is Everywhere, I opened it in awe. Here was a collection of stories written for children, a collection of stories that Vratislav told his daughter as a child.
Vratislav has shared his life with all sorts of animals - from intelligent horses and dogs to birds of all kinds. A musician, gardener, forester, farmer and poet. He doesn’t even underestimate chickens - as a child, he trained chickens to fly onto a stick as soon as he held it out. He loved to talk about animals with his daughter, Nikola, when she was small, and he has written these stories down for other children to enjoy. In his life, he says he has encountered two miracles: women and pine trees! What a man.
The book is stunningly illustrated by Matej Forman, son of the filmaker Milos Forman.
The stories introduce children to the wonders of living with animals and the lessons they impart to us:
“Woodpecker (I haven’t laughed like that in a long time)
Courtship, bait and spells
gold-plated charms, hocus pocus
knocks on your soul’s door
where a fire burns
from a spark
hidden deep inside
don’t trip
over a wandering root …”
Sadly only 100 copies of this book have been printed in English by Meander Publishing House. This is crying out to be picked up by a Publisher who has an eye on using social media to promote it ….
This story made me smile. My husband showed me the article in the London Evening Standard about Baby Archie - is he the new Jamie Oliver? Archie’s dad, Nick, was made redundant, and became a stay-at-home Dad, and started cooking with Archie, his son and creating a video blog. The blog gets over 1,000 hits per day, and a book deal is in the works!
Now, they cook every day together, and Archie loves his food. Given the ‘fussy eaters’ children can be, Nick’s approach is proving to be a huge inspiration for parents, and not just parents - I watched the video on Plum Clafoutis, something I have always resisted making, much to my husband’s chagrin - having seen how easy it is, I’m making it!
This guy is going to rock the foodie world with his approach, and so watch out Annabel Kiemel … Nick doesn’t hide his carrots, make them into eyebrows so Archie won’t notice. Oh no. Nick has followed a ‘baby led weaning’ approach, so Archie doesn’t think carrots are eyebrows, he knows they are carrots, and eats them!
The other thing I like about Nick’s approach is the little aside stories he includes on his blog, like the one in this video about the Mum who lost her daughter. Yes, life is precarious, and it’s also precious, and cooking together, sticky fingers and all, makes you stop and appreciate one another.
He didn’t set out to ‘make money’ from his idea, he just used this as a creative outlet, and a way to interact with other parents online. The irony is, of course, that he will probably end up being a squillionaire!!
Not Italy, although Italy was OK, but I was too distracted by her pasta eating …
But in India her journey deepens and so does her writing. Maybe she planned it this way, or maybe it was happy coincidence. Nothing, I have learned recently, about this book’s arrival, was coincidental.
Writing like this:
“If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be … a prudent insurance policy.
I’m not interested in the insurance industry. I’m tired of being a skeptic, I’m irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.”
Mark Rothko said: ‘anyone who eats food at these prices, won’t look at my paintings.’ It was this statement which preceded him giving the money back - returning the $35,000 paycheck he received to paint four canvases which were to hang in the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram building in Manhattan.
This moment forms the basis of John Logan’s outstanding new play, RED which opened at The Donmar Warehouse in London on Dec 2. I saw the play on New Year’s Eve, which felt like a fitting way to end the last year of the decade. “What do you see?” Rothko repeatedly asks his assistant. Indeed, what does one see? It’s a searching question as I reflect on the last decade, which has seen a full quota of red …
As Rothko said, knowing what has gone before us, what our cultural ancestors did, who they were, and what they aimed to teach us in literature, art, music, history, anthropology … gives us a presence of mind and a context to live within, to redefine ourselves by. History informs the present, and those lessons we learn from it enable us to take the next step.
Maurice Sendak is a genius. How is it that I discovered this only recently? My parents should be thrashed for not reading his classic book, Where the Wild Things Are to me …!
What’s even more exciting is that I read yesterday, on Dave Eggers site, that he has published a novel based on the movie, Where the Wild Things Are, called simply - The Wild Things. How cool is that. When I saw the movie I said to my husband: this story deserves a book … ah, to be proved right again …
The movie reminded me again that outsiders - also known as ‘wild people’, are just geniuses who haven’t found their rightful niche yet. Or, maybe they are new niche makers?
I don’t make new year resolutions anymore, but I am tempted to draw up a ‘wild things list’, all the wild things I want to do next year, starting with, drumroll please … restarting my dance classes - those that I stopped when I was a teenager and had a more serious and studious job to do. I miss that feeling of joy that I get when I dance, wildly or not, it’s just one of the ways I express myself. Others I can think of now are:
Not wasting anymore time …
Travelling to India and Egypt, and gliding down the Nile on an Egyptian steamer wearing my flapper dress
Finally getting to Bali … living and painting in Bali …
Opening a retreat in Morrocco, and filling it with hot pink cushions from the souks
I’m sure there will be more.
Got any wild things you want to do next year? Tell me.
I’ve been thinking for some time now that the power dynamic between author and publisher has shifted, in favour of the author. Which is great news. This has happened, largely because the options to self-publish and distribute have grown up and become respectable, rather than being a disadvantaged teenager. This respectability has given authors an opportunity to generate more income for themselves, rather than giving the lion’s share to the publisher, and therefore also build their brand, and touch their tribe.
The author Nick Kettles is doing this with his book, ‘The All-Seeing Boy and the Blue Sky of Happiness’, which recently garnered an endorsement from His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Impressed with this achievement, and curious about how he had done this, I have interviewed him for my blog. His insights into his creative process are worth reading, if you are struggling to find an audience and publisher for your book. His secret is so simple, and yet easy to overlook in a marketplace that thrives on noise …
What happens when you create a bigger game for your book?
I had been introduced to Nick Kettles after I told a friend I was looking to interview authors with self-publishing success stories. Intrigued by the title, The All Seeing Boy and the Blue Sky of Happiness on Nick’s promotional card, I looked up his web site http://www.newmythcreate.com to read his biog. I wanted to know the backstory, so called Nick for a chat. We connected, and discovered we shared similar values. I was impressed by the way he had created his own market for his book by combining intuition with large doses of ‘bare-faced gumption.’ My kind of person.
I started by asking him why he had chosen to self-publish vs. publishing with a mainstream publisher. It turned out that this wasn’t his first choice, and that like many authors, he came to self-publishing after being rejected by 10 mainstream publishers. At this point, Nick’s story was sounding all too familiar.
“I was appalled by the lack of dialogue and patronizing feedback from publishers who just didn’t see the market potential for my book, and were so risk averse.”
The rejections, however, proved to be a spur for him not to give up. Instead of shoving the manuscript in his desk drawer, as most disheartened authors do at this stage, he followed his intuition which was telling him that the book did have a valuable message to impart. This was an intuition which would ultimately result in the book receiving an endorsement from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. But that was all to come.
Nick decided to take the risk himself, and to explore publishing the story as an ebook. He had a sideline interest in ebooks, having completed a non-fiction ebook proposal for A C Black. Although the proposal was rejected, the research he had done for the proposal turned out to be useful. He knew that the way to successfully market the ebook was to create a viral campaign where it was forwarded on via email, a strategy he had seen work successfully in the personal development niche.
Before launching his ebook, Nick did his due diligence. He recognized that if his book was ever to be picked up by a mainstream publisher, they would need to see statistics to mitigate their risk. So he set about collecting them, partly, at this stage, out of revenge to prove them wrong. Some of the results were surprising:
The first thing he did was test his manuscript with 5 readers, all of whom were ‘blown away’ by the story. This gave him confidence to keep going.
He then asked a well-known print publisher “how many downloads would I need to get before you are interested.” The publisher didn’t have an answer, but guessed around 500. This didn’t seem to be a huge and unachievable number, as Nick knew from his reader feedback, (chosen carefully to represent a cross-section of parents, children and professionals), that there was an audience interested in the book’s message.
He targeted 50 expert endorsements and received 35 good ones, reader comments from authors like William Bloom, Dr. Aretoula Fullam, Carl Honore (author of In Praise of Slowness) and Susie Anthony (author of A Map to God).
And finally, he created a Wordpress blog to promote the free ebook.
Over a period of 18 months, the book was downloaded over 450 times, and was translated into German. Not bad, although it hadn’t reached its tipping point yet. Nick began to question, ‘what next’, and to wonder whether it was time to quit. This proved to be another turning point, as he began to explicitly state his intention for the book.
Around this time he had been involved with playing The Bigger Game, which is a personal transformation model based on a board game which allows you to unfold a mission and purpose bigger than yourself. Nick’s goal up to this point had been the promotion of the universal message of loving kindness. He was motivated by a sense of adventure rather than money, and although he was somewhat irked by the publishing industry’s response, he was happy going solo.
Nick had written the book for his godson, out of a desire to create and share to move someone - he wrote it for an audience of 1 he really loved and at the heart of the book (some would say ‘the book’s message’), was the Tibetan principle and practice of ‘loving kindness’. As Dr Jo Nash, Lecturer in MA Psychoanalytic Studies at Sheffield University writes:
“This story is an evocative tale about how thoughts determine our experience,
and illustrates a simple technique for transforming our own and others suffering
through the practice of loving kindness.
A rather special tramp initiates a small boy into the magical world of ‘blue sky
thinking’, based upon an ancient Tibetan meditation practice of compassionate
visualisation. This aims to alleviate others suffering and create positive intentions in
the practitioner’s mind stream, so opening the heart. The results of blue sky thinking
are a re-enchantment with the world through an experience of the transformational
power of generating loving, compassionate feelings towards others.”
Knowing how easy it is for writers to be disheartened, I asked Nick what had kept him going. His reply goes to the core of what the book is about.
“I had a stake, a clear vision for the book, which was to spread the message of loving kindness to the world. The stake was a belief that fueled my actions, and was a place to recover to when I lost my way.
I got stuck however, and lost motivation and it was at that point we got His Holiness the Dalai Lama to read the book. That helped me to re-align my stake around a tangible cause - and suddenly the book was no longer dedicated to one child - my godson - but to 100,000s of Tibetan children”.
Nick believes that having a bigger wish for humanity creates a different alignment for a book’s success, rather than saying it is simply to meet a need in the market. This took him out of his place of ego and getting something back - it was no longer all about him, the ego of the writer.
One of the steps in the Bigger game, is to ask what kind of action related to this project would make you gulp? Nick, together with his partner Priya, brainstormed together, and decided to send the ebook to 10 prominent Tibetan Buddhists, including the actor and activist Richard Gere, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Out of those 10, he received only one reply, which was this:
“His Holiness is happy to have a copy of your e-book “The All Seeing Boy and the Blue Sky of
Happiness”. His Holiness liked the story and hopes it will help to spread the message of
loving-kindness among the readers. His Holiness sends his appreciation and gratitude to you
and your colleagues for this wonderful piece of work.”
Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Ambivalent about appearing egotistical in using this quotation to promote the book, Nick kept this quote to himself for 2 months. Eventually his partner Priya encouraged him to share the comments, so he went back to His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Office and asked for permission to use his quote. They agreed, and suggested using the book to promote the Tibetan Children’s Villages. Nick agreed, and republished the book with a new introduction dedicating it to raising awareness of the Tibetan Children’s Villages’ mission to care for Tibetan children refugees whose purpose it is to meet the most critical educational needs of Tibetan refugee children, in Dharamsala, India.
Nick had finally found his bigger game for the book.
To date, the ebook has a readership of 1000, throughout 18 countries, and is slowly edging towards its tipping point.
If you have been inspired by this story, and would like to help promote the book’s message, please forward this article which contains the ebook link, on to as many people as you like. The ebook is free to download and share.
Reflecting on the many breakthroughs and learning points throughout this process, I asked Nick if he could have mapped this outcome from the beginning.
“I’m a curious person, and I treated this as an adventure. The strategy unfolded through trial and error, but it was underpinned by my strong intuition to share the message, and by my desire to create a personal touch by involving people in the project. However the real transformational shift happened when we made the dedication to a specific and tangible cause, rather than just the promotion of a universal spiritual message.”
I watched the London preview of The September Issue last night, R J Cutler’s documentary about the making of Vogue’s September issue. It was absolutely fascinating! Why? Because it tells two really insightful stories. One is the actual making of the magazine’s biggest annual issue, and the second, is the relationship between Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington.
I loved all the details of how the magazine issue is conceived and executed; like a book, it starts with a central idea, and then blossoms out from there, through sumptuous visual narratives. And what was very clear was that this works because of the central relationship between Wintour and Coddington, who complement one another into the perfect marriage: Wintour’s decisiveness balancing Coddington’s vision. Together, they tell the Vogue stories, and although it’s Wintour’s name over the door, it’s Coddington’s genius as a creative visionary that fuels Vogue with one story after another. Anna maybe the business brains behind Vogue, the editor who knows how to cut and cull the unnecessary from the pictures, but it’s Coddington’s soulful passion for photography that gives Wintour the canvas to cull from.
Even if you aren’t into fashion, just pick up a copy of US Vogue and sift through the pictures. Each one tells a story.
It inspired me to think about partnership and collaboration, and to ask myself: who do I want to collaborate with next and why. And I realized, if I fancy myself as a bit of a Coddington, who will be my Wintour?!
Ursula K Le Guin’s review in Saturday’s Guardian newspaper, of Margaret Atwood’s new novel - The Year of the Flood, is worth reading purely for the quality of her writing, and critical analysis. That is, the quality of Le Guin’s writing and analysis.
As I studied the illustration in the review, I noticed it was by Clifford Harper. Something about the way in which the two women faced one another in the illustration, both standing on the rooftops of different buildings, perfectly illustrated the radical subject matter of this novel. These women are what Atwood calls The Gardeners, an eco-religious sect who farm rooftops.
Le Guin says: “Their hymnbook rhythms and Blakean dodges are appropriate to their sentiments, which aren’t as simple as they might seem at first:
But Man alone seeks Vengefulness,
And writes his abstact Laws on stone;
For this false Justice he has made,
He tortures limb and crushes bone.
Is this the image of a god?
My tooth for yours, your eye for mine?
Oh, if Revenge did move the stars
Instead of Love, they would not shine.”
In an endnote in her book, Atwood invites us to hear these Gardeners’ hymns, which are printed about every third chapter, and sung on her websites, and to use them “for amateur devotional or environmental purposes”.
I looked up Clifford Harper’s website, and found there just a stunning summary and collection of these radical black and white illustrations, which speak, as he says, louder than words.
"Your paintings are like auragraphs. You pick up the information from the person and express it through art. However, they are on an altogether deeper level - not dealing with the outer projection of ourselves, not even with the spirit, but on a soul level. They are soul reflections".
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