Poetry & Pushpins

~ The Writings of S.L. Woodford

Poetry & Pushpins

Monthly Archives: April 2014

A Tissue, a tissue, a tissue for my Grief

30 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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empathy, grief, New Haven

And here we are, perched on the precipice of May. In New Haven, that means final exam studying for Yale students, the cherry blossoms burgeoning in Wooster Square, and the one year anniversary of mom’s death.

As April ends, my body seems to be simultaneously remembering and bracing itself for the raw pain and disbelief that occurred in the early hours of a late May morning last year—my brother in Ohio and I in Connecticut, linked together by technology and shock, as we waited for the paramedics to leave and the coroner to come.

That shock, that silence, I experienced last May has quite worn off. Now, for the first time in my life, I am prone to tears in public. Everything from the singing of my mother’s favorite hymn to a flitting memory of a place, a time, an object we shared, brings on an onslaught of silent tears. Snotty, gross, face-pinching tears.

This Sunday was no exception. I attended a friend’s recital, and, as I’m prone to do these days, I thoroughly read the program notes in advance. The final piece, Triptych by Tarik O’Regan, dealt heavily with death and remembrance, i.e. plenty of emotional triggers for me. I breathed a sigh of relief. Big emotions would hit me around movement 2, and I’d be ready.

Except, I wasn’t.

As the choir began to sing about how we remember our dead through all life’s the seasons, both emotional and natural, I began to cry–quietly and hard. I reached into my pocket, looking for a tissue, a soft, white wisp of paper that would make my emotional rawness a little more polite (one should not have snot running down one’s face in public; unless, you are a toddler and do not yet have the proper motor skills to amend the situation). There was no tissue. I was out.

But at that moment, something soft fell on my left hand. I looked down. There was a tissue: white, clean, and from my friend Tawnie. She had also been reading the program notes, figured out that movement 2 would be hard for me, looked over for confirmation, and mercifully threw me a tissue.

I couldn’t help smiling through my tears. There was something utterly ridiculous and wonderful about the whole encounter. Though my body possessed a grief that was raw, deep, and barely controllable, that little white tissue, barely the weight of a feather, freely given, freely thrown, gently answered my loss and pain with love and care. That which appeared to be fragile conquered that which appeared to be fathomless.

 

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Opposite Sides of the Same Coin: Writing and Music

23 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Literature, Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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the creative process, writing

I have so many long, high-stakes writing projects due in the next few weeks. So, after work, I come home, get out my laptop, and type towards what feels like a ridiculously large word count. As I write, I usually listen to music—The Shin’s Oh, Inverted World, Telemann’s Pastorelle en Musique, and Dvorak’s Requiem seem to be my most intimate tonal companions at the moment. Of course, these familiar songs and movements remind me of my dear musician friends:  Lovely people I cannot actually talk to right now, because I have to not suck as a writer.

Yet, I feel their presence as I write. My musician friends are some of the deepest delights of my life. I love them for their kindness, their sensitivity, and above all, their patience. They gamely tolerate me, singing in their choirs, attending their premiers, and gracelessly trying to discuss music theory with them. They are the people from my inner circle who get my quiet, shy, inner life the best, understanding what makes me tick as a creator of stories.

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One of my closest friends, an excellent musician and a profound writer in her own right, describes musicians and writers as opposite sides of the same coin. I get that. Especially now that I am spending most of my free time in front of a laptop. For me, music and prose are artistic expressions of sensual textures, technical excellence, and emotions. In order to produce something decent, you must mix these three things together in balanced, interesting ways. If you posses empathy and good technique, your job as a musician or writer becomes much easier. And, if you plan to read your work out loud, the sound and rhythm of words can have just as much of an impact on your audience as a beautifully sung aria.

Where they differ is in how they connect with others. Music is present, immediate. Writing, not so much. I can write in my room and have no idea what impact my work is making on others. In a music hall, there is instant gratification. You can watch the body language of the audience, wink at a friend, catch the eye of your teacher or director for affirmation. People influence your performance, whether you want them to or not. Another musician friend of mine put it well when he said:  “I have spent my entire life learning how to forget that I have an audience.” This experience of forgetting is not one that I live out as I “perform” the task of writing. Instead, I spend most of my time remembering that I have an audience.  Being tweeted and quoted by strangers helps this process—but, I still am surprised when the creations of my private inner life become public.

All I need to create is me and my laptop. And, I cannot get reassuring gazes from my laptop. Its screen simply mirrors me: my emotions, my fears, my mistakes, and my hopes for myself and my life with others, as I play with words and fight grammar.

 

On Bobbed Hair and Freedom

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Fashion, Feminism, Literature, Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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books, history, the creative process, vintage fashion, writing

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Image courtesy of: Lillian Goes Vintage

As the days begin to get warmer and we begin to anticipate spring, I get to anticipate something else, just as lively, just as youthful: bobbing my hair.

After work, I shall happily walk to my downtown salon where my stylist will greet me with a hug and a smile. It will be under her loving and creative eye that my thick, wavy locks will become straight and precisely angular. Transformed, I’ll step out into the New Haven night, my gait now adjusted to a new-found, joyous swagger.

I used to have long hair as a teenager. Like really, really, long hair. All the way down to my waist. It took forever to wash and dry every morning because it was so thick—I’d spend at least an hour on its upkeep everyday. And, in order to tame its long, wild waviness, I spent a lot of my allowance and summer job money on hair products and blow dryers.

But, when I bobbed my hair in my early twenties, something wonderful happened: My hair regiment became both luxurious and speedy.

Now, I could justify buying expensive hair products. A twenty dollar bottle of shampoo would last me months rather than weeks. And, if I’d let my bob air-dry with a little bit of leave-in conditioner, I could fill up my mornings with new activities. That hour I used to spend washing and drying my hair I currently spend on doing household chores and writing. Both activities are much more sanity-inducing and soul-nurturing than standing in front of a mirror, blasting my head with hot air, ever was.

Transformed, I’ll step out into the New Haven night, my gait now adjusted to a new-found, joyous swagger.

 

I must confess that wearing my hair in a bob makes me feel like a rebel. Though, given this haircut’s legacy, I think that I have every right to feel a bit daring when there is more of my hair on the salon floor than on my head. Did you know that in the 1920s bobbed hair was met with raised eyebrows and shock? Young women who undertook the cut were considered unladylike upstarts by America’s then older generations. Simply by shedding those extra layers of tresses, young women began to give themselves permission to take new, individual risks in their daily lives. Risks that worried the conformist, virtuous group-think of those who came of age in the mid to late Nineteenth Century.

My favorite contemporary example of this courageous personal daring occurs in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” Bernice, a pretty, but timid and dull Midwestern girl, visits her lively East Coast cousin, Marjorie. To help her overcome her dullness (and give herself something to do), Marjorie teaches Bernice how to flirt with rich, Ivy League boys, an action that costs Marjorie her own popularity. To regain her status as alpha female, Marjorie then emotionally blackmails Bernice into getting her hair bobbed—right before the young women attend a ball at the home of a staunch anti-bob society family! So, what does timid, dull Bernice do in return? Not what you’d expect. Her short hair gives her the freedom and the courage to enact revenge on her catty cousin in a rather fitting way: Marjorie also gets her hair bobbed before the ball…but, the cut happens with a pair of household shears and while she is asleep.

I think about Bernice a lot as as I rush around my house in the morning, barely keeping to schedule, but always deeply grateful for those few extra moments of writing time, or chore time, the a.m. hours continue to grant me. I think the older generations of the early Twentieth Century were right to fear the bob. It did (and does) give a rather particular freedom to women. The freedom to pursue personal development rather than a generic, societal beauty role. Though Amanda Palmer said it (or something very similar to it) about the maintenance of female body hair (or perhaps it was one of her fans who said it and she took up its mantle), I think it also applies to the bob: “The less time I spend on hair care, the more time I have for the Revolution.”

I couldn’t agree more. Even if my “Revolution” is an open space for morning writing and chores, my bobbed hair and I definitely have more time for it.

Texturing Text: Or, Adventures in Web Design

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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New Haven, technology, the creative process

“The Library site is looking great.” I type, in an e-mail to my website designer. “I was wondering if we could do something more with the background? I’m attaching a few photos that may give it more texture.”

We are currently putting the finishing touches on a new website, for the library I direct. It will help our community members and students access the information in our collection faster. So far, I’m enjoying the task, learning a lot about WordPress and web design as we progress.

The new site is clean, balanced, and modern looking, to mimic the building that surrounds the library’s moderate-sized collection. There are splashes of navy blue, a subtle reminder to the viewer of our Yale affiliation. And, if we can do it, there will be a background, rough, warm, and textured.

I was born in the mid-80s. Unlike the students I now serve (especially the college age ones), I remember a time when computers and smartphones were not primary research tools. I’m old enough to remember that learning, that seeking information, has a sensual experience to it. I know how it feels to hold a book in my hands, slowly slipping my fingertips across the paper’s light, fibered surface as I turn another page and learn another fact.

Though students will visit my site and take in information, clothed in svelte text on a smooth computer screen, there will be something else—a little warmer, a little softer, a little different—going on in the background. Their fingers will not touch fiber, but their eyes will feel the presence of a different sort of texture.

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