Attending to the Creative Soul
I’m sitting in a hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee, having treated myself to two nights of hotel bliss while the world outside my window storms its way through the day. Predictions are possible floods and tornadoes, so I decided the best way to ride out the weather was to look at it rather than drive in it. The bonus is that I can take this day and just breathe it in, rest peacefully, take stock of the last two weeks, and update this blog.
In a couple of days I’ll be home. Quite a bit of updating to do since my last post - I hardly know where to start! Here are some highlights and reflections, in no particular order.
Memphis
This city is a detour from my original travel plan, and has turned out to be a great decision, if I do say so myself! On the way back from Taos, I decided that I needed to avoid the predicted snowy weather across Kansas and Missouri, so I took a southern route and put Memphis on my path, thinking that might be a fun place to rest, regroup, and reflect. The last time I was here was for a national fencing tournament when Conrad was but a young boy, so it has been awhile. And back then we did not really explore much of the city, being consumed with the tournament and having fun with the other Michigan fencers and their families that were also there.
That time was fun, but this time has been a treat in a different way. I arrived early enough in the day that I could wander the streets to my heart’s content. My hotel is within walking distance of the downtown sights and sounds, so I didn’t have to worry about driving and parking the camper into tight spaces. The sunset over the Mississippi River was incredible. And what a joy to be in the birthplace of blues and rock and roll! (of course I had to stop in at the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum) Live music everywhere! Art everywhere! Delicious food everywhere!
The hotel staff recommended BB King’s Blues Club on famous Beale Street as a perfect place for great music and great food, and it did not disappoint!
Strolling around Memphis was a delight to the senses that I soaked up all afternoon and into the evening, finally tearing myself away from the fabulous performance at BB King’s Blues Club when I caught myself yawning repeatedly and realized I needed to get myself to bed. (I must have been really tired to be yawning through one of the best hard driving blues bands around…). When they took their break, I made my escape.
I didn’t even mind that it was Valentine’s Day and I was sitting alone among all the celebrating couples. The people who were near me at the bar were sweet and kind and we shared our exuberant enjoyment of the amazing music together.
Dodge City
This was a trip down memory lane that I couldn’t resist. As a pedigreed Boomer (according to my birth certificate), I had to see the city where the TV show Gunsmoke was based. I enjoyed learning about the “real” Dodge City along with experiencing the nostalgia of the TV show.
Dodge City was one of several western towns I spent some time in on my way to Taos and also as I began heading back east. Wichita, Kansas. Boise City, Oklahoma. Clayton, New Mexico. Eagle Nest and Cimarron, New Mexico. Las Vegas, New Mexico. Amarillo, Texas. In the towns where I stopped, walked around, read the historical markers, or visited a local museum, I learned that the so-called “glory days” of the wild west were actually only a few years, mostly in the late 1800s. I’m sure I already knew that, but it was even more apparent as these small towns celebrating their storied histories seemed to focus almost exclusively on the 1870’s through to the first decade or so of the 1900s. All the TV shows, movies, books, etc. that romanticize that history are referencing a period that spanned a mere 20 or 30 years, for the most part. Wild towns popped up to accommodate the cattle drives, gold rushes, and other attempts to seek various fortunes, and then they receded into the background of history as circumstances and technology forced changes to that wild way of life. While that was going on, there was a simultaneous and relentless push to force the Native American tribes into ever smaller tracts of land in the interest of European westward expansion and homesteading. Spain and the United States were also fighting over territory, and disaffected Confederate soldiers were recruited to fight with Teddy Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” in Cuba, among other places.
It wasn’t easy being a single woman in those rough and tumble years of the romanticized West. This is Frankie Bell, one of the more notorious of them.
What was going on in the Southwest during that time was juxtaposed against the industrial revolution and the gilded age that exemplified the East, a history that I am more familiar with. As I travelled through the West, where I have not spent nearly as much time as I have in the spaces east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason Dixon Line, I marveled at the natural beauty that surrounded me, and wondered why the naked aggression of the settlers and gunslingers has been treated with so much romanticism and has received so much air time. Much of the history of the West was extremely ugly and violent. Why do we celebrate that? In my boomer childhood my siblings and I played “cowboys and Indians” just like all our neighborhood friends did, and thought nothing of it. We watched shows like Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Daniel Boone, Death Valley Days, Rawhide, The Rifleman, to name a few that I remember. There were/are many others.
What is the relevance of this historical violence, done in the name of “taming” the west, to the mental (and physical) violence we see being perpetrated all around us today? Food for thought. And whose lens are we using when we think and talk about the history of the “wild west?” Some museums were better than others in describing the more unsavory aspects of our history of expansion and state-building, who it hurt and who it helped.
Oklahoma City and Little Rock
I had no particular route or agenda in mind when I left Taos, but I kept my eye on the weather and decided that I could come across the plains through Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas without a weather mishap. Except for one rather icy and snowy patch of road, the days were beautiful for driving long distances, and I found myself stopping often to take pictures, which is probably a direct result of the retreat I had just attended. (keep going to get to that, or just skip down to the appropriate section). The thing about stopping to get out of the van to take pictures, or taking a detour to go see something that your sister has texted you is in the area where you are, is that you end up shortening the distance you are able to traverse in a day, or taking longer to get somewhere. This wasn’t a problem for me and was a conscious choice I made. The trip home, for me, is about enjoying a slower pace of travel, and I have flexibility about when I get to Michigan. On the way out I needed to be in Taos by a certain day and time, and that deadline shaped the way I managed that part of the trip, although I was able to build in plenty of road trip sightseeing on that part of the trip as well.
I was enamored with the many windmills I saw dotting the plains in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
From Amarillo, where I didn’t tour around but did manage to find a fun place to have a steak dinner (had to do that in one of the cattle capitals of the world…), I drove to Oklahoma City. I arrived early enough in the day to visit the American Banjo Museum. Woohoo! A real treat for this banjo enthusiast. I also sought out the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, a very well-funded and huge enterprise that added to my fascination of how we Americans think about the history of the West and how that history contributes to our present collective American conscience and identity. The banjo museum was a much more modest affair, and did a great job covering the historical roots of the instrument and tracking the rise and fall of its popularity over time.
Did you know Taylor Swift plays the banjo? Respect!!
Balanced against the joy and romanticism of banjos and cowboys was the experience I had at the Alfred P. Murrah Memorial in downtown Oklahoma City. I couldn’t believe it has been thirty years since that tragedy. I remember it vividly even though I was very far removed from the experience of those who lived through it in a much more personal way. Part of the National Park Service, the memorial outside where the building stood is a beautiful but sobering reminder of the futility of violence as an answer to anything. I did not have time to go through the museum building attached to the outdoor memorial, but hope to do so on another trip through the area.
I find I am enjoying touring these different places in the off-season. In the smaller museums I am often the only guest, which I kind of like. Also, when I am driving on the smaller roads that connect the bigger places, I am often the only vehicle on the road for miles and miles, sharing it only with the occasional truck going about their normal day, often hauling trailers full of horses or cattle or haybales or machinery. I frequently pull to the side of the road to let them pass so that I can take my time and enjoy the views. I take pictures.
As I said, I took lots of pictures of windmills.
This time when I stopped, these cows, which had been scattered all over this large field, came rushing over to check me out and say hi. I thought about serenading them with my banjo, as I’ve heard that cows like that sort of thing, but it was 10 degrees outside. Apparently I was the most interesting thing that happened to them all day…
After several hours in Oklahoma City, I decided to try to make Little Rock that same day even though it was three in the afternoon and I wouldn’t arrive until after 8pm. I don’t generally like to drive after dark, but on this part of the trip I was sticking to the major interstate, Route 40, and the weather was dry and clear. I knew I could stop earlier if I needed to, but I ended up having no trouble staying awake. The moonscape was amazing as I drove along, and I was listening to amazing music that kept me alert and in a good driving mood. As it got later, the big trucks began pulling off the road for the night, leaving more unobstructed space for me to tool along in my van. I actually could have gone past Little Rock, but I wanted to spend the morning seeing a couple of sights before going on to Memphis.
I have always been interested in American history, particularly in the 20th century, and the Civil Rights Era of the 1950’s and 60’s, most of which I lived through, has always captured me. In one of my former lives before retirement I taught social policy and social history to aspiring social work students. During the years of desegregating schools after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, there was quite a lot of resistance by various cities and school boards. The Little Rock Nine got national attention on a big scale because President Eisenhower had to decide where he stood on the question of desegregation and whether he was going to enforce the Supreme Court ruling in Brown. In my humble opinion, he made the right call, which required him to nationalize the Arkansas National Guard in order to force the school system to allow the Black students to enter the high school.
When you think about that event, I try to imagine being one of the national guard members. First, your governor is telling you not to let those Black kids enter the school no matter what. Then, in the blink of an eye, that same national guard member is being told that you must protect those same students at any cost and not allow them to be harmed. Regardless of where each national guard member stood personally, they had to follow the orders they were given or risk a court-martial. I’m thinking that must have been confusing, frustrating, and very stressful for all concerned. A potential powder keg of violence.
As it happens, the chain of events leading to the National Guard standoff and President Eisenhower’s intervention occurred in September 1957, just nine months after I was born.
I went to the school where it all happened, which is a national monument but also a working high school. It was sobering to imagine what it must have been like in those turbulent years. I’d like to think we are past all that racial turbulence, but my heart tells me we aren’t…
The Retreat! The Retreat!
I know many of you are curious about what brought me to Taos, and I will try to do it justice here, knowing that I can’t possibly include all the amazing things we did. The retreat was called “The Muse in Winter and Wild Abandon.” It was led by Jill Badonsky, creative coach extraordinaire. If you don’t know Jill, please check her out. The retreat was held at the famous Mabel Dodge Luhan House. I’m not going to take time here to go into all the details of why this was a perfect spot for this type of retreat. But suffice it to say that the location for the retreat was not an accident. Many other artists and authors and incredibly creative people have spent time here. In its heyday when Mabel Dodge Luhan built the place and lived there, people like Georgia O’Keefe, Ansel Adams, D.H. Lawrence, and others were frequent guests. Inspiring setting, and inspiring legacy, to be sure.
With Jill as our fearless leader and facilitator, I think it is safe to say that I and the13 women I spent four days with, managed to push ourselves to the edges of our creative limits and discover new ways of thinking, being, and creating. I think I can say that was true for all of us even though several of the women had been to Jill’s retreats before and kinda sorta knew what to expect. That said, when you have a new group of people coming together for the first time, you never really know what to expect, right?
I officially began the retreat experience when I picked up Terry, who needed a ride to Taos from Santa Fe. Offering her this ride gave me a chance to visit Santa Fe before the retreat and spend good conversation (and shopping!) time with my friends Dee and George, who graciously put me up for a night. This also gave me a chance to take a much-needed shower before picking up Terry. Thank you Dee and George!!
But back to the retreat. Terry has known Jill for some years and was very familiar with the Taos winter retreat. You would think that her infectious exuberance and enthusiasm for what we were about to experience would have rubbed off on me by the time we arrived 90 minutes after starting the drive from Santa Fe to Taos, but I confess (I don’t know if you could tell, Terry) that I was still feeling unsure and a little ambivalent when we arrived. I had just spent the prior week on the road pretty much all by myself. Now I was jumping into a group experience. Was I going to fit in? Am I ready to meet a bunch of strange women and spend day and night with them for four days? Will they like me? Will I measure up? I’m not an artist! What am I doing here? What was I thinking? Why did I think this was a good idea? Yes, I like doing new things, but this?? My shy little girl self was rearing her head and threatening to hold me back. I was feeling reserved and skeptical that this was going to help me or serve any important purpose on my own personal journey to who knows where. Maybe I had made a mistake in coming…
Boy, was I wrong!!!
Anytime a group of strangers comes together, there is a fairly predictable dance that occurs as people get acquainted, settle in to the purpose that brought them there, and build relationships of trust, and even friendship. It doesn’t always happen that way, but when it does it can be a magical thing. There are predictable patterns to group dynamics that plenty of studies have explored and described. As a social worker who has led and participated in many types of groups over the years, I was well aware of this research and knew that if I could just hang in there and stifle the inner child that was afraid and questioning, and bring forth the inner child that likes to play and have fun, all would be ok.
Because of my unexpected reticence and uncertainty, it took me the first day and a half to start feeling comfortable with what we were doing. Communal meals. Morning yoga. Writing exercises. Ice breakers. Dancing. Spontaneity. Split-second, on the spot, speaking. Jill, being the consummate professional that she is, let us find our own pace and did not push us too hard at the beginning. As the hours and days unfolded, there was a definite progression that happened for me. I found myself loosening up, letting go of my preconceived notions of what constitutes “art,” and embracing what we were doing with full abandon. I began to relax as I got to know each of the women as individuals and not just group members. It definitely helped to hear a collective shout of “WAAYY COOOLLL!” every time I shared a piece of writing or artwork, no matter what it was.
I drew this bird upside down.
Then painted it in watercolors.
I found my confidence level building. The philosophies behind the “wild abandon” approach to creativity is well suited to people like me. I learned from Jill some important lessons. Actually, there were many, many lessons, but here are some examples that I managed to write down as being particularly relevant for me to remember:
if you have a big project, break it up into small steps. If you can’t do three hours, do three minutes instead and build from that.
whatever it is you are drawing, it doesn’t have to look like whatever it is you are looking at.
stay away from “all or nothing” thinking - lower your expectations and have fun.
if you aren’t getting the support you need for your artistic passions, recognize that you are on your own path and don’t need the approval of others to do what you do.
if you are filled with negative thoughts about your work (“it’s no good” “it isn’t perfect” “I’m afraid of rejection” “I wasted time” “I got nothing done” etc.) then make a “TA DA!” list of all the things you did do.
a corollary to this is that when something negative happens, remember to include the AND - and something positive also happened.
when in danger of getting derailed or sidetracked from where you want to be, acknowledge you are human and can begin again.
don’t compare yourself to others who may be better at something than you; instead, compare yourself to someone you are better than (even if it is your five year old nephew).
don’t be afraid of producing something crappy. Keep practicing and you will get better.
fear is what stops us - recognize what is scaring you so you can work through it.
persistence, persistence, persistence.
the creative process is chaotic - believe in your own stuff and don’t overthink it.
By the end of our time together I was sharing my work voluntarily with these amazing and talented ladies with wild abandon (if I do say so myself…). Some of it was pretty good, and some of it was crap, but hey, I’m a beginner and it doesn’t really matter because I had a blast.
I was pretty happy with the way this one turned out.
I drew this based on a photograph I took, but when I drew it I turned the photograph upside down first. One of the “wild abandon” techniques. Then I used gel pens to add color.
To give you an example of the kind of writing we did, in one exercise we: 1) drew shapes and lines with our eyes closed while listening to some jazzy music, then 2) went around the room and gave titles to all the pictures of the group members, then 3) shared our captions and titles, and then 4) used the words in the titles to construct a poem. These were all timed exercises designed to release our brains to just create, without a lot of thought or preconceived direction. Here’s what flowed out of me in the two minutes I had to come up with something:
The map to home is paved with romance.
I am free and easy but turbulant waves approach;
I am busy busy busy but eventually I am only lollygagging in the colorful chaos of my life.
I set sail and dance in the Sun, soaring with new joy.
Where did that come from????
A personal highlight during the retreat was my decision to share the opening to my book that I have been working on and to tell the story of losing Jay. The last day of the retreat, February 11, was the 7th anniversary of his death. I read my short passage to the group on the 10th, and described my idea for the book based on what had happened to Jay and how I have been rebuilding my life ever since. The depth of warm, caring support I received, both for my situation of being without him and for the idea to share my story, was a bit unexpected, but very appreciated. Jill told me, “This book needs to be written,” and others agreed.
On the next day, the 11th, I carved out some time to spend with my thoughts in between all the fun, creative stuff we were doing that day. I kept a candle burning by the fireplace in one of the common rooms at the lodge, and in the late afternoon Conrad and Maria and I connected by video call. Conrad and I shared memories as the two of them drank a small toast to Jay and I sprinkled some ashes on the Native American land that is just behind the building I was staying in. Loving the Southwest the way he did, I think Jay would have appreciated that, and the spot I chose was also in the shadow of the mountain range just beyond Taos.
Thank you to Jill and the wonderful, accomplished, and fascinating group of women at The Muse in Winter 2025 retreat. You all are inspiring to me in so many ways, and I can’t wait to see what the future brings for all of us.
After this amazing experience, I (think I) now have the confidence I need to work on my book project and bring it to completion. Stay tuned!
Jill, keep doing what you do. Maybe I’ll see you next year!
I drew this rotary telephone with my eyes closed. I’m amazed that it is recognizable!
