Miriam Badyrka is The Doodler

Summer Blog Project: Mine for a Memory

(This is the eighth in a series of posts following Tyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit. All the previous posts are collected in the Summer Blog Project category.)

Exercise 8:  Mining for Memory in a Photograph. Take a family photo, she uses a baby picture in her example, and study it. What do you see in your life is indisputably similar to your life today? What is vaguely similar? What ended up the opposite of what you see? The goal is to find something new in something old.

It would be cheating to use a picture of me that I love where I am about 3 and painting, so I chose this one (click on it to see it. Something has apparently gone wonky. ETA: image fine on one of my computers, but not the other. I give up!) instead. I am surprised at how few of them I ended up keeping after my parents passed on. 

What do I see in this photo? I see a child who is happy rocking in a rocking chair. I am in motion and happy about it. You can see the tracks of the rocker in the carpet. She is in comfy clothes, pj’s and probably ought to be in bed.

I barely remember this house. I love the mid-century furniture, I remember this furniture. I have the red Eames rocker in my house today. I still love rocking chairs. I have 2 of them.

What is the same, besides the red rocker? The smile, the dimples, the curly hair and the eyes are obviously me. My love for color and movement is still there.

I am still a night owl by nature, but not in practice. I live in the real world, and the real world gets up in the morning. Repetitive motion is still soothing and fun for me. I doubt that will ever change.

What is different? I look at the utter joy in my face and wish I had more of it in my adult personality. Oh, I am a mostly happy person these days, and I have a great life, but that sort of glee is hard to come by. I want more of it!

There is no evidence of anyone in the picture but me. This makes me sad, not for what was, but for what never was there. My family is fractured and gone. For all practical intents and purposes, I have no family. It wasn’t a turbulent or tragic family, there was no explosion that rocked it apart. It was just not a close or accepting one. Too many secrets and untruths to survive. Some families are meant to fall apart so new ones can be made.

We have built a new one, that is closer and better than the one I came from.

What is sort of the same is the beige. I know the color has faded and changed over the years, but I am surprised by how neutral this scene is. No color, no personality in evidence. The carpet, the walls, the window blinds, the chairs, the pajamas. The only real color is the red chair.

Summer Blogging Project: Trust Your Muscle Memory

Bet you thought I forgot about this, but I didn’t. I do see that it will take me into the Fall to complete this project, but I don't have to change the name yet.

The Trust Your Muscle Memory exercise doesn’t involve writing and took a full 2 weeks to complete. You take a series of movements and practice it for a week. Then you don’t do it for a week, you only think about it. After the week is up, you see if you can still do it.

I thought it was a piece of cake and had no trouble doing it at all. It is just taking time to learn to train your muscle memory. This exercise is more for people who are not very physical and don’t use their bodies, than it is for someone who is physically active by nature and who uses her hands in her work like I do.

I am interested in this same process. Tharp is a dancer, and does the same thing with gross body movement that I have always done instinctively by doodling. I have chosen to focus on this by setting things up so that I spend a good part of the time doodling, rather than drawing. 

Part of Tharp’s purpose is to get you to reconnect with your body, but I think that the real goal of this exercise is to get your mind out of your creativity’s way. 

Summer Blog Project: Observe

(This is the seventh in a series of posts following Tyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit. All the previous posts are collected in the Summer Blog Project category.)

Remember when I said that I would get back to this one? Well, here we go…

Pick out two people, write down everything they do until you get to twenty items. You could easily make up a story about them, but that is not the point of this exercise. Then pick out another couple. This time, only write down things that they do that you think are interesting.

Then compare the lists.

I suffered for this one. I sat in the food court at the local mall for a several hours watching people and making notes (and doodles). I felt like Harriet the Spy.

So what did I learn?

Well, watching people chew is oddly fascinating. It is a really idiosyncratic action. Everybody does it differently, chew on one side or the other, speed of chewing. I had no idea.

I find I noted the things that distracted them from what they were doing and from each other: people they watched, the sounds that made them turn. Usually the other person looked around to see what caught the first person’s attention.

It seems that the major thing that I noted was expressive hands.

People talk on their cell phones a lot. I pointedly didn’t write that down in the second list. Neither couple ignored the phone, or looked at who was calling and decided not to take the call. The phone call always trumped the person standing beside or sitting across from them. Irritating.

But I did note what the person who was not on the phone did, how they tried not to eavesdrop. In every case the ignored person seemed to deflate, how whatever was shining in them went dim. They looked at their fingernails, leaned back in their chairs, moved a step or two away.

Twyla Tharp says that if you do this regularly, that you will note patterns, that what you included or left out speaks volumes about you.

Will I do this again? I am not certain, maybe if I modify the assignment. I am not terribly interested in watching people. I like people watching, but only casually. I felt like a stalker. I felt silly following people around and staring at them.

To tell the truth, it is not people that interest me. I would rather watch animals or birds, note plants, or colors, or details in scenery or architecture. I might try it on a walk, write down everything I see, and then everything I see that is interesting.

Summer Blogging Project: Muses

(This is the seventh in a series of posts following Tyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit. All the previous posts are collected in the Summer Blog Project category.)

In this exercise, she has you memorize a list of the 9 muses.

Calliope, epic poetry

Clio, history

Erato, love & lyric poetry

Euturpe, music

Melpomne, tragedy

Polyhymnia, sacred music

Terpsichore, dance & choral poetry

Thalia, comedy

Urania,astronomy

Rote memory works, but she points out that associative memory makes it easy. She gives a mnemonic  for the names of the Muses: can clear earnest effort make proper things add up for the names, and then asks how you would remember their domains.

This exercise is about associations, attaching an image or a subject that triggers a memory and calls it to mind. There are the obvious ones, Urania sounds like Uranus, the planet, for astronomy, Erato sounds like eros which means love for love poetry, and Polyhymnia like hymns which are sacred songs. The question is, how do you remember the others?

For me to remember anything I have to write it. If I just hear or see something, it is pretty hopeless. I have to write it, make the shapes of it over and over. I sort of burn what the word looks like into my brain while attaching an image, a sound, or a word to what I am trying to memorize, like this:

Calliope has the repeat of the L’s and ends with p and e. The repeat of the L shapes in Calliope reminds me that the p and the e repeat themselves in epic poetry.

Clio sounds like Cleopatra so I drew an Egyptian style face

Euturpe has two u’s which make an upside down m for music, and the sound of those u’s is in music as well.

Melpomne starts like melancholy, one of my favorite words, and sadness is a part of tragedy. I drew a frowning face.

Terpsichore dances, so I drew a stick figure of dancer .

Thalia is comedy and using the tail of the final a for a grin, I added two dots for eyes making a smiley face.

Silly maybe, but it helps me.

Summer Blogging Project: Names

(This is the sixth in a series of posts following Tyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit. All the previous posts are collected in the Summer Blog Project category.)

#6. Pick A New Name 

Hey! What happened to #5? It requires going somewhere to watch people and I won’t be able to do it until next week, so I thought I would skip ahead.

 This exercise is to imagine your ideal name, and what it would say about you. It is about identity, who you are and who you aim to be.

 I like my last name, Badyrka. I got it when I got married. It was important to my husband that I change my name. I didn’t really care one way or another, but it was important to him, and that was good enough for me. It means we are a family.

 The only drawback to the name is that Badyrka is unusual and hard to spell. But lots of last names are hard to spell. We are often amused by how people try to pronounce it, people get thrown by that “y” in the middle.

 My relationship to my first name is problematic.

 On the one hand, I like it. Miriam is a beautiful and historical name. It is a very ancient form of Mary. In the Old Testament, Miriam is the name of Moses’ sister, who sets him afloat in the basket. She is also a priestess to her people.

 My mom told me that she didn’t take it from the bible, but that she got it from a novel she was reading in the hospital when I was born. Unfortunately, she didn’t remember the name of the book. I have always been curious.

 On the other hand, I hate it. Miriam means sorrow or bitterness. Who would name their child that?  I don’t know what my parents were thinking! Miriam was also my “uh-oh I am in trouble” name. Plus, it is a fairly uncommon name. I often get called Marion or Marianne. No one can spell it either.

 The combination with Badyrka means I have an unpronounceable name that no one can spell.

 My nickname is Mimi, which I like and am used to being called. I didn’t even know I had any other name until I was in Kindergarten. It is a long story, which I won’t bore you with.

 I have never really thought about it before, but I would be happy to change my first name. I thought about it for a long time, and I realized that I wouldn’t want to change to a completely new name, or name myself after someone I admire. I would choose to be called Marie.

 Marie is still a variation of Mary. Marie Badyrka sounds pretty good. It still starts with an M, so I wouldn’t have to change my unreadable scrawl of a signature. Marie is not totally common, like Mary, but it is not so unusual that people need lessons in how to say or spell it. Plus, it is French, my fantasy nationality. Sophistocated, artistic, fashionable, and perhaps a bit snobbish.

 All things considered, I think my choice says that I am pretty happy to be me, but I wouldn’t mind tweaking myself a bit. 

Summer Blogging Project: Rituals

(This is the fifth in a series of posts following Tyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit. All the previous posts are collected in the Summer Blog Project category.)

A very important part of this portion of the book deals with work rituals. What do you do when you prepare to work. She sees it as a focusing mechanism, and I agree. I talked about sitting down to work every day, but I didn’t go into my own ritual. That is because it is summer and my life is entirely different in the summer than it is the rest of the year.

My studio is in my home. At this point in my life, I do not have the luxury of a separate studio. My husband is a teacher and he is off for the summer, our daughter is still a student and usually (but not this summer, she is studying abroad in New Zealand) she is hanging around too.

Summer dislodges my rituals. I used to be upset during the summer, because it becomes so hard to get anything done. Reading this book has made me realize that it is the disruption of my work ritual, right from the beginning of the day, that throws me off.

On the plus side, I love the extra time with the people I love. We are so lucky that we are able to spend this time together.

So, instead of griping about how everyone interrupts me and that I never get any work done, I have decided to use my summer as a break in the routine. A time to experiment and explore, to go out and have experiences. I work when I can, and I accept the fact that I won’t get as much done as I do the rest of the year.

I can’t change summer, but I can change my attitude about it. 

Summer Blogging Project

(This is the fourth in a series of posts following Tyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit. All the previous posts are collected in the Summer Blog Project category.)

#4 Give Me One Week Without. (This is the fourth in a series of posts

This has to do with dealing with distractions, like the phone, clocks or the internet. Tharp makes a list of things she will ignore for a week in order to sharpen her focus on creativity.

 Today, I am starting an internet surfing hiatus. I can’t go randomly looking at things , which is the biggest time waster ever invented as far as I am concerned. I love to type in any random thing that comes to mind and follow where it leads me. I will keep up with my own blog for the purpose of this project, but I will not go off reading any of my favorite blogs. And no internet forums either.

 She suggests avoiding Numbers, on clocks, scales, bills, dials, meters. Any form of counting to give the left side of your brain which is the counting side a rest, which will let the right side, the more intuitive side, come to fore. I think I will be good at this one. I am kind of like that anyway.

 Another suggestion is avoiding background music. I don’t like background music when I am working. I listen to music, and often stop what I am doing while it is on. I can’t work with music because it grabs my focus. Music is based on repeating patterns and is full of colors. I can only listen to music when I am doing something fairly mindless that I don’t need to pay close attention to.

 What I do instead is listen to NPR. I can ignore speaking in a way that I can never ignore music. I turn on NPR and let it drone on in the background while I work. Sometimes, things catch my attention, but mostly I use it to make a kind of white noise.

So I will give up NPR for a week as well.

 Books. I love to read. Although it gives me many ideas, it is also my biggest distraction. No books, other than this one I am following, for a whole week. This will be the absolute hardest thing for me. I may die.

 Tharp compares this pact with yourself to abstain from your distractions a ritual sacrifice to the gods. Instead of goats or sheep, the sacrifice is distractions.

(Update v1: I wrote this last Wednesday, so I have 3 days to go. I have already failed the test. I started farting around on the internet without thinking. It was only briefly, before I remembered that I was giving it up and stopped. I am doing well with everything else though. Even reading!)

(Update v2: I did better at this than I thought I would, but I wasn't absolutely successful. 

I did forget and start surfing once, as I have already confessed. 

I also read for about 20 minutes, totally on purpose. It was a book I have been wanting to read for ages and it was on 1 million holds before I could get it from the library. But I forced myself to Step Away From The Book, and didn't pick it up again until the week was up. Pretty good for a gal who generally swallows 3 books a week.

I didn't listen to NPR for a whole week, which was harder than I thought it would be. As I suspected, I didn't have any trouble avoiding numbers.)

Summer Blog Project

(This is the third of a series of posts following Tyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit. All the previous posts are collected in the Summer Blog Project category.)

#3 Face Your Fears. She lists hers in the book and goes on to debunk each one in turn.
I will list mine, but I am not as confident about the debunking part as Ms. Tharp. After all, I am no Tyla Tharp, internationally known choreographer. I am a little known local artist.

Here are my fears:

1. That I have no talent and I have no business calling myself an artist. Even I know that this is ridiculous. I may not be a world busting talent, but I am good and professional. I have just as much of a right to be an artist as anybody else, and more than some.
2. That I will not be able to communicate what I am trying to express through my work, that I will fail to connect. I will be the only person who knows it then, and I can always take another stab at it.
3. That what I make will be a failure, despite my best effort. So? It is no reason not to go ahead and do it anyway. Nothing is perfect and the most interesting things often come about by accident.
4. That no one will care. Well, that’s actually true. No one but me will care if I do this or not. And since I care, I may as well do it.
5. That no one will like my work. A whole bunch of people won’t like it, but some will. It is worth doing it for them. If I was only doing this to please myself, I would not feel the need to get it out there. I feel the need to share my work with others, because it is my deepest, truest, best self. So I keep putting it out there regardless of rejection.
6. Fear of talking to strangers. A silly fear, with nothing to do with creativity, but it remains my biggest handicap.I am not a very verbal person, and I am shy. I am always afraid to talk to people I don’t know well. I doubt I will ever get over this, and it doesn’t get easier with practice.

#4 Give Me One Week Without.

This has to do with dealing with distractions, like the phone, clocks or the internet. She makes a list of things she will ignore for a week in order to sharpen her focus on creativity.

I am starting an internet surfing hiatus. I can’t go randomly looking at things , which is the biggest time waster ever invented as far as I am concerned. I love to type in any random thing that comes to mind and follow where it leads me. I will keep up with my own blog for the purpose of this project, but I will not go off reading any of my favorite blogs. And no internet forums either.

She suggests avoiding Numbers, on clocks, scales, bills, dials, meters. Any form of counting to give the left side of your brain which is the counting side a rest, which will let the right side, the more intuitive side, come to fore. I think I will be good at this one. I am kind of like that anyway.

Another suggestion is avoiding background music. I don’t like background music when I am working. I listen to music, and often stop what I am doing while it is on. I can’t work with music because it grabs my focus. Music is based on repeating patterns and is full of colors. I can only listen to music when I am doing something fairly mindless that I don’t need to pay close attention to.

What I do instead is listen to NPR. I can ignore speaking in a way that I can never ignore music. I turn on NPR and let it drone on in the background while I work. Sometimes, things catch my attention, but mostly I use it to make a kind of white noise.
So I will give up NPR for a week as well.

Books. I love to read. Although it gives me many ideas, it is also my biggest distraction. No books, other than this one I am following, for a whole week. This will be the absolute hardest thing for me. I may die.

Tharp compares this pact with yourself to abstain from your distractions a ritual sacrifice to the gods. Instead of goats or sheep, the sacrifice is distractions.

Summer Blogging Project

( This is the second of a series of posts following Tyla Tharp’s book  The Creative Habit.  All the previous posts are collected in the Summer Blog Project category)

The first of the exercises is What is Your Pencil ?  What is the thing that feeds your creativity and without it, you feel unprepared? Too easy!

 For me, it is a pen. My current preferred pen is the Uniball Mirco, but pretty much any pen will do, even a pencil will do in a pinch. I don’t like ballpoints or pens with a fat body, because I have small hands. I usually have  pen with me.

 As for paper, anything will do, I am a doodler after all. My favorite of all is graph paper. I have pads and notebook sheets and I have a little notepad that I carry with me. You never can tell when you will need to draw or something.

 The second one is Build Up Your Tolerence for Solitude.. This is another that is too easy for me. She talks about working up to 10 minutes alone, trying to tease creative thoughts out of your subconscious. She wants you to understand that solitude is an important part of the creative process.

 I do this all the time. It comes naturally to me. Reading this made me smile. I feel uncomfortable trying to describe it to my family and friends. What did you do al day? Oh, I sat and stared out the window, or at a blank canvas, or I went for a long walk.

 But that is exactly what I do before I start seriously working on any project.

 So far this seems like a piece of cake, but I know it gets harder as it goes on, because I got about halfway through the book before I got the idea that I should take a stab at doing this. 

The White Room

(This is the first of a series of posts following Tyla Tharp’s book, The Creative Habit.)

The first chapter is called I Walk into a White Room. Instantly, my in my mind starts playing the old Cream classic and I dream up my fantasy studio: a white room, wood floors , all flooded in light.

The reality is nothing like that. I am scattered all through the house and my painting studio is a corner in our basement, but it doesn’t matter where it is or what it looks like. All I need is a place to work. And that isn’t really what she is talking about.

The white room she is really talking about is the choreographer’s version of a clean white sheet of paper or a blank canvas. Every art form has a version of the white room. We are all looking to make something where nothing was before.

She dicusses routine and ritual of creativity, making the creative process a habit. She presents the question of whether creativity is based on divine inspiration, or daily hard work. I think this is the exact point where she wins me over.

I sit down to work every day. There are days where nothing happens and I am frustatrated, there are days where I power through what I am doing through sheer force of will, and there are days where things just flow and things happen effortlessly. The effortless days are the days of inspiration. 

Somewhere along the line, I heard the phrase “the most joyful thing to be in the world is a Sunday painter”. This slays out the difference between a working artist and a hobbyist. The hobbyist can wait for the inspiration to come, the professional has to sit and do it regardless.

We all long for that inspiration to come. I honestly do not believe that it would happen to me as often as it does if I wasn't sitting there day after day working on it.

Now, as a bit of a reward, here is Cream playing White Room.