I’ve had the John Vanderslice song “Exodus Damage” in my head for about three days now. (lyrics and link to download here) I keep hearing the lyrics “dance dance revolution” and “so the second plane hit at 9:02” in a revolving roaring chorus, each time leading me to think about how we as creators and makers internalize tragic and/or catastrophic events.
Natalie Goldberg says that the process of “filtering” is an important part of creativity, the way that we intake events and then after a few years we suddenly can reapproach them in a new light with perhaps a different spin. In transitioning to different mediums over the years, I can only echo how important the filtering process is for me. Stories and projects and ideas knock around in my head for years and only when I am ready to honestly and rationally deal with them do they morph into actual tangible forms.
So Vanderslice’s mention of 9.11 has reminded me of how valuable this process is to creativity and productivity. How years later, that one lyric still holds resonance and conjures up shadows of images seen on screen along with thoughts and conversations that have occurred between 2001 and now.
Today, I have been entranced by photos of the current events in the Gaza Strip. I can feel some of the scenes going into the figurative mental card catalog, waiting to be used in future work, after settling in among other images of other international events that grab my attention and yet seem so distant.
When I arrived at my parents house the other day, I was met with a corner in the back of the garage where my belongings have taken up root while I’ve been bouncing around. Sadly, I was greeted with some of my most treasured possessions covered with mold, that almost unknockable beast of the American south and its summer humidity. While I’ve been fighting it, its presence means that I have to pore through old things and throw out what is damaged or unnecessary.
Once again, I’m paring down my possessions, only this time I’m being forced to by the arrival of a fuzzy green carpet that is breaking down things kept and boxed. It seems so ludicrous in the face of settlers losing their homes of so many years, me warring against brightly colored fungi. But here I am, going through the reams of paper and old tchotckes as that card catalog in my brain is being visited repeatedly, images and memories being conjured up, remembered and restored.
Who knows which will make the cut and be reworked into a piece of art or lyric or scene or tapestry or color combination. All that’s important is that we keep our eyes open, taking in what’s happening around us and to us, that we keep filing away things in that card catalog, things that hopefully will have a new life one day in something besides a mere memory.