Sometimes you look on in awe

September 22, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

There was a brief timespan in college when I was going to go into Medieval literature. I’d taken a one-month class, taught by the now very distinguished H. Evan Runner Chair in the History of Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Bob Sweetman. At the time, his children were still toddlers, which lends dignity to noone; back then, he drank out of a Spiderman mug and students made fun of his ties. Anyway, it was a one-month class entitled Women in Medieval Society, and we read Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, and Hildegard of Bingen.

I have a very clear memory of Prof. Sweetman quoting one of the women (maybe Teresa of Avila?) to us, “Open Thy mouth wider, God, that I may taste Thee.” But I can’t find reference to it anywhere.

This was a group of passionate, fascinating, deep thinking women. We read them, we learned about their lives; Hildegard’s music even became my favorite study music.

But I somehow missed that Hildegard illuminated her own visions, in bright, trippy paintings. I was going to take one and unpack it, but it’s rather like uncoding some of the biblical visions in the Old Testament and in Revelation: they reveal as much about the assumptions of the time as they do matters of spiritual import. So instead of wrestling with that, I just want to gather some of my favorite illuminations for our mutual awe and enjoyment.

Thank you so much to my good friend Christina Van Dyke for showing these to me. I’m pretty sure they’ll still be as astonishing while I’m sitting here at my dining room table, as they were yesterday in the blazing sunshine over a beer.

God Enthroned Shows Himself to Hildegard

Hildegard von Bingen, receiving a vision (that is the holy fire of inspiration coming to her head from above)

Talk about scope for imagination!

As Real As It Gets: A Picture Book Announcement

August 25, 2015September 5, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 8 Comments

I met Amanda Barton in New York City in the mid-1990s. She stood up at a gathering at All Angels Episcopal Church and claimed that nobody there would’ve heard of where she was from in Michigan. Challenge accepted. My husband and I totally knew her hometown, although it was, indeed, super-tiny. Together with two other couples who were, like us, under 30 and married (and therefore felt like exotic zoo animals), we became fast friends. Amanda and I and our husbands even moved back to Michigan within a month of each other in 1998.

So when she said, “I’m looking for someone to help me achieve this dream I’ve had,” I wanted to help her. Her dream was that kids who’d been adopted when they were older might have picture books that reflected their reality — their reality of remembering their previous lives, previous families, of the not-so-smooth parts of adjusting to a new family.

I remembered when she and her husband welcomed a sibling group of three from the foster care system. Now I really wanted to help her.

Out of our discussions came a story about a young boy who feels something monstrous growing inside him (like a cobra, a T Rex, a gas bubble), growing until it comes slithering, roaring, exploding out: “You’re not my real mother!” His mother reassures him: “I’m as real as it gets and I’m not giving up. I’m your mother in truth. Your mother. Forever.” A warm glow spreads inside him (like a flower in June, a cookie out of the oven, a hug). But the feeling doesn’t last. The monster is soon lurking again. One day, the T Rex is only as fierce as a 2-inch tall rubber toy, and it taunts him, “How long is forever, anyway?” The story ends on an “okay for now” moment of love and silliness: “Well, T Rex. Here’s the bad news. Forever for you means that you’ll always have those silly short arms, too short to pick your nose and too short to tickle your son.”

We loved this story. It’s vibrant and silly, frank and loving. So we tried to find agents and publishers who might be interested. None were. But we were not ready to give up on it. We decided to find ourselves an illustrator and publish it ourselves (the story of my life). Because Amanda will ask anything of anyone, she contacted an illustrator who is well-known in our area: Joel Schoon-Tanis.

He said yes. We started West Olive Press.

And here are his first illustrations.

I think Joel totally nailed it. The monster is monstrous but not overly scary. In the top one with the son saying, “You’re not my real mother,” the boy looks angry, but the monster doesn’t. And then in the one with the mother delivering her “I’m as real as it gets” line, the monster looks like he wants to believe it more than the boy does. I can’t wait to see what else Joel comes up with.

Right around Labor Day weekend, we will be opening the Kickstarter campaign. You may become weary of me talking about this in September. But I believe in this project, both because I think it will be beautiful and fun to read, and because there is an underserved group of kids out there, and seeing yourself in a story is a powerful, powerful thing.

I’ll announce here and on Facebook and on Twitter when the Kickstarter goes live, but if you’re concerned that you won’t get the message, let me know via my Contact Me page, and I’ll make sure you are notified.

Big City Sidewalk

July 24, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

I’ve got a fun guest post up today at the always interesting You Are Here Stories — a site for stories centered around Place, around those places that have been important to us, to our communities. Please click on the last words of the excerpt to join me over there, even if all you want to see is a photo of me at age 12 (sweetly earnest and awkward).

In my forty-seven years, I’ve been all over the world, but all it takes are a few cues to haul me back to my childhood.

A certain sharp and damp and lumber-ish smell brings me to my grandparents’ farmhouse in Michigan (a smell it retains years after their deaths and despite my cousin’s attempts to eradicate it). Outcrops of red, grey, and black veins of Great Canadian Shield rock bring me back to camping trips and weeks at the cottage.

But the capital-P Place where I feel the instant settling of my spirit that says “home” is the big city sidewalk.

Settling the spirit might be an odd response to a place that’s loud and busy and can be crowded and chaotic, but that’s where I grew up: in the middle of the great city of Toronto, Canada. Truly in the middle: one block from the main north-south thoroughfare of Yonge Street, and two-thirds of the way up our subway line.

I was taking the subway by myself…

This is my punishment

July 22, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

A skilled and generous writer and teacher, John Vorhaus, sent me his soon-to-be-published book (How to Live Life) for me to read and spread the word about. I’d really been looking forward to this book, because he’s funny, and in his more recent essays for Writer Unboxed, he’s brought some moving truths, not just about writing but about life. Which is my favorite way to receive truth: wrapped up in something that makes me smile. I’m all disarmed from the smiling and then WHAMMO. Truth.

Vorhaus was a workshop leader at the Writer Unboxed UnConference I went to last November. He led the session on Failing Big (my notes for it are 1/3 of the way down the page here) and what he said there finally kicked me out of the disappointment spiral I’d been wallowing in for a couple of years. He also taught me how to play poker (a kind of poker I can’t remember the name of anymore, which is rather par for the course — in our first conversation he teased me for not knowing the make of car I’d just driven halfway across the country). He’s funny in person and he’s funny in writing and I knew that this life advice book would make me smile. And it did.

But even before breaking into Hollywood, I knew that teaching something was a great way to learn it. I’ve used this strategy many times in my life to increase my understanding of songwriting, poker, comedy, creativity, sailing (that was dangerous), archery (that was worse) and more. I have come to believe that an inspired learner makes a good teacher. So that’s the real source of my authority, such as it is: my gape-mouthed wonder at the fact of my existence, and my desire to know it more fully.

This book, then, is an intensely selfish exercise.

But I don’t think it’s all that pretentious, not really. No more than life itself is pretentious. I mean, here we are in the midst of this incredible, unbelievable experience, and something tells us that it should be even more incredible and more unbelievable. We should be… I don’t know… painting pictures, writing poems, staring at the stars, communing with God, digging life’s mysteries, getting down to the isness of it all.

I love that attitude (particularly because this is a non-religiously-affiliated book, but there’s room in here for people, like me, who are communers with God). But then he did something that made me feel crabby and rebellious: he left spaces for me to write my responses to the questions he was asking. Many spaces. Many questions.

Make a list.

You’ll hear me say that a lot, make a list. I’m a huge fan of lists because lists…

Let us create without consequence
Give us hard data we can use right away
Are emotionally neutral; they don’t judge
Yield much information for little effort
Put things where we can see them

This was not going to be a book that was both funny and deep and that I could enjoy reading and adding to the general thoughts in my mind. This book was going to make me actually do the work. I know myself. I know my process. I know that I have to write things down to truly work through them. Which is why I didn’t want to.

So, as punishment, I’m going to do it here, in public.

[Just so you know, I did absolutely everything else possible before doing this: the laundry, the household filing and bill paying, the dinner making, the nagging of children, the ferrying of children, the buying of toner, the returning of the video (yes, we are pleasantly old fashioned enough to still rent DVDs sometimes). I did filing, people.]

1. What wouldn’t I do if I had six months to live:

clean my house
cut down on beer or cookies
play so much online Boggle
go to “mandatory” mass parent meetings at school

2. There was a question about externalizing motivation to help one overcome inertia. I’ve tried some — I like Jerry Seinfeld’s method of X-ing off each day he’s written, and seeing the line of Xs motivates him to keep the line going. That works okay. For awhile. I think I need another person to hold me to a timeline. I’ve been working on a collaborative project and we have meetings, and I need to have things done for our meetings, and I do them. I don’t get stuck in freak-out mode or find other things to do. Like filing.

At this point, Vorhaus brings out some big guns: the centrality of acceptance to this process of growth.

Acceptance is called for here, the sense that whatever emotions we experience are fine, completely allowable, totally cool, no matter what they are. Without acceptance, we are afraid to approach ourselves. With it, we can appraise ourselves openly and honestly, without freaking out. …

I see me, and it’s all okay.

Just to be clear, acceptance doesn’t mean surrender. To accept means to process information with emotional neutrality. Acceptance provides an objective perspective where nothing is made worse by the editorial judgment that this really sucks.

How wonderful to be free from the feeling of this really sucks. You can be. It’s a choice you get to make. Simply seek to acquire the habit of saying, and thinking, “I accept.”

3. Pick something on your list above and dive deeper — if you tell yourself nasty things about yourself because of that thing, try to push past them with acceptance.

I wouldn’t play so much online Boggle because it doesn’t add anything to my life — it doesn’t add connection or knowledge or feed my imagination. I’m hiding and anesthetizing. If I had 6 mos to live, I’d dive in, I wouldn’t space out so much. I like the word games, I really do. There is a real satisfaction to them. But I go for the easy rush and choose it way too often and then don’t do things I actually like better.

4. “Got any questions you’d like to ask yourself? Just ask. Just answer. Explore. Don’t judge.”

Why do I keep falling into mindless activity? I used to be a horrible slob. Impressively messy. Every fall, when one mouse would come into our house, it would come to my teenage bedroom because there were so many piles of things for it to hide into. As I got older, I liked it when I made things clean and neat, but didn’t care to do the daily practices to keep things that way. And then I had children. There was so much chaos and overwhelm in my mind and in my life that I couldn’t stand a chaotic home environment, and presto: I am now very neat. So I know I can go from non-effort to regular-effort. Why won’t I do so for the practices I care so much about (writing, prayer, dance)? It’s like I’m still in teenage-mode: occasional and impressive outbursts followed by accidental ignoring followed by guilty ignoring. That is a question I imagine it’ll take me this entire book to figure out. So I’m not going to try now.

5. Name some things you know you want, but rarely dare to say out loud.

I never, ever, ever say this out loud, but I’d like to drop a little weight to make dancing easier.
I want people to read my books.
I want to be a better mother.

THERE. That’s chapter one. I’m not saying I’m going to blog my way through every chapter of the book. In fact, I won’t. But I will finish the book and I’ll make my lists and I’ll report back to you. I’d thought that declaring my word of the year to be PRACTICE meant that I’d improve my practices. Instead, it’s shaping up to be about exploring why I resist doing just that. Which may be more helpful in the long run.

A family legacy of words

June 24, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

At my recent family reunion, my second-oldest uncle talked about the work he’d been doing to clear out his house in anticipation of downsizing. He said he had all his father’s letters and poems. And then he said the most glorious words:

Would you like them?

I don’t know what made him think of me for such a treasure, but I am so grateful that he did.

the poetry files — Opa’s poems, both original and translations

These are the files of poems and songs, both his own and his many, many translations of other Dutch poets and songwriters. And in the middle, a chapbook of his poems from the 1920s — all in Dutch.

There are some materials in English, though. So far, I’ve found benedictions, poems written for friends’ wedding anniversaries, a limerick, a rewriting of a hymn so it’s about a man watching hockey, a very silly poem (half in English and half in Dutch) written for his young daughter, and his copy of one of my favorite things: a poem he wrote for me when I was a baby.

He had stayed in our house in Toronto some night when we were all gone, and this was the gift he’d left. His poems often had elements of what was in the news, hence the reference to David Lewis, who was a politician at the time. The “cardboard cellar” was where I was sleeping at the time: in a refrigerator box with a mattress in the bottom. My dad had used it as a prototype for the beautiful mahogany crib he’d later build me, so the cardboard had stylish curved cutouts, but I rather love that my box bed is immortalized in verse.

But wait, there’s more.

Opa's letters and assorted documents — Opa’s letters and assorted documents

There are liturgies for church services, articles for religious publications, notes on Synod meetings. And letters. Oh, the letters! They start from before the war, and I’m sure there are some from during the war, when he worked in the Resistance, and was often separated from his young family. All in Dutch. Which I don’t understand. I’m hoping either to hit it big enough some day to pay for someone to translate them all, or to entice a Dutch professor to turn translating some of them into a class project. (Any leads, send them my way!)

Tucked way in the back was a file labeled 1953. The year they emigrated to Canada.

This is my father’s ticket to his new life.

I don’t know whether I have any more words to describe the gift my uncle has given me.

Okay, I do have more words. Does anyone out there know how anything about how to archivally store a two-foot-high stack of papers? I want these to be around for a good long time, so I can root around and see what all there is to discover.

A new metaphor for this stage

June 9, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

For years, when people have asked me how this writing/publishing thing was going, I’ve described it this way:

I’m doing everything I can to get hit by lightning. I’m out there in an open field carrying golf clubs and flying a kite with keys on it and anything else that might help me get published.

That was back in the day when I was still pursuing traditional publishing. I really liked that metaphor. It communicated both that I was working hard and that success was not guaranteed — after all, getting hit by lightning is fairly rare. Just as it’s fairly rare to get a traditional publishing deal, even with a well-written, engaging story.

But now that I’ve decided to become an indie publisher, I need a new metaphor. It took a friend asking me about my garden to get me there. My garden is usually a bit slower than other gardens in my neighborhood, so while everyone else’s peonies are in full and blowsy bloom, mine are like this.

Fat buds.

That’s the stage I’m at in my publishing journey: the fat bud stage. Everything is there, ready to burst forth, but not just yet. The Giant Slayer is still with my Old Testament expert, but as soon as she’s done with it, I’m only three steps away from publishing it (edits, proofreader, book designer).* At the same time, I’ve got a picture book project brewing that we’re independently publishing through a Kickstarter campaign that will be live in mid-August. My words are all done, but I’m setting up the campaign and waiting for our illustrator for get me some art so I can get the website going and let everyone know about it. (There’s more information on my Books page.)

I’m SO CLOSE.

It could be driving me crazy, how close I am, but I spent too long wallowing in disappointment not to enjoy this stage of being on the verge. Fat buds aren’t as showy as full blooms, but they’ve got their own beauty.

Do you have a metaphor for an endeavor you’re in the midst of?

Edited to add: my expert is done! My bud just got fatter 🙂

What Time Is It?

June 2, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

My husband and I recently went to Detroit, and toured a powerful art installation called The Heidelberg Project.

In 1967, 12-year-old Tyree Guyton watched his city burn. In the aftermath of the Detroit riots, thriving communities rapidly became segregated urban ghettos characterized by poverty, neglect and despair.

In 1986, Guyton took a stand against the decay, crime and apathy in the neighborhood where he was raised. Using discarded objects from everyday life, he created a festival of color and meaning that has been described as a “Ghetto Guggenheim.” Using vacant lots and abandoned houses as his canvas, he transformed an entire block into a world-famous outdoor art environment and a thought-provoking statement on the plight of inner city communities.

As we walked around the couple of blocks, my attention kept being drawn by all the painted clock faces: different shapes and sizes, each with a different time painted on it, some alone, some in groups, nailed up to and painted on and leaning against every kind of surface, right-side-up and sideways and upside-down.

clocks against a wall at The Heidelberg Project

My husband walked up to the artist and asked him about it. Being an artist, Guyton answered in more questions.

What time is it? Where are you in time?

Guyton has been studying Plato and Albert Einstein and their writing about time.

Time is energy. It’s all about energy. What has time done to you?

As we walked, the same phrases played over and over in my mind:

It’s always time.

The time is now.

The time is now to do whatever it is that you so want to do. The time is now to seek change, whether personal or societal. It’s always time to do something that needs to be done.

And on a more personal level, the time is now to put in the work to realize my writing dreams. I need to put in the time.

And this one. This one cuts me to the quick.

O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever?
    How long will you look the other way?
How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul,
    with sorrow in my heart every day?
    How long will my enemy have the upper hand?
(Psalm 13:1-2, NLT)

Because this is/was a forgotten neighborhood, and represents all the other neighborhoods abandoned by the powers that be. When will it be their time?

So, for me, the clock faces were rallying cry and lamentation, plea and accusation.

What is it time to do in your life? In your corner of the world?

The Power of the Gaze

April 24, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

I recently took myself out on an artist’s date — something Julia Cameron recommends in her book on creativity, The Artist’s Way. My city is having a festival of art by people who have disabilities, so for my artist’s date, I went to the galleries to see the static visual art, and found myself compelled by the choices the artists made regarding where their subject (when their art included a subject) was looking.

Is the subject looking away from the viewer If so, how? Demurely? Fearfully? Disdainfully? Heroically?
If the subject has closed eyes, is the subject hiding? Or is it a symbol of willing vulnerability?
Is the subject looking straight at the viewer? If so, how? Is it a challenge? An invitation? A plea? A statement of fact with little emotion?

* * * * *

At the Grand Rapids Art Museum, there were two paired portraits by David Lock. The watercolors (or, watercolours, since Lock is from the UK) are portraits of the head of a cobbled together person. The eyes are different from each other, there are different jawlines, different ears, different skin colors and textures, all in the same face. It’s like a cubist-style painting run amok. In each of the pairs (as they were hung here, at least), one subject looks away from the viewer, and the other looks right at the viewer — each in a different way.

Misfit (Smoke), 2012, had an averted gaze that felt like the gaze had slid away, as if the subject didn’t want to be looking at you looking at him. Misfit (Unwanted), 2012, looked right at you, and it felt like a challenge, probably because of the lifted angle of half of the chin and jawline. The other pair was quite different. In Misfit (Shadow), 2013, the subject looked slightly up into the middle distance, a classic hero pose. While its partner, Misfit (Slice), 2012, looked right at the viewer, but without much emotional content; the gaze didn’t feel like a plea or a challenge, it just was.

It made me think about all the varying expectations people who do not have physical disabilities (or at least, people whose bodies do not broadcast their disability) have when looking at someone with a disability. Do we think of them as embarrassed? As noble? As intrusive? As a blank?

And from the point of view of the person with a disability. Are they tired of everyone always looking at them? Do they feel pressure to be The Heroic Representative? Do they reject that pressure with an “F.U.” to those applying it? Do they just want to be, without worrying about how you see them?

You can see images of all four of these watercolours at Lock’s website.

* * * * *

My favorite venue was the 250 Monroe Street Gallery, which had pieces by West Michigan artists. Deb Dieppa showed Outsider Art-style pieces, bright and energetic works that incorporated lots of words. Marylu Dykstra had a number of paintings, including a series of waterfalls (water as both an image of crushing and of solace), and a painting called, Hope Emerges (2012), that had a tiny face of a woman surrounded by a highly textured, dark surface that reminded me of Great Canadian Shield rock.

But the other two artists there gave me more to think about in terms of this “gaze” question: Reyna Garcia and Robert Andy Coombs. Garcia had a number of works in the show, including a large installation of painting and photography, Ayotzinapa We All, her “reflections on her work as a community organizer to support the case of the disappearance of the 43 Normalista students last September 29, 2014 in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico” (from her artist statement). But for these purposes, I want to talk about her series of three large paintings, “Voces de Esperanza (Voices of Hope), 2011-2013,” that focus on the immigrant experience. These looked very different from her protest paintings, which were full of heavy, saturated colors, and textured paints. The immigrant works had rich colors that I think of as clear — not in terms of being see-through, but not muddied. The paint is applied in a flatter style, using more sweeping strokes. (As a Canadian, they reminded me of Group of Seven, Lawren Harris’s work.)

And there are almost no distinguishable faces. Faces are plain ovals.

She doesn’t mention why in her artist statement. Was it to make the figures more universal? To make the story she tells less personal and more socio-cultural? I don’t know, but they were beautiful and striking, especially the blue female figure of hope rising out of the water, with the wind blowing her hair around coalescing into wings.

You can find images of the Voices of Hope series here; they were 2011 Art Prize entries.

* * * * *

But it was Robert Andy Coombs’s series of nude portraits that drew my attention the longest. First of all, they are beautiful bodies, beautifully lit, intriguingly lit even, with lots of interesting plays of light and shadow.

There were three shots of each subject: one close-up of the head and shoulders with the subject looking away, a full-body shot, and another close-up with the subject looking right at the viewer. Before I talk about the experience of looking at these photos, let me include Coombs’s words about the Disability and Sexuality Series, 2011-2012:

Having a disability myself, I am interested in photographing various types of physical disabilities, showing each individual as a sexual person. Despite having disabilities, the subjects are still human, therefore having sexual needs and desires. Photographing each subject nude allows the viewer to look at what goes on beneath clothing, showing scars, tattoos, and adaptations in order to lead functional lives. The subject’s gaze is an invitation to look, confronting the viewer, making each subject come to life.

An invitation and a confrontation, indeed! The first two subjects, especially so, because in order to even see that they were fully nude, you had to look right at their adaptations. You had to look right at the places their disabilities manifested themselves, which most people really don’t do. Or at least try not to do overtly. I admit, the first time, my gaze slid over the first one without looking closely enough to realize the man was fully nude. I had to go back to it when I saw the second subject’s full body shot. Just for that alone, this was a striking experience.

There were other things to think about in these photos. The first subject had a tattoo of folded hands on his chest, above them the words, “Pray for me.” Was that a sincere request? A bit of an “F.U.”? Both? Something else? Coombs has a tattoo on his collarbone, “Giving up is the ultimate tragedy,” that you’d be able to see if he wore a T-shirt, but he was dressed to the nines every time I saw him, so I never did.

Coombs was entirely successful in his desire to portray people with disabilities as sexual, but it wasn’t primarily because they were naked. It was in their eyes (whether closed or open), in the challenging lift of the chin (in Coombs’s full-body shot, in particular), in the softer mouth (an almost-smile?) of the third man that gave his final shot a come-hither invitation.

These were my favorites of the festival, for both the challenge and the invitation, as well as the sheer beauty of the images.

You can find images of the Disability and Sexuality series on Coombs’s website.

* * * * *

So lots to think about. Lots of questions to ask. Lots of beautiful and challenging images. In other words, an entirely successful artist’s date. If you are in the West Michigan area, the DisArt Festival continues through April 25, 2015, although some galleries will keep their works up longer. If not, I encourage you to take yourself on an artist’s date — fill that creative well for once, instead of just drawing from it.

If you’re interested in the other art forms on display at the festival, here are my reports on the Fashion Show and Poetry and Comedy Night.

“It’s true. It’s still funny.”

April 21, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

That’s a quote by Liz Carr, the British comedian and actress who was the final performer in DisArt’s Poetry and Comedy night, and who was so funny about true things that pushed the boundaries of what isn’t funny, that I was exhausted by the end of her performance. It was a cathartic exhaustion.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The evening started with West Michigan poet, and founder and leader of the organization, Compassionate Connection, Randy Smit. I’ve taken creativity classes with Randy and he’s a great facilitator and encourager and taker of the discussion to a deeper level, except when he occasionally takes it to a sillier level — all of which are wonderful. He’s also a poet who juxtaposes the mundane and the sublime and throws in some killer analogies which manage to make me laugh, make me think, and break my heart, often at the same time.

The poem titled “February 29” was a perfect example of that dynamic. It started out so ordinary, with, “Where would I be without toast?” But then, while eating a square of buttery toast, he thinks about a friend who’d driven his wheelchair off a pier, and how and why “they” said it happened (an accident), and wound up at his own conclusion, “he must just have gotten tired.” Devastating.

He started off with a rant poem inspired by a man who had driven illegally on a bike path, when Randy was wheeling down the path one sunny afternoon, to ask him whether he needed any help. Here are some of my favorite responses (direct quotes as I heard them, but probably not as set on the page):

Do I need help? Yeah.
I’ve been trying like crazy to pay down my credit card.
I’ve been dying to learn some Hebrew.
I could use some insight into my 401K.
I’ve got a new pair of jeans; I can’t get them soft.

He, of course, doesn’t need help to continue riding down the path. From a poem called “Inspiration,” I loved this line:

The deep abyss you call the present.

In a poem about his brother Chris’s dog, he made me laugh with, “The white fur between your toes smells like Fritos,” and then got me teary with the adjective, “omni-benevolent.” I did find a link for one of my favorites of the night, “Toilet Talk,” so I’m able to include this great analogy in its fullness:

I think I’m all set is what I’ll
say to the student nurse in just a few minutes, I

hope. But first − Even my sense
of God being in control seems to
be changing, I say, it’s much more like
a director of a musical, I mean certainly in charge
of what might… but then, I guess
more as a maestro, a muse, thrilled with
harmony, the soaring of hearts out
in the seats, the flautist, third chair
bassoonist, stagehands and soloists each rapt in
their singular, lustrous offerings, the conductor
at the center of the grand production − yeah, maybe
that’s who, that’s how.

I’m just crazy about the maestro leading the musicians who are “rapt in their singular, lustrous offerings.” Lustrous. Great word. His final poem started out talking to and about his younger brother and it was so big brotherly in funny and dear ways. Then he expanded it to his family, “I’d like to thank my family for being who they are and never quite telling me to my face.” And then he expanded it again to his “brothers panhandling in Cairo,” and wound up wondering what he could’ve done if he’d lived from end to beginning.

* * * * *

The next performer of the evening was poet Jim Ferris, Chair of the Disabilities Studies Program at University of Toledo (in OH). We got a hint of how he’d be right away from his shirt, which had stick-figure illustrations of people, one of whom used a wheelchair, engaged in a variety of sexual positions. I sure hope there was nobody in the audience who was uncomfortable with people with disabilities talking about sex; if so, they were in for a rough night. Ferris also talks faster than Randy, so I was able to jot down fewer of his exact words.

His first poem was the very funny, “High Concept,” about calling the Screen Actor’s Guild on a lark to see whether there’s already a Jim Ferris registered, and being put through to Jim Ferris’s agent and getting acting work although he tried to argue with them:

No movie star wears a brace or walks like I do unless they’re trying to win an Oscar.

The poem, “Fear at Thirteen,” was about being prepped for surgery. The images were sharp and often disturbing: one leg shaved to the hip, doctors and nurses hovering over him “showing only bandit eyes,”

and what you fear most is that you’ll pop a boner and die embarrassed….

He wrote a poem to a critic who kept being asked to evaluate Ferris’s work despite the fact that he always trashed it:

The crackle of pity tenses the electric air. He wants to see me limp …. He’s publicly disappointed when I don’t dance his way.

Besides other poems about being and knowing and sex, he read two poems that could also be characterized as rants. One for all the people who want to tell him what to wear and how to be so he’ll appear “normal,” that powerfully included the repeated line, “I won’t cover my stumps.” And another, “Tell Aristotle,” inspired by philosophers and thinkers over the centuries who think disabled children are not fully human: “tell them I lived…

Disorderly.
Imperfect.
Tell them all, we thrive.

* * * * *

And then Liz Carr came to the stage. She’s a British actress and comedian (she plays a forensics expert on a TV show there) who was able to make us howl with laughter at her stories of indignities she’s endured as other people try to deal with her disability, as well as what she gets away with because people don’t know how to deal with her disability (including her freedom to reach the Mile High Club because the flight attendants don’t dare question how long she’s been in the bathroom with her partner).

She started out with describing her experience at a comedy competition. The building was accessible, but the stage wasn’t, so the organizers came up with the solution of lifting her up to the stage at the beginning of the competition. That worked, but it meant she had to sit there while all the other comedians performed, but

it’s okay. They put a drop sheet over me. It reminded me of Christmas at home.

Somehow, she got us to laugh at the medical interview she was given before they’d let her on the plane to come here: “Do you think you’ll die during the flight?” She lamented how rich people got Disney to take away “the gold card of crippledom”: “We can’t go to first in the queue.” Said rich people were hiring people in wheelchairs to wait in line on their behalf so they could skip ahead of everyone else.

There’s another story that I can’t even begin to describe, just to say that it started with Amsterdam, went to the Anne Frank house, and then wound up with the audience screaming at the punchline, “Schindler’s lift.”

So many of her stories were like this. Her observations about her life and the lives of other folks who are disabled pushed the boundaries of what should be funny, but she made us laugh at them, laugh at our own earnest ridiculousness, laugh at the humanness of her condition and of ours. So she, indeed, had to say, “It’s true. It’s true. It’s still funny.”

It sure was on Friday night. I’m so glad I went.

The Mother of Invention

April 20, 2015 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

My husband and I went to our first fashion show this weekend. We dressed in black; I wore my steampunk-inspired earrings; we practiced our high fashion attitudes.

Happily, this attitude was more appropriate to the event, the first ever DisArt Festival Fashion Show.

From their website:

DisArt is a multi-venue Disability Arts Festival scheduled for April 10-25, 2015 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Through several world-renowned exhibits of Disability Arts from all over the world, DisArt Festival 2015 will challenge its audiences to reconsider the importance of community, identity, and difference.

Which sounds all fine and good, but let me tell you what it meant for the Fashion Show: every model was a person with a disability. Each was given the full hair and makeup treatment. Each got to strut their stuff on a professionally lit runway, accompanied by the musical stylings of a professional DJ and the raucous cheers of the audience — except when the sleeping baby came out and we all tried to clap quietly. Many of the designers were people with disabilities.

It was one of the most joyful events I’ve ever been to.

Unlike most fashion shows that make the press, this was a family event, full of children and grandparents. Maybe a quarter of the crowd dressed for a fashion show, but the rest could have been going to any event their offspring were involved in. There were lots of kid volunteers, with whole families in blue DisArt T-shirts. The organizers kept having to bring in more chairs, and still, people wound up standing. Room 217 in the Woodbridge N. Ferris Building of Kendall College of Art and Design practically vibrated with excitement.

Robert Andy Coombs, photographer (see his work at the DisArt Hub) and DisArt Fashion Coordinator, welcomed us to the event, and then the fun began.

The first three items of clothing were made by open style lab, a nonprofit enterprise out of MIT that designs and manufactures accessible garments. First was a black quilted jacket with grey detail just under the shoulder that was so cool-looking I forgot to notice what made it particularly great for those with disabilities. I talked to the model afterwards, and he said he’d buy that jacket in a heartbeat; some of the garments will be for sale in May, so hopefully he’ll get the chance.

Next was a rain jacket (RAYN) designed for those who use wheelchairs. It has a section that, when unzipped, folds out to cover the wearer’s lap, and has a hood that lays softly against the back, yet when it’s flipped up, forms a brim that funnels rain away from the wearer’s face. I talked with this model afterwards, as well, and he enjoyed the whole process — even his own America’s-Next-Top-Model-makeover-day experience, when one of the stylists didn’t like his hair and wanted to cut it. The model agreed, and loves his new haircut.

The final garment from open style lab was a gorgeous asymmetrical white jacket for women that featured magnetic closings that made it easier to put on and take off. Underneath it, model Jessica Poll wore a white pleated, goddess-style top (that I may have coveted just a tiny bit). Ms. Poll beamed her entire time on the runway.

The next group of garments were T-shirts and boots designed by military veterans who had been wounded during their service, many during combat in Iraq. A local organization, Fashion Has Heart, pairs designers with veterans to create a T-shirt that represents their journey, as well as boots that are then manufactured by Wolverine. The first model pictured here, the guy with the awesome multicolored mohawk who is totally working the crowd, is wearing a shirt designed by a man with burns over 90% of his body after his vehicle was hit by an IED. The design shows a man in the middle of flames, rising like a phoenix.

The young woman below is modeling a shirt designed by an Iraq war veteran who lost her sight. The tagline on the shirt: “When life gives you lemons, you make the best damn lemonade.” The design is also textural, so a person with visual impairments can enjoy the different design elements.

There were several more T-shirts — one with a gold medal to symbolize the veteran’s hope of becoming a Paralympian, another with many doors, another with an image of the designer standing on his bionic legs. All the T-shirts from Fashion Has Heart are for sale for $25 each.

The final group of garments were designed by students in a class at the Kendall College of Art and Design and in partnership with Spectrum Health Innovations. Each student was paired with a child with a disability and tasked with creating clothing that would be supportive, that would be able to accommodate diapers and leg braces, that would have seams that lie flat. AND that a kid would want to wear — these functional garments had to be fun and attractive. They totally were.

There was a Mickey Mouse-themed outfit with a cape for a toddler who wasn’t quite as excited about the bright lights as some of the other models. An outfit that looked like it could be Green Bay Packers practice gear. One of the models was clearly having so much fun, zooming with his walker, but taking his moment in the spotlight at the beginning and end of the runway, that I forgot to notice what he was wearing, except that it had a cape, too. The garments took advantage of cutting-edge fabrics, with 4-way stretch, and with compression capabilities to support the kids’ muscle development and placement. The pants all had really cool-looking seaming that had functional purposes, but they managed to make it look and feel great for the kids wearing them. It was such a great experience that the instructor of the class hopes they’ll be able to run it again.

When Robert Andy Coombs came out again, he got a standing ovation. He called out festival director, Chris Smit, who also got the standing ovation treatment, and then made many people cry with these words:

We wanted to flip things on their heads, and I think we just did it. There are opportunities for this to happen all over. But it didn’t happen in New York. It didn’t happen in Chicago. It didn’t happen in L.A. It happened right here in Grand Rapids!

Now that it’s happened here, I hope it happens all over.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then the DisArt Fashion Show demonstrated that designers and fabric technologists are more than up to the task of designing beautiful garments that fill some real needs in the world — whether the need is for more functional garments for those with disabilities, or for self-expression, or for beauty. Or all three.

* The festival continues all week, with exhibitions, films, round tables, family days, dance performances. All for free. Check out the schedule. *

** I apologize for not being a proper reporter and not getting the names of all the models. If anyone who reads this knows their names, send me a message and I’ll add them. All photographs were taken by Michael Van Houten on his iPhone from our seats. If you want to see professional photos and news reports, you can check out MLive and WZZM. **

Natalie Hart

my thoughts about life, the Bible, and the books I'm writing

Wonderful

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The Power of the Gaze

“It’s true. It’s still funny.”

The Mother of Invention