Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Doing What I love


When I was a child I did four things: I drew, I wrote, I read, I assembled.

I read everything I could get my hands on. I had hundreds of books. By the time I was eight, I usually read my mother’s books, so I gave my hundreds of books to a new program started by The Smithsonian Institute, Reading is Fundamental. We had a friend, Mr. McGraff, who worked for the Smithsonian. He knew I loved to read and told me the program was intended to provide books to poor children. We never had much money, but my parents valued reading and always found a way to provide any book I wanted. I earned my own money as well, from the age of five on, and books are what I spent my money on. My personal idea of ‘poor’ has always been not having a book. The idea that there were children who didn’t have books was shocking to me. My brother helped me haul all those books up the hill to Mr. McGraff’s apartment. Mr. McGraff was shocked and touched by my donation, and I was embarrassed by his reaction. Reading was so important to me that I just couldn’t stand the idea that anyone didn’t have books. I did keep one book, Poetry for Boys and Girls, which my parents gave me for my seventh birthday.

When I was a child, I read.

In Poetry for Boys and Girls, I met Ogden Nash and Edward Lear. I met Alfred, Lord Tennyson and William Shakespeare. I met Little Willie, with his insatiable thirst for gore; and I met  - as I was going up the stair – The Man Who Wasn’t There. I met Peter Piper and Sally of Sea Shell Selling fame. I met a man who tried to save his precious daughter from a raging storm at sea, and a woman who tried to stop bells from ringing to save her lover’s life. I met my muse, in the form of hundreds of poets from all over the world, and I began writing poetry. By the time I gave the rest of my books away, I had read this book cover to cover several times, but I wasn’t finished with it. I discovered that things I didn’t understand the first time often made sense the third or fourth time. I learned that as I learned new things and had new experiences, new meaning would unfold from the same poems I had read a dozen times before. I’m still not finished with that book, and it still on my bookshelf forty-two years later.

When I was a child, I wrote.

Taking my imagination for a stroll, I would gather random things as I walked, collecting them in a brown lunch bag. I would sing as I went, or tell some tale to myself, making it all up as I went. I could do this for hours, sing and walk, and find treasure. When I returned home, I would dump my treasure out on the dinner table, and with the help of glue and wires, assemble some crazy creation out of the random bits I collected. I loved putting things together. My brother got an Erector Set when he was ten, but he had no interest in it. I was always building something, often mixing my treasures with his Erector Set, Tinkertoys, and Lincoln Logs. Then I would create elaborate stories about my creations.

When I was a child, I assembled things.

I drew often. I drew copies of line drawings from any book I could find. I drew from photographs, too. My Grandmother gave my brother a Birding book on his thirteenth birthday. He had no more interest in birds than he had in the Erector Set. I read that book from cover to cover, and hunted for the birds. I’ve never seen most of them in life, but when I was eight, I drew them all, in ink. I have one picture still, drawn with a leaky blue ball point pen. My mother kept it and I found it among her things after she died. I don’t know what amazed me more, that she kept it all those years, or that it was good.

When I was a child, I drew.

I never stopped reading. Most years I average almost a book a day. I read from nearly every section of Mr. Dewey’s catalog. I want to know it all. I kept writing, off and on. I write to think things through, so I wrote more when I had problems than when things were going well. I wrote poems when so moved, but I’ve never written poetry consistently. I’ve saved a few hundred over the years, writing the reasonably good ones in a special book. I randomly wrote stories, never consistently. Mostly though, as an adult, I didn’t write much.

I also didn’t draw or create assemblages much. My drawing skills deteriorated as a result. I picked it back up, randomly, and have improved somewhat. I also started assembling bits and pieces again, and began to experiment with different mediums to create my assemblages. I developed my own style of sculpting my visions. When people visit my shop, I tell them if it’s a bit odd, I made it. If it’s normal, I didn’t.

I spent most of my adult life not doing the things I love to do. When I finally decided to stop slaving away in a “real” job and do what I love to do, life got a heck of lot happier. It got a little poorer too, but it’s worth the trade. I am a creator; my soul is content.


© Copyright 2011 Rikki Ansell
all rights reserved

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Songs in My Neighborhood



Listening to the radio as I worked last night, I was reminded how songs that mention ‘home places’ are somehow a little extra special. Starbuck’s ‘Moonlight Feels Right’ (1976) was on the radio when I got back into the truck. I arrived just a moment before the line “I’ll take you on a trip beside the ocean and drop the top at Chesapeake Bay.” It brought back memories. One night in particular when the entire gang ( and then some) were hanging out in Deale Island, Md.,  drinking and swimming and generally having a good time.  Deale Island isn’t really an island; it’s a peninsula, so there are fresh water tributaries running into the Chesapeake Bay. It was in one of these that we were swimming. All of a sudden, one of the guys on shore hollered  “everybody outta the water”, and a dozen or so dripping bodies burst out of the water like trained seals.

Since we weren’t were we were supposed to be, or more aptly, since we were where we weren’t supposed to be, everyone assumed the yell was a police alert, hence the prompt evacuation. No police, something of more immediate concern – water moccasins. Water moccasins are nasty vipers with nasty attitudes. Like copperheads, they will attack without provocation to defend their nesting area. Water moccasins are dark; they blend in with the water, especially at night. Their bite is miserably painful, and the venom rots the flesh. Few people die from the bites, but death is possible. Thanks to the moonlight and the sharp eyes of one of the guys, we escaped unharmed. Moonlight Feels Right was playing on the radio at the time. Every time I hear this song, I see a snapshot of that night.

There are places that have many songs; Dallas, New York, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco, etc. The Chesapeake Bay only has the one that I know of. While I was living in Dallas, a song that always amused me was Steely Dan’s “My Old School.” There is one line that says “California tumbles into the sea, that’ll be the day I go back to Annandale.”  I agreed, completely, though I expected Cali to fall long before now. It was California’s ‘tumbling’ that moved me off the west coast and into Dallas. Anyway, I had lived in Annandale briefly and while it was okay, the traffic was insane and I had no desire to go back. Even in the early Eighties, getting on the Capitol Beltway during rush hour meant wasting your life away. I’d just crank up the radio and sing, and marvel at the people who pulled over to wait it out.

Along side the road – at that time four lanes each direction packed bumper to bumper with vehicles – the intrepid would pull over, pull out a lounge chair, and read a book. I was tempted to join the shoulder sitters, but I never did. Every time I heard “My Old School,” I would remember the drive home from work, and sing ‘never going back’ with gusto. I am a die-hard Steely Dan fan. ‘Any Major Dude’ saved my sanity when I did come back from Dallas, but that tale is told elsewhere.

Dallas, of course, has numerous song mentions. My favorite is “Dallas, too close to New Orleans” from The Grateful Dead’s Truckin’. I just think that’s funny because they are worlds apart psychologically, and nothing is close to anything in Texas. Close means it took less than an hour to get there. It’s hard for me to pick a Dallas song that has actual Dallas memories attached. Nearly every one I knew in Dallas was in the music business somehow, so I was surrounded by music. I associate almost as much music with Dallas as I do with growing up in Maryland. I had a helluva lot of fun in Texas. Ask me someday and I’ll tell you about the Big Shoe and the Rain of Frogs. That was one strange weekend….