Does Pain Stop the Creative Juices?

Published June 10, 2017 by Nan Mykel

I’ve noticed that when something hurts physically I go to bed or its equivalence. I’m nowhere near the discomfort or seriousness of some of my followers, but I’ve also sort of shut down. I’ve realized my only Create Space-published novel needs re-working but if I live long enough to do that it’ll probably be filled with the gibbery-goo language of extreme old age. I’ve added only on my computer two final chapters and the aborted beginning of a sequel, but… At present I’ve been attempting the beginning of 2 or 3 additional novels, but it’s pretty much mush pile. Actually I’ve written 4 different beginnings for one of them. Caught in a quagmire.

I even picked up “How to Write & Sell Your First Novel” by Oscar Collier with Frances Spatz Leighton at a yard sale price of 50 cents, and possibly got an idea that I’m going to try, I think. It involves preparing a folder for every chapter, and after some degree of outlining, drop thoughts or paragraphs into those chapters as I go. So, despite having a bad leg day, I am beginning that mini-project, if I can find the blank folders without necessitating a walk to my car 50 feet away. (Complain, complain, complain!) What were the words Jim Neighbors used to use?

I will share my favorite paragraphs from my first novel–I’ve never communicated with anyone who has actually read the book, Shattered Boundaries. (I am in a position to advise you not to self-publish if you aren’t the pushy type): At this point in the novel the heroine has astral-traveled and stayed away from her body way beyond the safe limits:

…to her horror she notices that the cord has run out! When Amber reaches the house no one is home. She eases into her room and she is not there–here–either! My body is gone! Amber jumps when the phone rings. She realizes that she cannot answer it, but Rob’s voice on the answering machine does. It is a woman enquiring abut the time of the funeral.

Funeral! Who died?

MY AUTHOR’S NOTE

Published June 8, 2017 by Nan Mykel

I look in the mirror and see a strangely content woman losing her femininity to the neutering of old age. I’m not sure why I cover the gray. Perhaps I want to be seen as someone still to be reckoned with–but was I ever? The antidepressant is helping not only to keep me centered but also to bank the fires of desire.

If I were still sexually desirable would I so easily reject my sexuality? Well, yes, I suppose. I began rejecting sexuality even while still married, although then it was the experience of being valued only for sex that I could not tolerate, since it echoed my feelings that I had nothing to offer another person except sex. I never integrated sexuality into my self. I can think, create, listen well, empathize, write, draw, analyze, and have a sense of humor, but still struggle with the belief that I have little to offer a partner. And with that limitation the experience of romance and intimacy is not available to me.

There are many lessons already learned and incorporated. I am not sarcastic, I am not bitter. I do not “bad mouth” others. I no longer play Pitiful Pearl and Wooden Leg games. And since becoming an adult I have never used any power advantage to hurt others.

And I am not special, although I still struggle with this. During many years of “keeping the secret” and believing that I had wielded great magnetic power destructively, I did feel special–especially destructive, especially wicked, especially confused in the head. I still feel different from others. It’s a weird mix of feelings, debased and inflated, and is a flip-flop many survivors have come to know well.

Like many others, I am haunted not only by my father but by my response to him. Problems with perspective and judgment have always dogged my steps, in addition to the fallout of feeling shame. Although I rationally know better, in my eternal reality I stole my father from my mother. I am the other woman in her life. I am his partner in crime.

So at this point in time and probably until the end of my time, I am a survivor but not a victim….Instead of trying to change in an effort to be acceptable to others, I have come to embrace myself, with all my limitations and strengths. (At least that’s what I’m aiming for). As someone once said, “I’m not okay, you’re not okay, and that’s okay.”

MFA Thesis Exhibition: PERSIST : Reblog

Published June 5, 2017 by Nan Mykel

What a magnificent, definitive purge!!!

deo's happy little blog

For the last few months, I have been so busy preparing for the MFA visual thesis exhibition. The exhibition is, in short, the culmination of my work in Columbia’s Photo MFA program. I have spent countless hours preparing and putting up the installation of my work, and in true deo fashion I gave myself way too much to do.

Leave it to me to go into a Photo MFA program and come out as a mixed media artist. My pursuit of the question “How do I photograph trauma?” led me to this point, because I figured out that different mediums can convey different things. Photography can be a mediated experience of trauma. Installation could use more than just our sense of sight, but also smell and hearing and touch. Video, found objects, and performance all have roles to play as well, and as a result my final exhibition became a…

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