
DECIDUOUS: MEDITATIONS IN GRADUATING THE CREATIVE PROCESS a series of essays / encouragements / secular litanies about one's craftspersonship, artsmaking, & spiritual life issues to date: i. Allegro ii. Before Going Any Further iii. A Compass iv. What To Wear v. Houseplants vi. Hot Air vii. The Living Moment viii. Elevate ix. Loaf x. What Speaks xi. Jam xii. Last Tree Standing
de·cid·u·ous /diˈsijo͞oəs/ adjective (of a tree or shrub) shedding its leaves annually. (more about this zine:) My wish is to help others feel more creatively fulfilled and spiritually enriched. The text of DECIDUOUS is a negotiation between the literal and the figurative. What is literal is useful because it draws us closer to analogies in our individual lives. What is figurative is useful because it’s puzzling; it gets us working. Part of me wants all poem. Another part of me wants all manual. DECIDUOUS is an approximation between and of both things. Language itself is an approximation, between thought and material. It is a tool we use to entrap the abstract and show it at the rodeo. But how can the animal show who it really is when on display? So, language fails. The very binary understanding of poem/manual, figurative/literal is a failure. However, its failure does not mean language is altogether of no use. Isn’t the creative process itself a similar negotiation? An approximation between extremes? Between self-reliance and sharing with others? Between facts and feelings? Over the course of DECIDUOUS's issues, I will create structures for communication and later abandon them. The texts may be contradictory. They may break their own rules. Language is a failure. It is disposable. We use it and we shed it when it stops being useful. When we are more fluid with language, we free up our process to be more sustainable inside of the experience of one pole or the other and both. This paradox ought to be freeing. I am grateful for your time and attention; I promise to make good use of both.