The close-up and the faraway of Connemara have been held in my mind's eye for a decade now. While away from the Carolinas by a 12 hour drive, from Flat Rock, North Carolina, where Connemara sits and soothes, I have aged but it has not. Breathing its mountain air, washed by a nearly cloudless February sky, I notice the blood in my veins slow as it readjusts to the pace and place where American poet Carl Sandburg embraced "the creative hush."
Every artist needs what Julia Cameron refers to as the "artist's date," usually a solitary venture, a date with one's self, away from the usual routine. Today, though, I take along my favorite date, my husband, to revisit Connemara's trails, history, inspiration, and goats. What amiable creatures Dori and Magnolia are, letting us stroke the hair on their necks and the backsides of their ears, rotating their heads just like cats. Touch is so vital to the senses, without which visual art cannot be created. It is primal, luring, natural.
My age today, and Sandburg's when he arrived at Connemara in 1945, are similar. He spent a productive two decades here, nestled on a hillside with a mountain vista that directly contradicts the crowded upstairs study where the author pecked at his Remington Rand keys, crystallizing and distilling the American experience into prose and verse that resonate still. His juxtaposition of words are visceral yet universal, like the dirt of Connemara and the passage of time.
Oh dear, visiting a poet's home makes me wax poetic. But I am not a poet and he did not draw with pencil, unless you consider the poetry of drawing or the drawing of words on paper to be parallel arts divided only by semantics. Too cerebral, I can hear Sandburg say. The goats keep us grounded.
"...It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness, to sit on a rock in the forest and ask of himself, ‘Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?’ ” Sandburg refers to this experience of loneliness as “the creative hush.” What a rare concept in our contemporary world where we are bombarded by beeps, blips, ringtones, sirens, sound bytes, whirring traffic, and our own personal mind chatter.
Listen. A cardinal's wings are taking flight. A goat is ripping grass from its firmament. A stream is gurgling and tumbling over ancient rocks.
Oh my, I wax poetic again, when I only intend to share the concept of the "creative hush." And perhaps a favorite Sandburg poem, "Fog." "The fog comes on little cat feet./ It sits looking over harbor and city/ on silent haunches/ and then moves on." I, too, must move on to a decibel-filled world that challenges me to listen to, well, nothing. To silence. And then to create.
PS - To learn more about Connemara; to learn more about the poet, I recommend the September 2012 American Masters/PBS production "The Day Carl Sandburg Died"
Every artist needs what Julia Cameron refers to as the "artist's date," usually a solitary venture, a date with one's self, away from the usual routine. Today, though, I take along my favorite date, my husband, to revisit Connemara's trails, history, inspiration, and goats. What amiable creatures Dori and Magnolia are, letting us stroke the hair on their necks and the backsides of their ears, rotating their heads just like cats. Touch is so vital to the senses, without which visual art cannot be created. It is primal, luring, natural.
My age today, and Sandburg's when he arrived at Connemara in 1945, are similar. He spent a productive two decades here, nestled on a hillside with a mountain vista that directly contradicts the crowded upstairs study where the author pecked at his Remington Rand keys, crystallizing and distilling the American experience into prose and verse that resonate still. His juxtaposition of words are visceral yet universal, like the dirt of Connemara and the passage of time.
Oh dear, visiting a poet's home makes me wax poetic. But I am not a poet and he did not draw with pencil, unless you consider the poetry of drawing or the drawing of words on paper to be parallel arts divided only by semantics. Too cerebral, I can hear Sandburg say. The goats keep us grounded.
"...It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness, to sit on a rock in the forest and ask of himself, ‘Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?’ ” Sandburg refers to this experience of loneliness as “the creative hush.” What a rare concept in our contemporary world where we are bombarded by beeps, blips, ringtones, sirens, sound bytes, whirring traffic, and our own personal mind chatter.
Listen. A cardinal's wings are taking flight. A goat is ripping grass from its firmament. A stream is gurgling and tumbling over ancient rocks.
Oh my, I wax poetic again, when I only intend to share the concept of the "creative hush." And perhaps a favorite Sandburg poem, "Fog." "The fog comes on little cat feet./ It sits looking over harbor and city/ on silent haunches/ and then moves on." I, too, must move on to a decibel-filled world that challenges me to listen to, well, nothing. To silence. And then to create.
PS - To learn more about Connemara; to learn more about the poet, I recommend the September 2012 American Masters/PBS production "The Day Carl Sandburg Died"