December, Ekphrastic, and Charley Harper
I confess something and share some of my writing
What has spoiled me in life more than anything else—The Month of December
This is a confessional. I am spoiled.
I grew up with a Jewish mother and a father somewhere on the Christian spectrum: denomination unknown.
Neither was religious. But we sure could celebrate a mean holiday.
Oh, and I was born on December 11th.
I’m one lucky guy—perhaps too lucky. It’s for these 3 reasons (Birthday/Hanukkah/ Christmas), and also because I love the cold, quiet calm of winter, December is my favorite month.
Spoiled: this is and isn’t the correct word to describe what celebrating a birthday, and two major gift-receiving holidays, all within of a couple weeks of each other makes a person.
The term spoiled generally relates to food deteriorating to the point of rotting, or to a person having a greedy nature.
It’s certainly possible that this happened to me as a child, the greedy nature part. Me, thinking about presents too much, too many years in a row.
Slowly … slowly … rotting—a bad fruit.
Fortunately as an adult, things reverse, and the spirit of gift-giving takes forefront. And now rotting my kids’ hearts from the inside-out is all I have to worry about.
At least they were born in Spring and Summer.
***
In the spirit of December, I’d like to share a quick winter poem from the Poetry Foundation. Here are the first two stanzas.
Read the rest of the poem here.
I love, love, love each line of the second stanza. And when all placed together: beauty.
Even though I now live in Florida, I still recall as a Missouri boy heading out the front door into a world padded fresh with snow: “This is a good world,” I’d think.
And now as I grow older, I find great comfort in: “Who made the snow waits where love is.”
***
In our home around this time, holiday music suddenly wakes from its nine month slumber, and like a monster truck, immediately goes into full-on beast mode.
Traditional Holiday favorites are great, but every once in awhile you need a palate cleanser, a little slice of ginger in between all that sashimi.
Here are 3 non-traditional Holiday albums that do the trick.
Low, Christmas
You really can’t untradition your Christmas listening party any more than by throwing on a slowcore (aka sadcore) album. Don’t miss Just like Christmas and Little Drummer Boy.
***
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, It’s a Holiday Soul Party
Over the recent years, this is my go-to holiday album. I don’t tire of it. Don’t miss 8 Days (of Hannukah) and Just Another Christmas Song (This Time I’ll Sing Along). They misspell Hanukkah, but it’s still a great song.
***
The Ventures, The Ventures’ Christmas Album
Think Christmas in Palm Springs, 1965. Think surfing Santa Clause; Mistletoes hanging from palm trees. Try out Sleigh Ride and Jingle Bells.
My favorite way to untangle writer’s block—Ekphrastic Writing
Sure, I know writer’s block; believe me, I’ve experienced it … Sort of.
Writer’s block. What is it really?
It’s a kind of illusion; a ghost, that vanishes if you know how to wiggle loose its grip.
Trust me, with the right method, you can break through it. Yes, you can.
What works for me: Ekphrastic writing.
In simple terms, this means I grab my laptop or a notebook. I find a work of visual art. I look at it, and then I write about it.
I let my mind loosen and start telling the story I see in front of me. I start describing what I see: what colors are used, what things in the image might smell or taste like; I put what I believe the artist is trying to say into my words. My words.
But mostly, I remain confident in myself as a writer (no matter what amount of experience you have, you have to believe in yourself). Have an open mind. No matter what ends up on your page, It Is A Start.
I’d like to share two pieces of mine that arrived from this sort of writing exercise.
Ex 1.
For five nights she sat alone, guarded within a flaccid green cube of hanging satin sheets that rocked to her unsteady breath, with her pale fingers wrenched around her scroll’s top and bottom. Chanting and hearing. Every hour, she chanted aloud in a trembling din, Namu Amida Butsu, dreaming her murdered husband would soon find solace in the enlightened land of the Amida Buddha.
-from “Hazy Green”
I wrote one of my first short stories in Fiction 1 at the University of Kansas.
I got lucky with this one. It ended up winning a campus award and getting published in the journal, THE KIOSK.
Recently, I was fortunate to have it re-published by The Emerald Coast Storytellers, a fantastic local writing group in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.
The story is called Hazy Green (⬅️you can read it right there).
This story began with my instructor sending us to the Spencer Museum of Art to find an art piece to write a story about.
I found a work called Ghost of Kobata Johaiji and wrote a story about it. Please keep in mind, anything I write, there are extensive editing periods that come with it. It doesn’t come easily.
Well, now you know what those people sitting on museum benches are doing when they are scribbling words into notebooks.
Ex 2.
Last winter I binge watched a few seasons of M. Night Shyamalan’s series, Servant. When we watch anything on screen in my house, we have subtitles turned on. I find reading words in television shows and films to be incredible starting points for poems.
I’m not sure what dialogue was said to inspire the crazy poem I wrote called “web/webs,” but something in Servant was the original sseed. I was fortunate to have this one accepted for publication by The William & Mary Review.
Weird, right?
The poem became a sort of game where I tinkered with language, particularly words with “s” and allowed myself to write a strange, snake-like monologue.
I’m not sure who the speaker of the poem is, but I don’t think I’d like spending much time with them.
Also, I love to add a dash of humor. Writing is like cooking, adding ingredients and seeing how they work together—little bit more of this, little bit less of that. Eventually you get a pie. And it either tastes good or it doesn’t.
On this one, I had to find out what the “web/webs” pie tasted like when the word “bigly” was added to the mix. Turns out, it tasted pretty good. But it still needed one “yessir” for the final recipe.
Challenge: If you want to try Ekphrastic Writing but need a prompt to help you, Rattle, a wonderful poetry journal hosts an Ekphrastic Challenge each month where the winning poems are published online.
As a lover of almost all things Mid-century, an artist I can’t get enough of—Charley Harper
Charley Harper art takes me back to childhood, to a better time, a better place. A time when I used to rush to the window to see what was going on at the birdfeeder.
Harper was a conservationist as well as an artist. He really knew how to show humanity through animals. There is something about his linework and shapes, how he makes little natural scenes into two-dimensional worlds of color and pattern.
He also does wonderful holiday and seasonal pieces. Here are some favorites of mine from his art studio’s official Instagram.
Weekly Word
After spatchcock last week, I thought we should pick something completely different, something less spatchcocky, per se.
This one will do. One of my very favorite words:
Resplendent
Merriam-Webster defines it as:
shining brilliantly : characterized by a glowing splendor
M-W goes on to explain that resplendent gets its shine from the Latin verb splendēre ("to shine"). In the case of resplendent, the prefix re- added to splendēre, formed the Latin resplendēre, meaning "to shine back."
Used in a sentence: The sun’s resplendent smile revealed itself as ripples of golden light across the surface of the lake.
For fun, Substack allows you to use an AI generator to create images based off words in different styles. I plugged in “resplendent december” and chose the epic style. This was the image I liked most.
As always, I’d love to hear from you. Please share your innermost secrets. Or not.
And, lastly, if you want to share my newsletter with friends, I won’t blame you. I’ll love you.
Hey Adam - Just a quick note to say that I am reading and appreciate your work. The variety is great - light-hearted, serious, and all very enjoyable. Warm regards, David
Any interest in helping me brew my next batch of beer while we drink some of the prior batch? Thinking maybe this Sunday, or early evening one day next week if not. The whole process takes about 4 hours but you don't need to stay for all of it unless you want to!