Wednesday 23 November 2016

Creative outlets

Image: Morguefile.com
I seem to be being offered outlets for creativity all over the place at the moment. Hot on the heels of the artist-led walkabout a couple of weeks ago, I went on a similar excursion on Sunday with storyteller Jo Blake Cave, who told us tales past and present about the Corby woods. I came home feeling inspired to write my own stories.

Prior to that, I was invited to take part in a dance taster session with choreographer Neil Paris -  'No pressure to commit to anything: just come along and have a bit of fun!' I was told. Well, I've been caught like that before! Of course, a taster is going to lead to something and sure enough there is a show in May, but before that we have to come together and create the piece. Actually, it was fun and I found I was able to throw myself into it pretty well, considering how controlling and controlled I  usually am. I wasn't entirely comfortable when asked to interpret four key words - fearless, empower, breathe and secret - through movement, but I did my best.

Elsewhere, the Weaving Words writing group came up trumps again with some fantastic stimuli (stimuluses?) for writing. I thought I was doing well. Then this morning, I was reading a couple of chapters of A Life Discarded by Alexander Masters and there on page 159 is the sentence:

'He mows the grass until it bleeds.'

How am I supposed to come up with something as fabulous as that?

4 comments:

  1. I'm so envious of that dance taster, Julia! Great to have so much creativity going on around you - and that quote reminds me of whoever said about writing:'you just sit and type until your fingers bleed' or some such.

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  2. Rosemary, I've had a look on http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/14/writing-bleed/ and there are lots of possible sources for that quote.

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  3. I love dance (I've lost count of the number of dances I do) but hate improvisation. It brings back memories of 'be a tree' in music and movement classes at school!

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    1. Yes, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to cope. We shall have to wait until the New Year when rehearsals start to see if this old dog can learn any new tricks.

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