The Life and Times of the Plume — Page 210

Quintessential Me

March 26, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

...in case you ever wondered about who exactly I am.

Watch it on a full screen HERE.

March 28. 2011
Dear You,
Thank you so much for taking a moment to watch this short film.
Thank you for taking a moment to leave a comment.
Thank you for your continuing support over the past few years.

Thank you to John and Melissa over at Hemet Productions for being our friends for this long, for being our friends into the future, for being SO good at capturing who I am (social awkwardness and stutters included)
AND for coming up with the idea for this film in the first place!
Thanks to you two for believing in me and taking interest in my life and work — in our life and work.
Love you.

Filed Under: hemet productions, short film

March 26, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

For every girl who ever loved a horse.

Plume

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/03/26/948/

Filed Under: cowgirls, free range beef, gilbert ranch, horses, idaho, inkom, pebble creek, rocky mountains, working cattle ranch

March 25, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

We’ve been making some changes around here:

THE NOISY PLUME

What do you think?

Happy Friday!

The Plume

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/03/25/947/

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Capturing Quiet: Creative Freedom

March 24, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

Everyone else is asleep in bed. I’ve been awake since 5:30.

I’ve been capturing the quiet like a dusty moth beneath the glass of a spent pickle jar.

There was an effort, a chase, the painted paper of wings against glass and then suddenly, I found the quiet in my hands, turned it over and over again, inspected and embraced it. In a short while, I’ll set the quiet free again.

Out in my studio, the world is blue. I’ve left the lights off, for the time being, I’ve been writing my morning papers with the help of cold fingers and the dampness of springtime morning drifting in the big window that faces West. The view from my chair is vast and I think again, to myself, the only reason I live here is because of all the windows that face West into sage and space. Were there houses across the street from me, I couldn’t do it.

I toss my mane. I snort a little and shuffle my hooves.

I feel my mustang heart beat inside the interlocking grip of my ribcage.

I’m working my way through a project book, The Artist’s Way. This morning, I’ve come back to a paragraph that really rings with some truth, for me:

“In retrospect, I am astounded I could let go of the drama of being a suffering artist. nothing dies harder than a bad idea. And few ideas are worse that the ones we have about art. We can charge so many things off to our sufferings-artist-identity: drunkenness, promiscuity, fiscal problems, a certain ruthlessness or self-destructiveness in matters of the heart. We all know how broke-crazy-promiscuous-unreliable artists are. And if they don’t have to be, then what’s [our] excuse?“

[Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way]

The thing I really connect with in this paragraph is the notion that artists don’t have to be tortured or self-destructive. Julia goes on to talk, throughout this book, about how a creative life can be steady, even tranquil. That we, that I, can work with an even pace, escape the roller coaster of high and low times of creative output (oh my, the creative highs are so high…the creative lows are so low). I don’t have to work myself to the bone when I feel fresh ideas are most accessible, I can work with steadiness. I can work with calm. She has this idea that I can have my creative wells filled on a daily basis, that I can recharge myself, every day, through my approach to work and life. I can work hard and long and gently and short without burning out and I can do it all without the persona of tortured-artist. Eureka! How novel!

I don’t know who it was who told me so, but this whole idea of the tortured artist truly is a bunch of bunk. I’m living my life and I’m doing creative work. It’s not rocket science. Why the turmoil? Why the torture?

I’ve grown up a lot over the past year and I can feel a heap of new, personal growth coming on strong. I’ve surplussed many wretched ideas about creativity, grown some new perspectives and I like who I am, right this instant, so much more than the me of a year ago! But there’s still so much to learn about myself and about my creative process and habit if I want to continue to sustain myself (and my family) with this work.

At any rate, before the blue light of morning runs out, I wanted to talk to you about the concept of morning pages, a term used by Julia Cameron. Every morning, this past week, I have sat down in the early hours and written three pages in my journal before beginning my day. I’ve always journaled but never every morning, first thing. Also, dedicating three whole pages, every day, is a lot of writing. I use a very large sketchbook journal and three pages, depending on my writing flow, takes some time.

I don’t always have something beautiful to say, and a lot of what I have written this week has been replete of thoughts that are rooted in insecurity and general negativity. But to pour all of that crap-filled emotion out onto paper really purifies my mind and heart before I begin my day. I’m often surprised when I glance over the writing from previous days — the content surprises me because the emotions were ugly but so fleeting! I’ve forgotten all about the things I felt, usually as soon as I write them down on paper. Sometimes, I can see that my emotions confused me or made me believe something untrue. Other times I write something beautiful and full of meaning. Either way, I’m always aware that I am writing for myself, I am my only audience, and I’m letting everything fly out of my pen tip onto paper and it might be better for me than a hot bath in my claw foot tub.

How many times, in one day, do we let ugliness take root in our hearts. When that ugliness builds up, how can we function? How can we see straight. To pour it out on paper is to free ourselves of it. I don’t feel like I need to talk to someone about my misguided emotions — especially if those emotions I share might mean that the individual receiving my words will pick the shrapnel of my talk out of their heart and soul for weeks and months. The human heart can be vulgar. The human tongue can cut deep and wound like bullets.

To free myself of my insecurities and crazy emotions before the day even begins does myself and others a kind service.

It’s not my intent to make you think I don’t have anything positive to say when I journal, on the contrary, my writing flow sometimes begins grumpy and it sometimes begins lighthearted, but no matter what, by the end of a journal entry, I often find my writing to be light and filled with beautiful concepts, even small sketches. Some days, I haven’t anything negative to say at all. The point is to write. To free yourself. To eliminate anything that might get in the way of creative flow. And it works. Try it.

It’s officially day here now and there’s much to do.

I’m wishing you such a wonderful Thursday.

Be well.

The Plume

Filed Under: books, creativity, morning, plume gables

March Is A Flirty Tease

March 23, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

I love March.

I love it when it comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion.

I love it when it coaxes the tulips and daffodils out of the dirt and then suddenly

decides to snow and blow and frost and freeze all over the buds

of sweet, darling nature.

Oh, silly nature, don’t you know by now that March is a tease?

I know that March is a tease.

Yesterday I was drifting about The Gables on cloud nine with a springy draft blowing in from the North.

I went to sleep with gardening dreams in my fluffy little head and woke up to a few inches of new snow that fell in the night and a heinous wind out of the North.

I don’t mind. March is a tease. She’s a glorious old flirt. The fresh snow in the low country means there’s a new and sassy layer of powder in the high country and I’m going to take my new skis out for a blitz sometime this week (might even coax dad to come with)!

I am, after all, a cup-half-full kind of girl!

Back to this necklace. It’s big. It features several of my favorite design elements: hollow form, long trailing pendants that drop from a focal pendant, coral, antlers and two dimensional forms. Whew. Made for a lady who isn’t afraid of false springs. Made for a lady who likes to garden but keeps a wee shard of ice in her soul because she finds all-things-Arctic particularly blissful.

Humdinger.

It’s built of sterling, 14 carat gold, coral and prehnite.

In other news, I’ve been faffing about the studio all day long waiting for my mum and dad to arrive and they seem to be taking there sweet time between Montana and here! Yeesh.

Mundane life details:

1. I’m making quinoa and steamed broccoli for dinner. That sounds meager…perhaps I’ll add an elk sausage avec moutarde!!!

2. Today I casted something. I can’t wait to show you!

3. Yesterday and most of today, I had a pinched nerve in my lower back. One hour ago, my discomfort disappeared after I did three sets of ten pull-ups out in the studio. Huh…

4. Plum gave Judith a kiss. It was quite the sight to behold.

5. Have I told you that RW gave me an ameraucana chicken last week! She’s going to lay me blue eggs after she recovers from the dismal life she had before she became mine…already, after free ranging in the yard for a week, her feathers have filled out and she seems much more confident! The Gables is officially a chicken rescue!

Here she is!
Her name is Debbie Gibson.
6. Isn’t Lionel beautiful?

He hails from the same ranch as Mister Pinkerton (the same mother as well, in fact). Next time there’s a batch of kittens out at the Gilbert Ranch, I’m going to claim a fluffy tiger kitten like this.

7. I’m wearing galoshes.

8. RW spent the entire day cleaning the house. Isn’t he wonderful? Don’t you want one like him?

9. I just checked the mail, one second ago, and there was a pink letter from Corinna.

10. Sometimes I wish we could all get together, in the summer, and camp on a beautiful lake and have campfires and splendiferous s’more making and star watching. Do you ever dream of such jamborees?

The Plume

Filed Under: cats, mister pinkerton, New Jewelry, spring, woah there are lots of made up words in this post