> i know a place <

{ Preface to an exciting new series! }

Lucy walked all the way through the wardrobe, past the big furry coats, and discovered the magical, life-changing place called, Narnia.

There is another place--accessible to anyone who wants to go there--that can bring wonder and adventure to any life. Getting there does not require passage through the elusive Platform No. 9½  at the railway station. Nor does it require that we “think happy thoughts.” In fact, for some, it is often thoughts of frustration that hold the key.
    It is a world I discovered as a kid in grade school and I have been making regular trips to ever since. I have not shared this with anyone, until now--fearing I would be labeled crazy. Alas, I was called “crazy” none the less and have embraced it boldly.
    Now it is time to reveal the location of this amazing, restorative place and invite you in for tea and more. When I tell you, it will not surprise me to learn that many of you have already visited there, many, many times and, like me, you too, have kept it a secret.
    Our journey there commences with a story.
  As a kid I never hated school and, I did not love it--not for any normal reasons at any rate. I loved history and geography--especially maps and globes (which I collect.) I thought we spent to much time on European minutia and almost no time on the ever-intriguing East. Our look at Asia was, at best, a fly-over of China, a harbor tour of Hong Kong, and a post Pearl Harbor peek at Japan. It seemed as though Asia was created to start World War II and ancient Asian art was actually mass produced in the back rooms of small shops in the “China Town” districts of New York and San Francisco. For all I knew from school, “Ming Dynasty” was a noodle shop on Grant Street.
    I did actually hate reading. Mostly because we all read the same books. Why couldn’t we each read something different and learn from each other? Evangeline, the epic headache, ah, poem, being read aloud by twelve year olds I found to be a mind numbing ritual--after all, there was hemlock in “the forest primeval.” Coleridge’s The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner was literary water boarding.
    In fourth grade, at age nine, a miracle happened: I met Mr. Samuel Clemens, and his literary alter ego, Mark Twain. Eureka! I sailed through Huckleberry Finn, the assigned text, and jumped on to Tom Sawyer’s adventures, and then off to King Arthur’s Court with "Hank Morgan," an ingenious Yankee from Connecticut. I read it all, traveling with Twain to Calaveras County, the Garden of Eden, and all points on the compass. I could not get enough of his genius for story telling (and human observation.) Mostly it was Twain’s indefatigable wit that captivated me. He is my favorite human to quote (followed immediatly by G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Edison.)
    Before I had devoured all of Mr. Twin’s four-egg oeuvre I ran smack dab into a hot and steaming flagon of Charles Dickens. Eschewing the assigned tome, I had greater expectations for myself and ran head long away from David “the wuss” Copperfield and signed up with Dombey and Son. Next, I perused Mr. Pickwick’s prodigious Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, and A Christmas Carol--which every family should read aloud.
    I almost talked our school into staging A Christmas Carol one year in the place of one more tired re-dredging of Jesus and the Indians Go to Bethlehem. “But,” they said, “Scrooge doesn’t really become a Christian in the end, just a good person.”
    Bollox!
  Meanwhile, back in class, every class, I searched for what does this have to do with me? Especially with math, if everyone knows how to determine the square root of the sum of an isosceles triangle, or whatever, why do I need to learn it. Ask some one who knows--and cares.
  A more surprising discovery in school, I didn’t  like recess either--accept as it was a relief from triangle and sentence dissecting. Recess accomplished naught. Oh, sure, we worked off nervous energy to be less fidgety during the next round of “French monarchs for 200, Alex.”
    Then, one day, on my way to recess, I found it. The magical place--my own private Narnia. It was an accident. I had been drawing in my sketch pad--having completed the filling in of the ten blanks in my Think and Do workbook calculated to drum into my brain the role of the adverb in modern culture. I was never allowed to go to recess early--no one was. Hence I drew. On this day, not having completed a particular drawing, and the story that went with it, I took my sketch pad with me as we headed for recess. No tether ball for me that day. I sketched and wrote all through recess.

    “Are you alright?” Asked the officer of the day in the noisy, frenetic playground. It was uncharacteristic of me not to join in any reindeer games.
  “I’m fine. I just need to finish this.” And then it hit me. That I said “need” instead of want. That there was something started in the classroom, a place of reason and learning, and continued to completion during our recess from reason--the mindless pursuit of play, for no real reason.
    This was my new favorite place, but could it, I wondered, be a better place than either the classroom for reason and the clash-ground for recess. Is there a place I can go, anyone can go, to do what they love and that what they love has purpose? Is there a place like that? I’d like that.
    Welcome to the place Between Reason and Recess!

So, today, I am launching a new series of exercise, playful projects, designed to push your personal creativity ever-closer to the surface, out into the light of day. It is also intended to develop tools and skills usually thought to be only for artistic expression and integrate these skills into all areas of your life. When I speak at writers’ conferences, I push writers to start drawing to improve their observation skills. My Uncle Paul (Beckman), while a professor at Sacramento State College, had a student who showed great promise as a painter and encouraged “Wayne” to write about his art. His first effort was crap (Uncle Paul used a stronger noun.) He threw the essay at Wayne insisting he rewrite all of it. Years later Wayne told me that  my Uncle's insistence that an artist be able to put his ideas into words was a great gift to him as he went forward in life. That artist became one of our greatest American, contemporary masters, Wayne Thiebaud. ("Waterland" by Wayne Thiebaud, below)

 
These little “try this” events in my new Between Reason & Recess series are designed for discovery and exploration. You can do them and so you must try--please.  This is not a contest and no one need see anything you do. It is a playful exercise leading to discover. The only failure is not to try.  Also, I ain’t just makin’ them up. This is the stuff I’ve been doing for years--proven to inspire and stimulate the creative centers of your mind and spirit. When I invent a new exercise, I will try it myself before passing it along through the blogosphere. If you have an idea, speak up, share it with. I'll try it and pass it along to the rest of our "creative salon." This  series will occur in between my regular posts at blog central: TEA WITH McNAIR . Each exercise will be simple and fun enough that you CAN do it. The only failure is not to try. If you were to look through all my old sketch books ( 140 and counting), you would find lots of chicken scratchings. But it all adds up to the important work of just trying to draw while you are really learning to be more observant of life and all its remarkable details. 

•  •  •  What to bring to creativity camp •  basic supplies •  •  •  •  •   •   

• Sketchbook (blank, unlined).  Both a journal and sketchbook. I suggest, if you are not already a regular sketchbook user, get a basic, spiral bound, 9”x12”. Any smaller and you will create phone doodles. Larger may be too awkward to carry around. If you haven’t got an art supply or craft store nearby, Target and most drug stores carry decent sketchbooks. WARNING: If this is your very first sketchbook, do get an inexpensive one so you WILL feel free to use it a lot--the higher the price, the lower the usage. Trust me.
• Lead pencils, soft (get 3 and a small sharpener)
• Colored felt pens, a fist full. If you do not already have a favorite “felt-tip” brand, start with one of the packs of 24-50, small felt pens, assorted colors-- Target and other such stores.
• Camera ~ If you do not own a small, easy to use camera, a disposable one will work fine for our purposes. Even those with film can be used to create digital images on a disc during film processing.
• Office supplies: Small pair of scissors, clear tape, glue stick, etc. (Think portability)
• Favorite writing instrument ~ fountain pen, roller ball, your choice. This would be a great time to try out something new. (Cue the fountain pen salesperson.)

{ Between Reason & Recess  • Exercise No.1 }

1. Get the stuff (see above)

2. Write (scribble, draw, no labels) your name, address, contact phone on inside front cover of your new sketchbook and the phrase, If found, please contact:

3. Select a favorite quote that inspires you and write (draw, scribble, etc.) it on the first page of your new sketchbook.

That's it -- for now.
Onward & upward,

McNair

Sketching at the counter
Jamaica Inn coffee shop,
Los Angeles

[ 1,661 ]

Lucy walked all the way through the wardrobe, past the big furry coats, and discovered the magical, life-changing place called, Narnia.

There is another place--accessible to anyone who wants to go there--that can bring wonder and adventure to any life. Getting there does not require passage through the elusive Platform No. 9½  at the railway station. Nor does it require that we “think happy thoughts.” In fact, for some, it is often thoughts of frustration that hold the key.
    It is a world I discovered as a kid in grade school and I have been making regular trips to ever since. I have not shared this with anyone, until now--fearing I would be labeled crazy. Alas, I was called “crazy” none the less and have embraced it boldly.
    Now it is time to reveal the location of this amazing, restorative place and invite you in for tea and more. When I tell you, it will not surprise me to learn that many of you have already visited there, many, many times and, like me, you too, have kept it a secret.
    Our journey there commences with a story.
  As a kid I never hated school and, I did not love it--not for any normal reasons at any rate. I loved history and geography--especially maps and globes (which I collect.) I thought we spent to much time on European minutia and almost no time on the ever-intriguing East. Our look at Asia was, at best, a fly-over of China, a harbor tour of Hong Kong, and a post Pearl Harbor peek at Japan. It seemed as though Asia was created to start World War II and ancient Asian art was actually mass produced in the back rooms of small shops in the “China Town” districts of New York and San Francisco. For all I knew from school, “Ming Dynasty” was a noodle shop on Grant Street.
    I did actually hate reading. Mostly because we all read the same books. Why couldn’t we each read something different and learn from each other? Evangeline, the epic headache, ah, poem, being read aloud by twelve year olds I found to be a mind numbing ritual--after all, there was hemlock in “the forest primeval.” Coleridge’s The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner was literary water boarding.
    In fourth grade, at age nine, a miracle happened: I met Mr. Samuel Clemens, and his literary alter ego, Mark Twain. Eureka! I sailed through Huckleberry Finn, the assigned text, and jumped on to Tom Sawyer’s adventures, and then off to King Arthur’s Court with "Hank Morgan," an ingenious Yankee from Connecticut. I read it all, traveling with Twain to Calaveras County, the Garden of Eden, and all points on the compass. I could not get enough of his genius for story telling (and human observation.) Mostly it was Twain’s indefatigable wit that captivated me. He is my favorite human to quote (followed immediatly by G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Edison.)
    Before I had devoured all of Mr. Twin’s four-egg oeuvre I ran smack dab into a hot and steaming flagon of Charles Dickens. Eschewing the assigned tome, I had greater expectations for myself and ran head long away from David “the wuss” Copperfield and signed up with Dombey and Son. Next, I perused Mr. Pickwick’s prodigious Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, and A Christmas Carol--which every family should read aloud.
    I almost talked our school into staging A Christmas Carol one year in the place of one more tired re-dredging of Jesus and the Indians Go to Bethlehem. “But,” they said, “Scrooge doesn’t really become a Christian in the end, just a good person.”
    Bollox!
  Meanwhile, back in class, every class, I searched for what does this have to do with me? Especially with math, if everyone knows how to determine the square root of the sum of an isosceles triangle, or whatever, why do I need to learn it. Ask some one who knows--and cares.
  A more surprising discovery in school, I didn’t  like recess either--accept as it was a relief from triangle and sentence dissecting. Recess accomplished naught. Oh, sure, we worked off nervous energy to be less fidgety during the next round of “French monarchs for 200, Alex.”
    Then, one day, on my way to recess, I found it. The magical place--my own private Narnia. It was an accident. I had been drawing in my sketch pad--having completed the filling in of the ten blanks in my Think and Do workbook calculated to drum into my brain the role of the adverb in modern culture. I was never allowed to go to recess early--no one was. Hence I drew. On this day, not having completed a particular drawing, and the story that went with it, I took my sketch pad with me as we headed for recess. No tether ball for me that day. I sketched and wrote all through recess.

    “Are you alright?” Asked the officer of the day in the noisy, frenetic playground. It was uncharacteristic of me not to join in any reindeer games.
  “I’m fine. I just need to finish this.” And then it hit me. That I said “need” instead of want. That there was something started in the classroom, a place of reason and learning, and continued to completion during our recess from reason--the mindless pursuit of play, for no real reason.
    This was my new favorite place, but could it, I wondered, be a better place than either the classroom for reason and the clash-ground for recess. Is there a place I can go, anyone can go, to do what they love and that what they love has purpose? Is there a place like that? I’d like that.
    Welcome to the place Between Reason and Recess!

So, today, I am launching a new series of exercise, playful projects, designed to push your personal creativity ever-closer to the surface, out into the light of day. It is also intended to develop tools and skills usually thought to be only for artistic expression and integrate these skills into all areas of your life. When I speak at writers’ conferences, I push writers to start drawing to improve their observation skills. My Uncle Paul (Beckman), while a professor at Sacramento State College, had a student who showed great promise as a painter and encouraged “Wayne” to write about his art. His first effort was crap (Uncle Paul used a stronger noun.) He threw the essay at Wayne insisting he rewrite all of it. Years later Wayne told me that  my Uncle's insistence that an artist be able to put his ideas into words was a great gift to him as he went forward in life. That artist became one of our greatest American, contemporary masters, Wayne Thiebaud. ("Waterland" by Wayne Thiebaud, below)

 
These little “try this” events in my new Between Reason & Recess series are designed for discovery and exploration. You can do them and so you must try--please.  This is not a contest and no one need see anything you do. It is a playful exercise leading to discover. The only failure is not to try.  Also, I ain’t just makin’ them up. This is the stuff I’ve been doing for years--proven to inspire and stimulate the creative centers of your mind and spirit. When I invent a new exercise, I will try it myself before passing it along through the blogosphere. If you have an idea, speak up, share it with. I'll try it and pass it along to the rest of our "creative salon." This  series will occur in between my regular posts at blog central: TEA WITH McNAIR . Each exercise will be simple and fun enough that you CAN do it. The only failure is not to try. If you were to look through all my old sketch books ( 140 and counting), you would find lots of chicken scratchings. But it all adds up to the important work of just trying to draw while you are really learning to be more observant of life and all its remarkable details. 

•  •  •  What to bring to creativity camp •  basic supplies •  •  •  •  •   •   

• Sketchbook (blank, unlined).  Both a journal and sketchbook. I suggest, if you are not already a regular sketchbook user, get a basic, spiral bound, 9”x12”. Any smaller and you will create phone doodles. Larger may be too awkward to carry around. If you haven’t got an art supply or craft store nearby, Target and most drug stores carry decent sketchbooks. WARNING: If this is your very first sketchbook, do get an inexpensive one so you WILL feel free to use it a lot--the higher the price, the lower the usage. Trust me.
• Lead pencils, soft (get 3 and a small sharpener)
• Colored felt pens, a fist full. If you do not already have a favorite “felt-tip” brand, start with one of the packs of 24-50, small felt pens, assorted colors-- Target and other such stores.
• Camera ~ If you do not own a small, easy to use camera, a disposable one will work fine for our purposes. Even those with film can be used to create digital images on a disc during film processing.
• Office supplies: Small pair of scissors, clear tape, glue stick, etc. (Think portability)
• Favorite writing instrument ~ fountain pen, roller ball, your choice. This would be a great time to try out something new. (Cue the fountain pen salesperson.)

{ Between Reason & Recess  • Exercise No.1 }

1. Get the stuff (see above)

2. Write (scribble, draw, no labels) your name, address, contact phone on inside front cover of your new sketchbook and the phrase, If found, please contact:

3. Select a favorite quote that inspires you and write (draw, scribble, etc.) it on the first page of your new sketchbook.

That's it -- for now.
Onward & upward,

McNair

Sketching at the counter
Jamaica Inn coffee shop,
Los Angeles

Comments

[Paris Parfait]

Scott insisted I visit you and join in - so here I am. I must warn you, I don't like pencils - they're so messy (yes I know, art can be messy) - but I'll play along.

[Mark Kistler]

A great posting! I've got my portable creativity kit in hand, favorite quote written, one hand poised over my sketchbook, the other over my keyboard willing McNairs's next posting to appear!

[Anita Renfroe]

Excellent, as always.
You, my friend, have a big, BIG Brain -
Loving your cranium and the heart that drives it,
Anita

[Niki]

I am soooooo ready for this. Let's go McNair...What's next? ;)

[Angela Smith]

Oooh!! I'm so excited about this, thank you for posting this. I'm ready to go whenever you are!

[sharala]

I'm game, I think. I'll have to see what supplies I don't already have.