Art and Practice

April 4, 2013

This month many writers are writing a poem a day in NaPoWriMo..the poetry challenge.  I am accomplished in a few expressive ways, but I have not visited my poet for years.  I was a prolific song writer as a teenager, and wrote poetry every day of some kind.  I am a language fan, loving words because they sound funny or because they have obscure specific meanings.  Being poetic, or even doing rhymes as improvisational humor, sharpens the wit, grows the vocabulary and enhances connections and metaphoric images.

When I was young I heard my father recite the Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W Service.  He knew it by heart. After a couple of drinks he liked to sing, dance or recite that poem. It was always entertaining. He was a research scientist by profession, but my parents loved music and dance more than anything.  We had a player piano which was the scene of many sing a long parties.  What was truly admirable about my parents was their artistry.  They had regular suburban lives, but my dad was an accomplished musician, and my mother designed and executed both landscape environments and fashion with amazing professionalism.  My mother was a prize-winning floral arranger, and avid flower show horticulturist.

I was encouraged , and in some cases forced, to practice art.  Piano was a mandatory 30 minutes every day of my life, and a legal pad sheet of cursive handwriting had to be inspected by my father each night.  I eventually realized I could recycle some of the handwriting, but there was no faking the piano.  My guitar and voice lessons came with mandatory practice sessions when I was in high school.  I learned the power of practice at a very young age.  Discipline is never natural to kids and maybe my parents overdid the whole rigidity thing.  Today, however, I thank Dick and Ruby Morse, the living artists, who gave me the self confidence to know that I can be any kind of artist I care to be.  My art will reflect my practice, and with practice I will improve.  All poems, all songs, all dances are alive and need to be brought forth.  Practice is the vehicle in which they travel into the light.