Back to School: Creative Writing 2.0.2.0

Three years ago, I was asked to relocate to a new classroom in my school. I packed up ten-plus years of teacher things and moved to a more-or-less identical room in another part of the building.

This summer, in another shuffle of classroom assignments, I was asked to move again — back, it turns out, to 226, the room where I’d started out and taught for so long. I was happy to discover, when I returned, the ghosts of my old decorations — postcards, photos, bookmarks, bumper stickers, students drawings — still lingering on the big bulletin board at the front of the room, three years after I left, their memories imprinted into the cork.

I’m a big believer in classroom decorations, not the mass-produced posters and banners you can buy from the teacher store, but decorations of a more personal and DIY sort. What’s on the walls can go a long way toward establishing the classroom as a safe and creative space, and the less one classroom looks like the next, the better. This year, things are a bit different: most of my decorations are still in boxes from this last, hurried move, and many of my students are learning from home, not in the classroom at all. The need for a safe and creative space is at least as important as ever, but that “space” is more metaphorical. For the moment, in Room 226, the ghosts of decorations past will do.

One Friday in March, we left school for the weekend and did not return until August. I swept through my room just once after that, to grab some necessary books and papers. I didn’t set foot in the school again until July, when I started the move to my new (old) classroom.

In this last room, the one I packed up this summer, I’d made a mural of huge photos of writers, figures I imagined as some of the patron saints of our class. The students and the photographed writers had no choice but to gaze into each other’s faces all year, which I liked. Early on, I asked my Creative Writing students to warm up for their writing day by drawing, in their notebooks, one of the faces from the wall. Then they moved on to drawing the faces of their own creative heroes. (To see the original mural and a few student notebook drawings, see this blog post from last November.) Before the schools shut down, we started using the drawing time to learn more about the world: students would take about five minutes to Google Czech or Nigerian or Bolivian writers (for example), then choose an arresting face from the images that resulted, draw it, and finally surround the drawing with a few biographical facts, culled from a brief internet search. As an alternative, they could type in their own first names, followed by the word writer, and quickly research and draw a writer with whom they happened to share a name.

In February or March, students had started taking turns drawing their pictures on the classroom’s two whiteboards. I hoped to have every available whiteboard inch covered by the end of the semester.

But then the virus came, and we went home, and the school stood empty for months. So when I finally returned to pack up the room, I was greeted by all these faces, each of which I still adore. Every one of them is somehow alive with the unique personality of the student who made the drawing:

I was reluctant for a long time to push my Creative Writing students to draw pictures — or even sometimes sing — which are decidedly not activities they signed on for in a writing class. But these whiteboard faces persuade me to believe that our drawing time is time remarkably well spent. If nothing else, the drawings have brought me enormous joy — I’ve looked at them so much it’s hard to believe they might never have existed. And it made me glad to know these figures stood watch over the classroom all spring and summer, when no one else was there.

Our first assignment in Creative Writing this year had nothing to do with writing. It was inspired in part by Kurt Vonnegut’s now-famous letter to a bunch of high school students in 2006, the one where he implores them to “Practice any art … no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

I share the assignment here, in case you would like to do any of it yourself. I’ve also included, at the end of this post, a few student responses, which have convinced me that this, too, was time well spent.

Thanks for reading, y’all. Stay safe, and be kind.

FRIDAY, 8/21/20:

This isn’t a writing assignment, but more like an invitation to play. The purpose is to shake off some self-consciousness, to do something silly and pure, to open yourself up to art and accident and vulnerability, to express yourself by yourself, for yourself. I will not see the results of this activity, but I do want you to send me a short email after it’s done, telling me how it went.

Do ONE of the following:

1. If you have a driver’s license and access to a car: Make yourself a short playlist of the songs that give you the most life and the most energy and the most joy, the kinds of songs that are best if you play them loud, songs you know or can at least fake every word. Go for a 20 minute drive, by yourself, blasting those songs, signing along as loudly as you can.

2. If you don’t have a driver’s license or car access, skip the playlist and the driving. Just go take a shower and sing your heart out. If possible, do this when you are alone in the house, and really sing your heart out. Loud! Make it a long shower, with lots of songs.

3. Without consulting the internet; spend at least 10 minutes trying to do an impression of each of the following. Don’t worry if your impression is terrible. Don’t be afraid to laugh at how hilariously bad you are at impressions. But do make a mental note of which impression is your best. Spend at least a couple minutes each trying to imitate each of these:

+ a family member

+ a famous actor

+ a famous singer

+ a famous politician

+ a cartoon character

When you’re finished, consider: what would an impression of yourself sound like? Can you do an impression of yourself?

4. Spend 10 minutes making funny faces in the mirror. For inspiration, you may want to first watch the first three minutes of this video, in which Patton Oswalt makes faces for the camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVNCm8lhB80 (The second three minutes may also be of interest, but they don’t include funny faces.)

5. Pour a tall glass of water. Spend a few minutes gargling some of your favorite tunes. Optional bonus challenge: after you’ve done this by yourself for a while, invite a family member to join you. See if you can gargle in harmony or gargle a duet, swapping lines of the song. For best results, do this standing face to face.

6. Draw each of the following from memory, without consulting the internet: a giraffe, a koala, an orangutan, an ostrich, an owl. Don’t spend more than 5 minutes on any one of them. Live with (and celebrate) your mistakes. Only once you are finished, compare your drawings with online photos of the real thing. Revel in the differences.

7. Find a place, maybe but not necessarily your bedroom, where you can be totally alone. Lock the door, if possible, and put on a favorite, high energy song. Play it loud enough to drown out the rest of the world. You know that phrase, “Dance as if no one is looking?” Do that. Don’t even watch yourself, because then you have an audience and it becomes a performance: avoid all mirrors. I ‘d recommend going a step further and finding a dark place, a closet or a bathroom, maybe. Turn off the lights and do your dancing in the dark, where all there is is your invisible body and the music. If you have trouble picking out a song, try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMXBJW1PuU8. Whatever song you choose, dance to it at least twice, back to back.

8. Draw pictures with your feet, holding the pen, pencil, or marker in between your toes. A marker may be best because of the thickness; feel free to experiment to find the best writing utensil for you. Draw your own self portrait, first, and then at least 2 of the following, on separate sheets:

+ your home

+ your family

+ your biggest crush, if you’ve got one (either someone you know, or a “celebrity crush”)

+ your pet, if you’ve got one, but wearing a cape

+ Dracula

+ Spiderman vs. Batman, the ultimate showdown

9. Only if you don’t already know how: spend the weekend learning to juggle. Get as good as you can by Monday, even if it’s still pretty rough. Feel free to consult internet videos for help.

Okay, that’s the list. Do one of those things. If you want to do more than one, that’s fine, too, but make sure you do at least one of these, and do it whole-heartedly. Do it alone, and try your best to be as unself-conscious as possible.

Immediately after you do this, email me a brief description of what you did, how it went, how it felt, etc. Just 3-6 sentences documenting the experience is all I need.

That was the assignment. You’ll have to take my word that I received a bunch(!!) of inspiring responses. Here are just a few:

I took a shower and sung my heart out as you said, and really gave it my best shot! It was loud, ugly, and loaded with vocal cracks, and unruly shrills! It was … the most cringe-worthy and satisfying thing I have ever done! I butchered: Lewis Capaldi “Bruises” “Someone You Loved” “before you go” and many other great songs. And let’s say…I felt as powerful as a battalion, and that’s a statement!

I did the first option and made a short upbeat playlist and drove for 20 minutes. This made me feel energetic and I wanted to accomplish things after I got home, and I did the rest of the day I worked out did speed drills, and went to the park to play basketball.

During the weekend, I stayed in my bedroom singing national anthems of different developing countries. I didn’t dance because I don’t dance and dancing is not my thing. It made me feel extremely good while singing them because I feel like I want to help those countries.

So, I drove around with the music up pretty high. Higher than normal. It was after work and I was going home. I had a terrible, stressful day and I went on my favorite playlist and felt free. I took the long way home and I normally go under the speed limit, but I decided to go over. I know, so rebellious and scary. In that moment, I was as free as a bird with the world in my hands. I felt absolutely elated and when I came home, I was in a better mood than I had been for a week.

I did the impressions option for today, and it was a funny experience. For the singer portion I tried to do Ariana Grande, and I was way off, though that was expected. But the funny thing about the whole thing is that my mom heard me from the other room and started laughing. She actually came in to try and help me with my impressions, but we just kinda sat there and laughed for most of the attempts. Then we went out and got ice cream and fries, because why not?

Why not is right. That right there is what I would call some homeschool at its finest.

Draw Your Ancestors

1. Classroom Faces

At the start of this school year, I moved into a new classroom and had a new, big, blank cinder-block wall to fill. So I used one of those giant printers to print out life-sized and larger-than-life photos of a few American literary icons, and I arranged their faces into a huge collage:

Your Words Can Change the World — *(Left to right, this is Eudora Welty, Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Walt Whitman, Flannery O’Connor, and Toni Morrison.)*

I think of it as a (partial!) Mount Rushmore of American writing, a wall of literary ancestors. Their job is to remind us that our words, too, can change the world.

Over the course of my Creative Writing course, we’ll read at least a little something by most of these writers, and sooner or later we’ll talk — at least a little — about the rest. To be sure, it’s a subjective and incomplete wall of ancestors, filtering the “canon” through my own biases and tastes, but it’s a start. (I keep in the hollow space of my podium a huge, rolled up head of Kurt Vonnegut, whose impish sidelong glance I just couldn’t fit, physically, anywhere into that puzzle of faces. Later I may create a second line-up on another wall; in the meantime, when Vonnegut comes up in discussion, I can whip out and unfurl his image.)

2. Student Drawings

Especially because Creative Writing happens to be the first period of the day — and because I think some “mindless” drawing can awaken some playful, spontaneous, unpredictable part of the brain — I sometimes like to start the class by asking students to draw for five or six minutes. I’ve asked them to reserve the first three pages of their Creative Writing notebooks for these start-of-class drawings and doodles, so that by the end of the year those pages will be crammed with all sorts of images — images which will serve as untamed and untranslatable intro to all the words that will follow. Of course, half the class complains that they “can’t draw,” which is the real point (it turns out, they can). But because they only have five minutes for the drawings, the perfectionists have to abandon perfectionism and the slow-to-starters have to jump in, ready or not. There’s no time to think, and everybody is equal.

I started the year’s drawing times by having students choose one of the big literary faces on the wall and try, quickly, to draw it. At the start of the year, they’re likely to know something about one or two of these writers — probably Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes — but the rest, so far, are strangers to them. Ultimately you have to choose your own creative ancestors, and I know my students haven’t chosen these particular writers as theirs. But that’s part of what I like about these first drawing activities: I tell them to just choose whichever face stands out or interests them the most, and spend a few minutes with it. Maybe later a voice or a meaning, or some historical weight or baggage, will attach itself to the face and the drawing. But for now you’re just moving your pencil or pen across a sheet of paper, waking up your brain.

Later on, students will add to the same three pages their own self portraits — and self portraits of themselves as superheroes or supervillains — and they’ll look up pictures of their own creative heroes and their own creative ancestors and draw their faces, too. The ones on the wall are just our starting point, and I absolutely adore the results:

Another reason I like starting with the same limited group of faces, before students branch out into their own, is because I love the variation you get from a few repeated, recognizable images. Each Gertrude Stein reflects its drawer’s personality above all; the result is part Gertrude Stein and mostly that student. No two Gertrude Steins are alike — but they’re just enough alike to make those differences magical.

You can see a few of the students’ own heroes and ancestors mixed in among these sample drawings; I’ll post some more later on in the year. (One day I gave them the option of drawing anything in the room. A student in my film class had recently brought in a wonderful, creepy E.T. mask that her father had made her, out of felt, years ago, as a Halloween costume; it was still hanging on a hook in the front of the room, which is why you see that E.T. There are a couple of stuffed Kermit the Frogs on my bookshelf, too.)

So:

3. Your Turn

Here’s an assignment, if you want one. I recommend starting your day with this, to warm yourself up — if not first thing in the morning, then right before you begin the most productive part of your workday. Take about five minutes to draw one of your own creative heroes or ancestors (a writer, artist, musician, filmmaker, comedian, teacher, lawyer, whatever — maybe choose somebody you admire from your own line of work, someone whose example reminds you why you do what you do).

Keep it to about five minutes. That way it’s not a huge time commitment, and it takes the pressure off: you can’t expect it to be super-accurate, and you can’t worry about whether it’s “good.”

When your five-ish minutes is up, look back upon your creation. Don’t ball it up or throw it away. Take a picture or scan it, and send me a copy (burgin@bhammountainradio.com). Then put the original on your refrigerator or over your desk, or leave it in a public space for a stranger to find.

Here’s an idea, if you want to really go all-in: get a notebook just for this. Spend five minutes doing this, every day for 30 days — or, if you like, for 365 days. Set a goal and keep it up. Create a diary of five-minute faces, a one-of-a-kind, homemade, ever-growing book of ancestors. Occasionally send me pictures (again: burgin@bhammountainradio.com).

Or, finally, an alternate assignment, if you prefer the mystery of losing yourself in a stranger’s face: Google “Czech authors” or “Ugandan authors” or “Indian” or “Hungarian authors” (someplace whose literacy ancestry is unknown to you). Choose the face that most arrests you, and spend five minutes drawing it. Be sure to write the author’s name beside, around, or under the drawing, and maybe (quickly) add to that a book title, birthdate, or fun fact, whatever you get when you click that person’s picture.

I am certain that you will create something magical that otherwise would never have existed. Give it five minutes and see.

P. S. This week I got my hands on the new book by Lynda Barry, Making Comics, and it’s wonderful, offering many of Barry’s own exercises to draw your way into unexpected and extraordinary, imaginative places. Don’t let the title fool you: her book isn’t for aspiring comics artists (although those people should get it, too), nearly so much as it is for the rest of us — especially those of us who quit drawing pictures around the same time we stopped being kids.

P. P. S. Here are a few of my favorite things from the drawings above: Langston Hughes at an enormous, blank typewriter; all the Toni Morrisons; the bored, tired, or mildly annoyed Whitmans; “powerful.” Also this truth: that sometimes when you’re drawing, your pencil produces something your brain didn’t mean or want (a “mistake”) and you just have to run with and reclaim it. So Zora Neale Hurston becomes “Evil Zora Neale Hurston” — which is pretty wonderful in itself.

Don’t forget to send me your drawings! Thanks for reading.

whiteboard cinema & royal alpacas

Yesterday in my neighborhood some little girls were selling their drawings, lemonade-stand style, for 25 cents apiece. I bought this one, which I imagined was a family of royal alpacas. It turns out they are unicorns.

Unicorns

Also this week, we’ve wrapped up my Film Studies class for the year. All year, I’ve been tracing onto the white board paused scenes from the movies we’ve been watching, as backdrops for our discussions. I started an Instagram account for these last semester (@whiteboardcinema), and I’ve posted a few of the drawings on this blog. Here are some more from the last few months. One of my students, Sydnee H., did this one from Raising Arizona:

Here’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (with a freehand Spiderman by Zaida W.)…

… and a few stills from The Godfather (Parts I and II) …

luca brasi

sonny godfather

… Strangers on a Train …

… and, most recently, Moonrise Kingdom:

I’m compelled by art that’s designed to be temporary, made to evaporate, wither, or vanish: jack-o-lanterns, sand castles and mandalas, whiteboard or Etch-a-Sketch drawings, fresh magic markings sold to strangers like lemonade. I think it’s good practice, to create something special from scratch and then to let it go.

I don’t have anything especially deep to say about any of that, I just think it’s a good thing to do.

Happy one hundred.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti — poet and publisher and bookseller, one of my creative heroes — turns one hundred years old today.

Ferlinghetti!

One hundred!

To celebrate, he’s releasing a new book, Little Boy, and City Lights — the iconic San Francisco bookstore he opened, back in 1953 — is throwing a birthday party for the public.

I wish I could be there to celebrate, but since I can’t, I made and mailed him this drawing.

If you need some Ferlinghetti to read, to help celebrate the big day, let me recommend his fantastic little book, Poetry As Insurgent Art, which he published at the age of 88. t’s small enough to fit into your back pocket and is rewards frequent returns. Or of course his first book, from 1958, A Coney Island of the Mind. (If you’ve never read it, the poems numbered 11 and 15 (“The world is a beautiful place…” and “Constantly risking absurdity”) are great and obvious starting points — also “I am Waiting” and “Dog.” I look forward to picking up Little Boy this week.

So happy birthday, Ferlinghetti, and thanks.

whiteboard cinema

I teach a film class to high school kids, and since it’s only a fifty-minute class, we usually have to pause mid-way through each movie and finish it up the next day.

We started the year with Psycho, and after class the movie was paused on a close-up of Janet Leigh’s face. I pulled up the screen and traced her picture with an Expo marker on the whiteboard underneath.

Since then I’ve been tracing scenes from all the movies we’ve watched. Sometimes the drawings compete for space on the whiteboard with notes from this or another class.

Here are a few of the films we’ve watched so far this year:

Psycho 2

Kane 1

Kane 2

Modern Times

If you’d like to see where we go from here, you can follow my brand new(!!) Instagram account, @whiteboardcinema, where I’ll post more drawings as they come up in class. I’ll also be asking my students to send me their own drawings of their own movie favorites, and I’ll post those drawings there too along the way.

(It’s my firm belief, by the way, that everyone should draw pictures, like most of us did at some point when we were kids. You don’t need to be good at it; being “good” is entirely beside the point. And speaking of movies, did you know Roger Ebert liked to draw? I invite us all to embrace his example.)

Thursday!

Tonight I’m donating a drawing apiece to two auctions going on around town, both of them for very good causes.

At TrimTab Brewing Company from 6 to 9 there’s a Beer Tasting and Silent Auction Benefiting the Public Interest Institute. This institute sends UA law students on summer internships with nonprofits and government orgs committed to social justice and the public good; tonight’s fundraiser directly supports participating students, since the gigs are unpaid. The students are doing important and inspiring work; in the past they’ve spent their summers with groups like the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Justice, Alabama Possible, and the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative in Kampala, Uganda. Tonight’s fundraiser is one of the many important and exciting projects spearheaded by my inspiring wife, Glory.

Since it’s a law thing, I drew some favorite legal figures:

Last night the power went out while I was drawing the next one, so I had to do it by candlelight.

IMG_3879-1

I didn’t realize last night that I was mixing black and blue pens in the dark, but now I like the way the two colors came out together. “Pioneering Women of Rock and Roll” is for the Girls Rock Art Auction at Seasick Records and Crestwood Coffee tonight. Girls Rock Birmingham is a great local org. Here’s their exciting mission: “Girls Rock Birmingham helps girls build self-esteem and find their voices through unique programming that combines music education, performance and promotion; empowerment and social justice workshops; positive role models, collaboration and leadership skill building.” You can find out more at www.girlsrockbham.org.

To be sure, both events will have greater and hotter auction items than these two modest contributions. And both events will assemble great groups of people for a great good time. You might not even remember you’re supporting a good cause, just by showing up.

Finally, I must mention, too, one more incredible event, also happening tonight: an evening performance and art exhibit to benefit the Society for the Arts and Culture of South Asia, featuring Parvathy Baul—singer, painter, musician and storyteller from Bengal. That event is 7-9 at Tres Taylor’s studio in Avondale (right next to Saturn) and is bound to be an inspiring and memorable night. Call Lloyd at 205-317-8983 for more info.

Regrettably, none of us can be in three places at once. So let’s spread out tonight and each do our best to support art, social justice, education, and community in Birmingham and around the world.

How to be a poet (drawing)

Wendell Berry

A few years ago I drew this picture of Wendell Berry for my friend Daniel on his birthday. Daniel’s wife Lucy commissioned the drawing and gave me one of Wendell Berry’s books as payment. She also suggested the text, “How to Be a Poet.”

A few weeks ago, while I was moving, I came across my copy of the drawing, which I’d mostly forgotten. Now I’ve put it where I see it every day. I’m not a poet exactly, but I find Berry’s reminders a comfort and encouragement. Here’s the full poem. Maybe it will be useful, also, to you.

Don’t forget to breathe.

How to Be a Poet

By Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.