It’s been more than twenty years since I read Anne Lamott’s memoir-journal, Operating Instructions.
It was a book I intrinsically disliked.
Why? As I’m writing this post, the urge to reread is surging: I probably misunderstood what I was reading my first time through, probably related too closely to certain elements. One writer reading another’s advice on the creative process is surely a recipe for a critical reading! My initial “writer’s read” likely pulled my takeaways from Lamott’s story out of shape. I’ve done that often enough in the past…
I detested George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones my first time through. The lack of fantastical elements following the atmospheric and ominous opening — where was the follow-through, the expected magic?
A year later, out on a walk, I found myself arguing in my head with various Stark family members all of whose names and idiocyncracies I remembered) — immediately I knew: it was time to start rereading…
Operating Instructions was not Lamott’s first book. The references to her earlier work, Bird by Bird, were frequent and detailed. Bird by Bird‘s title “comes from an episode Lamott shares from her childhood. Her 10-year-old brother had been assigned a book report on birds. He was given three months to complete the report, but he had procrastinated until the night before it was due … His father’s simple yet profound advice was to take it “bird by bird,” or one small step at a time…“
In Operating Instructions, we heard, more or less word-by-word, the same story.
I understand why she reused it. Looking it up on the Internet this morning, I appreciate the strong imprint the story made on my own brain, read so many years ago.
Not only is it a good story, but it’s one we’d ALL be well-served by internalizing, and actively, at that. But. Bird by Bird was not the book that delivered me the story, and if there’s nuance between Lamott’s numerous retellings, I’ve yet to find it.
I’m participating in Somerville Open Studios this upcoming weekend. I’ve procrastinated, and I’m overwhelmed. Some element of my participation will be in classic Ann Lamott style: ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’ And sure, there’s something in me still, that really kicks against that.
Giorgio Vasari, back in the 16th century, detailed how Michelangelo submerged his models in water and then slowly lifted them above the surface as he carved the emerging details onto full-size marble. Art historians and sculptors since (as well as the examples that remain of Michelangelo’s work in progress) challenge this as a creditable description of Michelangelo’s literal process, but the metaphor works. The idea, the statue is already there in the water, the stone. The blank page.
The artist’s work–the work is to see it, to drain the water away, to bring into life.
Step by step. Bird by bird. Add one bird in after another, until the project is complete. But what’s the project? What’s the… picture? The deep shape behind every bird that gets sketched in?
When I first saw Edward Steed’s New Yorker cover, “Enchanted Garden,” I collected it for my ‘ideas’ box, and, for whatever as-yet-unexplored reason, I started drawing my own birds on a tree, some time later.
What prompted the birds? That’s what I want to know. Why am I currently bird obsessed? Why all these different, tiny birds? Why was I thinking “Bird by bird–that’s from Ann Lamott?”
I’ve learned, both as an author and in life, that repetition is unavoidable. Asking yourself, over decades, things that seem to be the same questions. The greatest artists know how to repeat themselves in a way that’s…. not repeating themselves. Juggling between the specific and the universal, the prosaic daily steps and the vaunted sense of the greater figure, as yet under the water of one’s unconscious that one hopes those prosaic steps are on their way to be uncovering.
Will any of my damn bird drawings be completed for the day? I’m exhausted and overwhelmed (right now, with my non-artistic life) and honestly I don’t know.
But Saturday, something about my process at least will be up to see. And that is what THIS open studio will be about.
I’m grateful for every bright, colorful bird, for every spark and idea; I’m grateful to Lamott for the repetition that cemented this idea in my head.