The Fountainhead: Capturing Our Creative Spirit

No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one simple theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn’t borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn’t borrow hunks of its soul. It’s maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.
- Howard Roark, The Fountainhead

How does what you read, listen to or watch  influence your creative process?

Participating in a blogging community expands my thinking and creative capacity, but only so much. During those weeks when I only read blogs, current news, status updates, and Tweets mingled with the scriptures and lesson material for my religion class, my focus narrows as much as when I am reading nothing at all.

On the other hand, when I read a monthly book form my lifetime pursuit of literature list or something written in a different setting than the current media, my vision broadens. I learn about circumstances outside of the issues at hand and connect or apply the things I learn to my current context.

This opens my eyes to not only understand; it opens my spirit to create.

In the past, I’ve invited my blog readers to read with me in an online book group and discussion.  My Try-It-With-Me-Tuesday challenges—books or other challenges—brought inspiration to me. Some readers have expressed the same.

Now, however, I’m refining my blog approach and want to dispense with any pressures for people to contribute. I’m still reading and seeking truth, from sources outside the current events stream, including a monthly book from my list. And I’ll still share the truths and connections I find. If you want to comment, I welcome the discussion. Otherwise, just enjoy the light I’m hoping to reflect here.

My February selection from my lifetime pursuit literature reading list is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.  I see evidence of our current culture in the characters of Peter Keating, Dominique Francon, Ellsworth Toohey, Gail Wynand. The leaders and the followers. So many leaders who are seeking power in their own way—some with a mask of altruism, others with money. And then there are so many followers who are just following to follow. The story brings out the worst in most, and the best in a few with themes of creativity, integrity and free will.

Howard Roark, the architect protagonist, whose creativity builds from a purpose, reminds me of the times when that creative spirit has grown in me. Even more broadly, he represents the creative spirit within each of us.

Roark is the only one, in the end, that stays true to this spirit. We’d like to hope we were all Roark, but in reality, we’re each a little bit like every other character. We need approval. We imitate. We follow. We deny the source of creativity.

I love to create and offer my writing to readers. Lately, thought, I sense that the blogging community, like any other, is just a microcosm of the world Rand described. And I’m torn in my participation. I want to draw wisdom and inspiration from other writers, but the light of my creativity comes from above. When I become too involved, my ability to create wanes. Still, I want to share that light within me and receive the offerings of others, but I do not want to become Keating-like and adorn my writing and website to gain acceptance.

Roark gives his best at a very high cost. In our culture, even with the proliferation of media, we still do not value creation or respect the costs paid in its offering.  Will the best of our age be lost in the muddle of mediocrity? If so, maybe it will be safer there, away from the ever-changing top layer, until another generation can dig it up and connect it to their own.

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January’s Book Discussion: Angle of Repose

Have you read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner? Today, as part of a lifetime pursuit of literature, I invite you to share your thoughts on the novel, which won the Pulitzer Prixe in 1972. Read my thoughts and share your own in the comments below or leave a link to your own post about the book.  Next Month’s Discussion is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand on the last Tuesday of the month, February 24.

What interests me in all these papers is not Susan Burling Ward the novelist and illustrator, and not Oliver Ward the engineer, and not the West they spend their lives in. What really interests me is how two such unlike parties clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until the angle of repose where I knew them. . . That’s where the meaning will be if I find any.

That’s the search that Lyman Ward, a retired historian, embarks on when he spends a summer living, researching and writing from his grandparent’s final home. I say final because they moved from place to place in the West in a day when packing up and moving wasn’t as easy as it is now. Hence, the term, angle of repose, is not only a fitting reminder of the engineering and mining adventures that Oliver pursued but also the metaphorical resting place where Susan longed to establish her home and family. Ironically, while it was Oliver’s job’s who took them over rugged country, Susan’s dissatisfaction with any circumstances that didn’t meet her expectations kept her forever looking for an unattainable ideal. It’s no wonder that their grandson asks, “What made that union of opposites hold them?”

Susan is an artist who writes and draws her life instead of living it. While I admire her sense of perspective, I can see how it keeps her from appreciating the ideal unfolding within the reality.  I, like her grandson, began to resent her blindness to her own husband’s strengths. In one scene, he leads them to safety in a harrowing climb in the mountains of Colorado, but instead of acknowledging his lead, she begrudges it. Throughout the book, she compares him to other men, embarrassed at the grace or tact or communication he lacks. Thus, the first example foreshadows an unfortunate truth—how Susan sees Oliver is how she treats him and who he will become in her artist’s eye.

Sometimes I have a difficult time training my eye to see my children and appreciate who they are now. When have you missed the strong qualities that already exist in a spouse, friend or child in an effort to “help them”  achieve a greater potential?

I don’t begrudge her the desire for a home, just her dissatisfaction in her husband in providing her ideal.  Her desires are expected; she longed for permanent roots and a large family of loved ones surrounding her. I love my own home and the refuge it provides, and we’ve expended a lot of energy to build such a place. Yet, I also see that Susan’s desire was even stronger than my own, given that she lived in a time when it was really uncommon for people to move around. I like the way Stegner compares her longing to ours:

I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place, so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? . . . We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.

Even with a great sense of my own home, I sometimes wish to move on. Do you believe we have a shallow sense of place?

Despite also living in this generation, Stegner writes as if he knows many places and many perspectives. As a would-be writer I envy his language, especially his ability to write the woman’s perspective with femininity:

She got up and went to the window. . . A girl with a wide flat basket of flowers on her head crossed the street, herself a flower, a nodding sunflower on a graceful stem, and stopped, swaying and top heavy, while a customer selected a blossom from her tray.

I may be like Susan in seeing how men are opposite of women, not the same. Stegner, in the voice of the main character identifies that this may be a mistake that  many women make of men. He says:

Like my grandfather, he was not a man of words, and it is an easy mistake to think that non-talkers are non-feelers. Grandmother herself may have made that mistake. . . It was his capacity for feeling that she should have attended to: by failing to comprehend it, she probably contributed to his silence.

I’ve made that mistake, have you?

The lessons of this story reverberate through generations, for good and bad. Most tragically, I see how Susan never realized how the West painted a life for her that she could never have imagined herself. Her old friend and publisher, Thomas, saw it:

“How art thou remarkable? Let me count the ways. Hmm? She’s been out in the unhistoried vacuum of the West for nearly five years, as far from any cultivated center as possible. What does she do? She histories it, she arts it, she illuminates its rough society. With a house to keep and a child to rear, she does more and better work than most of us could do with all our time free. She has been over Mosquito Pass in a buckboard and across Mexico by stage coach and saddle horse, she has been down mines and among bandits, places where no lady ever was before, and been absolutely unspoiled by it. There isn’t a roughened hair on her head. . . Nobody made you but yourself. I also suspect the hand of God—no other hand could be quite that sure of itself.

Why is is so hard to see who we’ve become and not the missed opportunities?

I’ve relearned in this story, a lesson I’m learning every day: The shape of our life portrait is hardly ever drawn from the paints we think we’re choosing, but as we embrace those materials,  our picture of ourselves and others becomes more beautiful than the one we intended to create.

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TIWMT Book Club: Walden

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

The TIWMT Book Club discussion of Walden by Henry David Thoreau begins today. Have you read it?  Share your thoughts below.

“To the sick the doctors widely recommend a change of air and scenery,” Henry David Thoreau in Walden.

Reading Walden certainly is a change of air and scenery from my life, but a change that didn’t bring me the wisdom and inspiration I was seeking. I hope I can say that without sounding truly ignorant of good ideas. Thoreau observes the simplicities of life with intelligence, which is a gift that I do not possess. But his gift, while admirable, did not rub off on me just by reading his story of getting back to nature.

I promised that we wouldn’t have a stuffy discussion, but embarrassingly, even though I chose this book, I am having a hard time crafting a good discussion post about it. It’s an old classic with many beautiful metaphors but overall, I just had the hardest time staying interested. I think that is because it is a book of observations rather than a story with a plot. Admittedly, I skimmed some of the chapters on economy, the bean field, and winter animals. The chapters I appreciated the most were on reading, solitude, and the ponds. In these, I made a connection with his philosophy to become a student and observer of life.

While his ideas of shunning materialism for a more simple life have much relevance fro us today, I’m afraid his style of writing and pace is so far removed that average modern readers like me will have a hard time relating it easily to our lives. I did find some lines that spoke to me, and I’m holding firmly to the poetry of his words, rather than his overall philosophy as a good reminder to slow down and savor what I have in my life rather than always searching for more.

Please stop by and see Rebecca at Thrilled By the Thought. She made her own honest assessment of the book; please check out her post and leave a comment there, too, to add to the discussion.

As a conclusion, tell me how you think these statements in Walden by Thoreau might relate to our time:

One:

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture or to carve a statue, or to make a few objects beautiful, but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Two:

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

Three:

And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls.

Four:

The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. . . . The day is an epitome of the year. The night is winter, the morning and evening are the spring and the fall, and the moon is the summer.

Five:

The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but he writer, whose more equitable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the vent and the crowd which inspire the orator speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

Six:

Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten.

Join the discussion by leaving your thoughts on one or more of the statements in the comment section below or if you wrote a post about it on your own website, leave your link in the comments below.

Even though this book wasn’t a favorite, I’m not giving up on my lifetime pursuit reading list. Next Tuesday I will announce a new the TIWMT Book Club Book for November. Have some recommendations? Send them to me at tj (at) tjhirst (dot) com.

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The Bond With Breaking Dawn

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

I kept my promise this week and didn’t challenge myself, except to sit for long hours in the hammock reading. The bright red V8 juice that I just poured into my glass for a snack looks suspiciously like Bella’s drink of choice in Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer and seems an appropriate beverage now that I’m finally finished and ready to comment. I don’t anticipate spoiling the book for any of you who haven’t read it, but if you want to be safe, you can wait to read this.

I anticipated Breaking Dawn‘s release as much as my 14-year-old daughter, who read it first and squirmed through the entire first half. The passion intensifies beyond any that we’ve seen in the other books of the Twlight series, but comparetively, it’s mild, not to mention legitimate. If I were recommending this to other mothers of younger teens, I’d caution you to read it first and discuss, discuss, discuss.

The young adult series isn’t just a love story or an adventure or a vampire fantasy that we can’t wait to see how it’s resolved. Breaking Dawn challenged me to think about two contrasting, but powerful forces—the strength of family bonds and the forces that work against family solidarity.

First, the strength of family bonds. The gifts of communication that Bella, Edward, parents and siblings experience brings family communication to a new level that I wish I could attain. But despite what seems to be an ideal, they still experience limits to their gifts, and must sacrifice, learn to develop trust, and practice controlling their emotions. In time they experience strong familial love (albeit a weird family), which one house guest witnesses as the power behind this family’s bond.

Second, the forces that work against the family. Edward and another character explain how the antagonists, the Volturi, use one of their guards, Chelsea, to manipulate their enemies. She uses her gift to gain “influence over the emotional ties between people. She can loosen and secure those ties. She could make someone feel bonded to the Volturi, to want to belong, to want to please them.” They go on to explain that by separating family alliance, they could defeat more easily by breaking the ties that bound them together.

To some extent, these contrasting forces existed throughout the book, but the intensity of action is less than in earlier books in the series. The struggle identified itself in more subtle ways, which introduces the discussion point about the danger of forces that lurk around us in equally subtle ways. The conclusion of this clash rests upon a woman learning to use her gifts for good and protect her family from those forces that try to tear it apart.

On a personal note, this story resonated with me. Both forces have worked on me. The strength of my family is irresistible, but the contrasting force is not evil on its surface and so difficult to detect without the gifts of the Spirit. There is power in finally identifying those influences and putting my shield in place against the attack.

The real challenge for readers of Breaking Dawn is not to see who can read it first or fastest but how each of our own family’s story will conclude.

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Book Club: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

My son stood in the library searching for a “boy book” to read. I spied The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, which I wanted to start for the Bodacious Bloggity Book Club. I encouraged him to read it with me.

Years ago, my children and I watched the movie version of Tom Sawyer together. At the end of the movie, Becky Thatcher and Tom become lost in a dark cave and discouraged. Then Tom sees a way out. He goes forward toward that light, keeps climbing and finds an exit.

At the time, we stopped the movie and talked about this ending. I taught my children about symbols in literature and symbols in the scriptures. I told them that light is a symbol that is often connected with Jesus Christ. My son, NH, wasn’t more than five or six years old. And he said, “When we are in the darkness we can pray and we will be able to see the light so we can get out.”

The discussion left an impression on my son and on me. With that memory, I expected to read the book and experience those same feelings and have that discussion again. However, I was honestly a little disappointed that the book’s ending was more focused on the treasure the boys found in the cave than on Becky and Tom’s disappearance and rescue. Oh the problems of expectations!

Once I recognized that my disappointment was only from my memories, I could enjoy Mark Twain’s original story for what it is. It is very boyish, as I had told my son. And the author was true to his words from the preface:

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

My sisters and I used to talk about never forgetting what it is like to be a kid. I promised myself that, but how hard it is to remember that perspective when another one comes to replace it. As an adult woman I couldn’t relate to the rambunctious activities of Tom and Joe Harper and Huck, but it was fun to think that these same desires to be free and creative are the same ones that drive my son to build forts with the neighbors all summer long.

Tom’s manipulative enterprising tactics to get the other boys to paint the fence for him also amused me. How true it is that if you ask someone to pay for the privilege of work, that work becomes more valued. Doesn’t this relate to so many of our modern pleasures that only become valuable when we see the price that people are willing to pay? Then we are all prepared to be duped into lining up for our share.

I am often discouraged at adults in children’s books because they look so stupid from a child’s perspective and truly seem to be diminished in authority. As a parent I don’t ever think the author is doing other adults any service by painting them in such a silly way. I know, I need to not take myself or these portrayals too seriously. Knowing that about my self, this time I had fun looking toward Aunt Polly’s foibles and her qualities with delight. For instance, when Aunt Polly is questioning Tom, Twain as narrator gives this commentary,

Like many simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning.

This made me laugh at myself a little bit and wonder at my own pet vanities, which more often than not include the same pride that Aunt Polly shows in her discipline methods. When she scolds Tom for breaking the sugar dish that Sid actually broke,

her conscious reproached her, and she yearned to say something kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into confession that she had been wrong, and discipline forbade it.

Despite these weaknesses that she had, I loved the tenderheartedness of Aunt Polly when she truly believes that Tom is in danger.

Over and again the book showed how we all battle with our conscious and our own desires and wills. That happened for Aunt Polly, it happened for Tom and Becky, and to some extent, in the conclusion, it even happened for Huck.

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Who Are My Five People?

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

I believe in life after death. In the last year I researched many of our ancestors’ lives and the close connection to our family history confirms my belief even more. What I believe happens to us after death is dramatically different from the fictional story by Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Yet, I appreciated a fresh look at this topic that we rarely discuss for fear of offending one another with our personal beliefs.

Following Eddie through his death is like wandering beside him through his search for understanding. His death is not the cliffhanger but the impetus for his journey. The story is his process of coming to terms with his life, his relationships, his choices.

In addition to moving Eddie forward through the steps of heaven, Mr. Albom uses flashbacks to his birthdays in life to inform the reader of Eddie’s history. These flashbacks, like most flashbacks as a literary tool, are difficult to comprehend and fit together in a reader’s mind. However, they establish the circumstances better than a chronological story would and keep the immediacy focused on Eddie’s life after death rather than those moments themselves.

Eddie meets five people who have also died and they assist him in his journey to learn about his life. Each person crossed Eddie’s path—some he knew, others he didn’t—and changed his life. Now in heaven, these five people meet with him and “illuminate” his life as the first person explains to him.

One of the main concepts of this book is that in life we do not know the impact of our lives, for good or for bad, on other people. In heaven Eddie has the chance, with the aid of these five people, to learn about his relationships with his family, seek the peace he desires, look past himself to forgiveness, and discover redemption.

The story does not identify God or His purposes in heaven or in our lives. Rather, the author focuses on the five individuals to bring Eddie through a process. This prompts a curious question for me. If I were in Eddie’s story, “Who would my five people be?”‘

I believe it might be some of those people in my life who have played an important, but less verbal role—like my mother or my oldest daughter. It would certainly include several strangers and an acquaintance or two.

So, I ask you, which five people would you meet?

By having Eddie meet five people in heaven the story is more universal for all faiths. Still, I lead my life with faith in God, assured that he is there and lives even though I cannot see him and do not have tangible evidence of him. Faith makes possible the restoration of relationships through forgiveness and redemption here in this life.

So, I would maybe change my question from which five people would I meet once I died, to whom should I meet now?

Did you read this book with me or have you read it before? What did you think? Leave a comment below or go to my contact page and send me a link to a post you have written about it and I will publish it.

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