Melissa Stephens Art

I admit, it’s an unusual title for a blog post written in February in Pennsylvania where most days the landscape and, occasionally, my outlook resemble 50 shades of gray. My college roommate’s father, Mr. Murphy, dubbed this time of year “the Febs,” a perfect description for the daylight-deprived doldrums of a Northeast bleak mid-winter. Perhaps then this is the perfect time to explore the idea of “Blue Skying”?  It’s a term I discovered a few months ago in Lynn Whipple’s delightful book, Expressive Flower Painting. She describes Blue Skying as a brainstorming game where absolutely anything is possible and the Universe is conspiring alongside you, providing all that’s necessary to support your dreams, as big and tall and wide and playful and bold as you can dream them. For, as she says, “there are no limits in the big, beautiful, blue sky!”  While your imagination is running wild, she encourages your hand to keep pace, hurriedly recording all your big ideas in as much juicy detail as possible. If you are an imaginative, Universe-affirming, creative dreamer like I am, you understand why I love the concept of Blue Skying, right?

When it comes to writing your dreams or sparks inspiration down as fast as you can, with as much detail as possible, before they float through you and on to someone else, I’ve long been fascinated by poet Ruth Stone’s description of  creative inspiration barreling through her and how she would “run like hell” to catch it. Listen to this short clip from a TED talk  by Elizabeth Gilbert regarding her interview with Ruth Stone on the subject. If you’d prefer to read the transcription of this short interview rather than listen, I’ve included it at the very end of this post.

I had a Blue Skying / Ruth Stone-like running for her pencil and paper moment late last month. January is a fertile month for me, perhaps not so much for gardens in Pennsylvania in the aforementioned bleak mid-winter, but it is a month ripe with creative inspiration for me. I’m a New Year lover through and through: new calendar, new word/intention for the year, new ideas, new plans, and a new “anything is possible” kind of energy. It’s a perfect month for me to do a little Blue Skying, dreaming big dreams and sewing tiny seeds I hope will take root and begin to grow as winter gives way to spring and summer. At the end of January, my husband and I were at our lake house, a sanctuary of immense peace and contemplation for me. As we walked out the long, snow-covered, wooded driveway, we spied a fluffy pile of woodpecker feathers, their black color a stark contrast against the white snow. He or she had recently fallen prey to a coyote or fox and all that remained was this scattering of feathers. I gathered several into my coat pocket, planning to add them to my collection of feathers at the house: turkey and eagle and great blue heron and songbird and now, woodpecker. As we continued our walk around the lake, my mind was racing, beginning to connect the dots on a big, Blue Sky idea. I was remembering our New Year’s trip, when I purchased and read the book, Rabbit and the Crown of Dreams , by Amy Ringholz. The story chronicles a rabbit’s journey to fulfill its own BIG dream and features the inspiring words and gorgeous paintings (bison, bear, and other animals native to her home state of Wyoming) of this very talented Jackson Hole artist. Now my imagination was in full gallop, wondering if I could create a similar book featuring the wildlife we enjoy seeing at our Northeastern Pennsylvania lake house: deer, beaver, fox, and more. Back in the house, holding those woodpecker feathers I’d retrieved from my coat pocket, my dreams took flight! Why, YES, I should write a book (just for my family!), but not about animals. Instead, I should write a book about birds, the birds we see at our lake house, inspired by the feathers I’ve been collecting over the years. Bam! The creative sparks REALLY started to fly! By this time, I was stirring batter for a batch of chocolate chip cookies and I had to keep pausing, over and over, to frantically grab a pen and paper to write. I felt like Ruth Stone, madly trying to capture a poem as it came barreling through her from across the prairie. Stir, pause, write. Stir, pause, write a little more. Stir, pause, write even more. Before I knew it, the entire story had poured out through me, title and all, in delightful detail, onto every piece of scrap paper I could find in the house! Later, over a warm chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk, I re-read my scribbled notes, all about the adventures I’d love to have some day exploring these woods and this lake with grandchildren, watching birds and collecting feathers (my apologies to any of my sons who might read this, no pressure on the grandchildren!). But make no mistake, as vividly sweet as those moments of creative inspiration were, I had an urgent sense they did not barrel into my mind just to entertain, to play. No, indeed, they meant business! They were demanding to be made (gulp). But how? I can’t write a book! I can’t paint a great blue heron or any other bird for that matter! But am I not the person who was just blathering on about Blue Skying, where absolutely anything is possible (bigger GULP)? Since madly scrawling those first notes on scrap paper, I’ve begun revising the story, with even more detail, filling in the periphery of my vision for the pages. I’ve been playing in my studio as well, drawing and painting feathers and eagles and gathering collage materials for each bird I plan to include. I’ve also been out hiking some gorgeous trails these past few weekends, soaking up the inspiration of nature, even as She sleeps through “the Febs.” I’ve taken photographs and recorded observations, some of which are inspiring additional ideas for the paintings or the story. My Sky keeps getting Bluer! Can I do it? I have no idea! But I do know I’m incredibly excited to try and I can feel the Universe encouraging me, gently nudging my tentative first steps forward. (See below for a few early photos)

 I understand, from my experience with past, BIG, multi-step projects (this will take me years to create), the possibility of fizzling out, giving up, or being distracted by the next shiny idea to come barreling down the snow-covered drive is REAL. Hopefully my WHY for the project, my clear vision of wanting to share my story, my love of this place, with my family is enough to see me through the obstacles and crises of confidence I am sure to face. By making my Blue Sky dream public, I’m also recruiting all of you as accountability partners, hoping you encourage me to make consistent efforts rather than repetitive excuses. Perhaps you’ve got your own New Year dream or have similarly experienced a crazy spark of inspiration barreling through you? I’m hoping you’re doing a little Blue Skying yourself during the bleak mid-winter, dreaming joyously and remembering, absolutely anything is possible!

Below is the transcript from Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on Ruth Stone and inspiration:

“As [Stone] was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out, working in the fields and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. It was like a thunderous train of air and it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And when she felt it coming…’cause it would shake the earth under her feet, she knew she had only one thing to do at that point. That was to, in her words, run like hell to the house as she would be chased by this poem. The whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. Other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, so she would be running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house, and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it, and it would continue on across the landscape looking for ‘another poet’. And then there were these times, there were moments where she would almost miss it. She is running to the house and is looking for the paper and the poem passes through her. She grabs a pencil just as it’s going through her and she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. In those instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact, but backwards, from the last word to the first.”