I’m the artist formerly known as ‘Type A.’ My children have helped change me, surely for the better. Newborn/baby/toddler bootcamp taught me that a modicum of incremental progress on any front is the new “done.” As in teeny, tiny, incremental progress. If my yard’s a wreck, I might manage to get the rake out of the shed. The next day, maybe I’ll rake a few leaves into a pile before being interrupted. By the end of the weekend, I might get that pile into a bag and put it on the curb.
It’s an odd paradox that children inspire so much creativity yet make it nearly impossible to realize any of it. So I’ve become a guerrilla scribe, stealthily jotting down ideas or songs in stolen moments. I got a new laptop recently, and it has a built-in microphone. When I get a tune in my head that I want to work on, my policy is to sprint over and record it. If I don’t, within seconds the beginnings of my ditty will be lost to a trike-fight mediation or a work call. It may be months before I even remember that I recorded it. But it’s in the digital vault. The start of something yet to be.
Tonight after the kids’ bedtime, I opened up one of these micro-recordings to see about fleshing it out. I recorded it about a month ago after playing with my daughter at the dining room table. When she’d finished eating her lunch, she climbed into my lap and then stood up on my knees, her hands holding mine for balance. I started singing “She’s a balancing girl in the world; she’s a balancing, balancing girl.” I was singing about her, but it turns out that the song is about me, too. And about most Coconut Girls. Once my daughter was done with our game, she jumped down and ran outside. I saw my window to capture the tune and grabbed my computer. A couple of lines into the recording, my son ambled over to break up the proceedings. Done and done.
Balancing Girl
maybe we are twins? thanks for these posts.
“When I get a tune in my head that I want to work on, my policy is to sprint over and record it.”
This is exactly what anyone with an idea should do. Well, either record it or write it down.
Pretty tune! 🙂
A student of mine, long graduated – on her own now as an “adult” – told me she had decided (DECIDED !!) that I was ADD. How insightful of her to ‘fess up after having observed me over many years – and was now out from under her teacher’s jurisdiction. Wow. So I sloughed it off and gently reminded her that perhaps ADD had been my salvation during those days when my modus operandi was a full-time job, raising 4 kids of mine and a step child (my 2nd husband’s child), tending a garden, remodeling a house, making work for art shows and slinging really good hash out every day. Is that ADD or multi-tasking or what a college prof. of mine always called “dove-tailing one’s activities”? Perhaps best put is something an older, very wise woman always said “Let’s mend while we rest!” to which I will make an addendum now that the dust has settled: “Let’s rest while we mend” now that I can “sit a spell” and reflect on those crazy days of yore.