New Things #382-390

Greetings from Los Angeles, where I'm completing research on book three and working on developing the whole series for television. What's more, this trip has provided me the opportunity to catch up on doing more New Things.

Beginning with the Long Suffering Floyd and I installing a bike rack on the back of my car (#382), surely the greatest technological achievement in the history of the world.


From there, I embarked on the 1,000 mile trip alone, another first (#383). I stopped in San Francisco, where I visited a fortune cookie factory (#384) which I learned are actually folded by hand.


Then I drank my first bubble tea (#385), courtesy of my friends Kathy and Dave. Imagine a smoothie filled with wads of gum.



Then a stop in Carmel to meet Jeanne Adams, the daughter-in-law of photographer Ansel Adams and a fascinating futurist and philosopher.

She believes all of life can be categorized according to edges, intersections and parabolas. Think about it--in any situation there's always something on the outskirts, something intersecting and something returning.

I love ideas people, but I try to meet so many of them I won't count it as new. As a matter of fact, I feel so fortunate that fascinating people are a regular part of my life.

Then I made a pilgrimage to Hearst Castle, (#386) which I loved unreservedly, and where I also saw hundreds of elephant seals on the beach (#387)


And now a little studio in Hollywood at the base of Griffith Park, where I get to hear coyotes howl at night (#388) Actually, yelp is more like it. They sound like a band of chihuahuas being strangled. The other night one crossed the road (#389) while I was on my bike. Y'know, the one I transported down. So I could research LA close-up.

The trip has been like one long "Artist's Date," as Julia Cameron calls them in The Artist's Way. A chance to recharge my batteries.

Oh, and did I mention I experienced my first California earthquake?

Yeah, that was #390.

New Day #120

“Are we going to the ice cream store?” my goddaughter asked.

“Nope,” I said. “It’s Take Your Daughter to Work Day. You're my New Thing.”

She sighed. “I wish you worked in an ice cream store.”

If Take Your (God)daughter to Work Day were held in any other month of the year, six-year-old Amy would be watching me laze about in sweatpants, updating my MySpace and Facebook pages. But it’s pub week and so she accompanied me to KINK FM for an interview with Sheila Hamilton.

I was late picking Amy up. Her mother informed me that had I been on time, the child would’ve been dressed normally. However, given the additional ten minutes, Amy decided to wear a curler on the back of her head. Not to style her hair, but because, well, that’s just Amy. Once, when she couldn’t decide what to wear to the Daddy / Daughter Dance, she layered four dresses and took one off every half hour.

It’s impossible to spend even the shortest time with Amy and not be impressed by her outpouring of creative energy. She literally vibrates with it. She’s already written dozens of books, a few of which are so startlingly original they’re close to publishable. In Amy’s world, the plastic seal on a water bottle becomes a mobile, while drawings are hung on the ceiling so she can see them when she wakes up. Something as simple as walking down the street becomes a creative act, a piece of choreography.

“Here’s a song I wrote,” she said as we drove:

You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I’m telling you why…
Oh yeah? I don’t wanna know why.

Everyone at KINK made Amy feel welcome. “Would you like a glass of water?” Sheila asked. “Or a hot chocolate?”

“I’ll take a cup of coffee,” Amy said.

As she sipped her hot chocolate oh-so-quietly we taped the interview. But the moment we finished, Amy broke out the markers to draw pictures of a fairy and a flamingo; which is what happens when you let small children hang around gay men.

She worked feverishly, unaware of her surroundings. Watching her, I was reminded of Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, which is the best book on the creative process I’ve read since Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way , a book I previously wrote about for Powell's and which I recommend so often I deserve a commission. But, whereas Cameron’s book is for blocked creatives, Tharp offers advice for the working artist. “The blank space can be humbling,” she writes. “But I’ve faced it my whole professional life. It’s my job. It’s also my calling. Bottom line: Filling the empty space constitutes my identity.”

It’s this spirit that fuels Amy and which motivates me not only to write, but to engage in this nutball quest to do something new every day for a year. Like her, I need constant inspiration.

As we walked back to the car, Amy asked, “Uncle Marc, what do you think I should do when I grow up?”

“That’s a huge decision,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

She bit her lip as she chewed on the idea. “I think I want to do what you do.”

What she doesn’t realize is that she already does.


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