Mike Mills on the Creative Process

My steadfast creative partner put this on his blog yesterday and I'm copying him by putting it on my blog. Miranda July of No One Belongs Here More Than You (see my blog, Tuesday, June 13) and Me and You and Everyone We Know (my second entry on Thursday, June 15, the Tyrrone Street video) is married to this guy, Mike Mills, who makes album art and directs off-kilter music videos. Here he talks about the creative process. If you can hang in for the last few minutes...I love how he talks about the arc of his creative life. It's so honest and emboldening.

He also says this great thing that I, as an immensely kinesthetic person, so relate to, that when he's making something, he just tries things and tries other things and then eventually something feels right and he just goes with it..."it's a body thing" he says. Amen.

The Ultimate Goal

Someone asked me about my blog today. They asked: “What’s your ultimate goal with it?” And it’s a good question. Because I’m a word person and a totally shameless Gogol Bordello fan, the world “ultimate” is what stuck out to me (the title of one of their most, well, ultimate songs). I gave the person a very short, admittedly insincere reply. Not a lie, just an I-can’t-explain-it-really answer. Half-embarrassed that I didn’t really know. And half-resistant to saying what was true since what is true isn’t really a goal so much as a whole bunch of stuff I don't know yet and can't explain.

The real answer would have been to blast this:



Or play this:



Or read the last several lines of Maurice Manning’s poem “Three Truths and One Story”: "There are words and there are deeds, and both/are dying out, dying away/from where they were and what they meant./God save the man who has the heart/to think of anything more sad."

Once, when I was very young, I had to walk the final bottom stretch of El Caminito Road to get to school. Something had happened with a ride, and to wait would have meant being late. So someone’s mother directed me down the road. “Just walk. And watch for cars.” It was a short stretch. But I was small and there was no sidewalk, just a big intimidating fence to my left that lined our town’s private airstrip. On that walk, I became very aware of the sound of my feet in the dirt. The crunching of my sneakers. And then I became very aware that I was aware. And I began to think about death, as I often did, and about infinite which usually scared me, but didn’t on this particular morning, and I thought about what I would be like when I was old, very very old, and I saw myself there. Old me. And young, small me was filled with a certainty that my life was going to be somehow extraordinary. I didn’t have those words then, but I knew.

In other words, the ultimate goal is, y’know, that.

All of it.

Miranda July outtakes

After a little viniyoga with Jason Brown in my bedroom (seriously...yoga, with JBrown on my Ipod dock, on my yoga mat next to the bed with just enough room to do a sufficient vinyasa series). Mucho sweat. Ocean breathing. Crazy crazy tight right hip. Like, it's-never-been-this-tight-ever-before tight. I'm sure one or two manifestation psychologists would tell me this means something intense...I'm up for that. I'm always up for that.

Instead tho, I'm going to follow yesterday's thread (read: creativity, inspiration, getting off the couch and just doing it) and offer some of my favorite words from No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July, the ultra-creative, you-almost-want-light-but-clunky-things-to-rain-down-on-her-and-cause-her-just-a-little-discomfort-because-she's-so-damn-original-and-brave-and-talented-and-relatively-young-but-she-inspires-you-so-much-in-her-creative-experiments-that-you-have-to-thank-her-instead-for-leading-the-way writer, performer, and filmmaker. Even when she has what the NY Times called "the cringe factor," I still love her because no matter what, she is sincere. To who she is. To what she does. To her imagination. Her weirdness. And that's what I want. To break through that 75th wall into a place where I just try stuff and never give up. Reading Miranda J, watching her films, etc, helps me remember that if I don't experiment, I really will end up on the couch watching TV and eating one baby ice cream sandwich after another.

So here's some MJ:

From "This Person"

Somebody somewhere is shaking with excitement because something tremendous is about to happen to this person....Possibly there is some kneeling, such as when one is knighted....Math teachers are saying that math was just a funny way of saying "I love you"...and the chemistry and PE teachers are also saying it....This person feels the sudden need to check her post office box. It is an old habit, but if everything is going to be terrific from now on, this person still wants mail.

From "Something That Needs Nothing"

We were anxious to begin our life as people who had no people.

Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone's job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine.

[re: a bad cockroach situation]
He said he would send someone over but that we shouldn't get our hopes up.
Why not?
Well, It's not just your apartment; the whole building's infested.
Maybe you should have them do the whole building, then.
It wouldn't do any good; they'd just come over from other buildings.
It's the whole block?
It's the whole world.

From "Making Love in 2003"

[re: an older woman with a younger man]
We learned to be discreet. It helped that nobody really cares about anyone but themselves anyway. They check to make sure you aren't killing anyone, anyone they know, and then they go back to what they were saying about how they think they might be having a real breakthrough in their relationship with themselves.

...I felt hunger. The body's expression of hope.

From "Ten True Things"

She seemed to have room for me; she never turned away in the pauses that allow for turning away....she never recoiled...This is a quality I look for in a person, not recoiling. Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into a friendship. They can't see the tiny outstretched hands all around them....

From "How to Tell Stories to Children"

It may have been in self-defense that Lyon's aggravated preteen body replaced itself with an unaggravated, rather amazing woman's body in the summer after her freshman year of high school. I thought this elegantly bubble-bottomed response was brilliant; I could not have said it better myself.

Nor could I. So I will stop blogging and go make some food courtesy of a Mark Hyman recipe and see what else the night has in store.

Namaste...and shit.