What is the colour of your writing?

I visited the Musee du Jardin de Luxembourg exhibit on Chagall today, and aside from the sheer number of paintings and the work, I was struck by his use of colour. On my way out, I bought the magazine describing the exhibition and inside of it was a lexicon of the symbols he used (goat, rooster, couple, musicians) and the colours and what they represented.

According to one author, Chagall said, Blue is the colour of my soul. (Of course another author said, he just said that to blow off curious people asking too many questions). But I like that his soul had a colour.

I'm in the middle of a writing retreat, so I began to read more about Chagall, and it turned into a few pages about my own choice of colours, especially in clothes I'm wearing. It began as an inquiry in my journal about that woman who likes pink shoes and an orange shirt she hasn't worn yet. It turned into a discussion of colour and what it has meant to me at different periods. And the reasons behind why I haven't been writing lately.

So can going to an exhibit be a muse for your writing? or seeing a painter prompt a poem or a prose piece? Not that unusual, perhaps, except I hadn't thought of it on my own, the writing facilitator suggested it as an artist date with myself (a concept from Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way).

Reading it back tonight after supper, to a listener for the first time, I was pleased with the piece. Then Karen, the retreat facilitator said, I think you're writing again!

So what colour will trigger your writing? your creative juices? can you get outside your room or house and go for a walk and notice something you have never seen before, and get inside some inspiration from outside? what surprised me is that it doesn't always have to come from your 'imagination' or inside your head.

Dare to do something different, shake up your schedule, pencil an hour with your camera, mix up the arts a little, and allow yourself the freedom to find a new path, just for today.

that's all for now, from Paris,
Jenn/Musemother
xxxooo

Creative Life

Ah to read about Paris, Hemmingway, Frida Kahlo, Anais Nin, the golden era for me that was their world in between the wars.....and to be in Paris reading these books, hmmmmm, stirs the creative juices.

But if I was hanging out with surrealist painters and writers, today, in whichever arrondissement the current artists are sitting in cafes in, perhaps I would be bored to tears or find them wacky and weird.

Instead, we are making our own creative fun by walking the streets and bridges, Pont des Arts, Pont Neuf, going from cafe to cabaret, in three different quartiers, drinking cafe creme or rose, a little bubbly... It's very conducive to the fertile muck stirring a writer needs - to budge from her rut, her comfortable world, and explore the City of Light. Having conversations with cab drivers about the lousy economy and listening to Leonard Cohen dance me to the end of love.

Actually, it's very dark and rainy today, cold, a good day to stay indoors and read the life of Frida Kahlo, parts of which were in New York and Paris, rubbing shoulders with Georgia O'Keeffe and Andre Breton, Henry Miller and Anais Nin.

c'est tres sympa, as they say. To be moody and cold in Paris...next week I have a real writers' retreat booked for myself, a few blocks away, and maybe I'll tackle this O'Keeffe-Kahlo project that has been tickling my mind for a few days now.

Until Monday, hopefully the sun will come out, we'll put on our walking shoes and shop for our baguette and fromage.

salut les mecs!

Musemother/Jenn
a  Paris (where there ain't no cure for love)