The Long Schoolroom is a creative community for writers, artists, and makers committed to personal & professional growth.
The Long Schoolroom s01e01
On Getting StartedOne of my favorite lines I picked up from Henry David Thoreau, either from his journal or his letters. “The poet is one who, having nothing to do, finds something to do.” When we finally get around to a long overdue task, it is a fair question to ask, why now? The answer is, usually: this is the last (best) possible moment. Or maybe there are taxes to avoid. An acquaintance was asking about the difference between learning and researching, having an itch to do more of the former than the latter. I tossed out an answer, something about starting with a genuine question or problem (never a bad thing!) but even as I wrote it I knew it wouldn't suffice. “I am interested in unknown unknowns,” she retorted. Queue the allusion, this master work of Donald Rumsfeld. The Unknown As we know, Still, one must begin, and that itself is a problem: what to do? "It's appropriate to pause and say that the writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do." Donald Barthelme, from "Not Knowing" When we say that necessity is the mother of invention, we tend to think in terms of practical solutions. But what if the true exigency of discovery is simply the desire, or even the need, to discover? Because it is there, and all that. As Rilke implores the young poet: "This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must”, then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse." I won’t ask you to believe that this newsletter is born out of spiritual or artistic necessity, but I will say after a year of thinking and hemming and hawing, it’s first edition emerges today because I needed to start it, because I need to see what will happen on other side of starting. We cannot get to knowing what we do not know until we get to doing what we must do. The Long SchoolroomIn the slow evolution of this thing, here is the current one-sentence description: The Long Schoolroom is a creative community for writers, artists, and makers committed to personal & professional growth. Practically speaking, what it's been the past year is a series of 8-week writing workshops, capped at four participants, and these have been a great success! I've had the privilege of working with smart, motivated, interesting people each week, and it's fair to say that our net quantum of love, art, competence, and joy has increased. But as I wrote in the welcome email that many of you have long forgotten: Plus, and maybe above all, a place to make friends, to convene with the kind of like-minded souls we struggle to find in our day-to-day lives but urgently need. Art may be long, but life is indeed short, so it's time to get started. Eclipse LitIn honor of the solar eclipse in Aries, happening today, April 8, 2024. Annie Dillard's 1982 "Total Eclipse," from Teaching a Stone to Talk (PDF download) "The Eclipse," by James Fennimore Cooper (1806) A Solar Eclipse In that great journey of the stars through space Sometimes such passionate love doth in her rise, Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) Quickhits
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The Long Schoolroom
The Long Schoolroom is a creative community for writers, artists, and makers committed to personal & professional growth.
The Long Schoolroom, Public Beta About a year ago, I had an idea to build an online "third place," a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe places neither home nor work (the first and second places) that cultivate community and foster a sense of belonging. I wanted this for myself. A learning community for writers and creatives, yes, but also a place one would find kindred spirits, inspiring conversations, and be supported to grow as artists and human beings. Things we cannot do...
The Art of Reinvention While watching the new Morgan Neville documentary about Steve Martin ("Steve!," Apple+), I was reminded, and continuously moved by, the ominipresent nature of this person and persona—this face, this voice, this attitude—across 45 years of my life. When I was a kid, my sisters and I would listen to his albums, checked out from the Greenwood Public Library, and I would memorize and recite bits of his standup that still, if not verbatim in their sensibility, show up in my...
The Next Thing When asked why he made "Curb Your Enthusiasm," Larry David answered this not-very-interesting question with what is a not-very-interesting but reasonable answer: We made this special, people seemed to like it, so why not? (Ted Danson, who became a regular on the show, famously did NOT think much of that special/pilot) That empty feeling one has after finishing a thing I once heard called (but cannot attribute) "the empty attic of achievement." Many artists never recover from...