SKYE stephenson

It’s summertime, and the livin’s easy. The fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.

This Gershwin tune was one of my mother’s favorites to belt out in her theatrical way.

Sometimes, after she finished, she would say (with a bit of melodrama) that in her next life, she hoped to be a singer. For to her great regret, she did not have a great ear for key and pitch.

I think of the stories she used to tell me of growing up in Depression era Ithaca, where her once-upon-a-time southern belle mother had to run a boarding house for Cornell university students. And how my grandmother somehow managed to fill that house with music and laughter and poetry. Such that people would gather there, around a creaky piano, to sing and joke – even if they had barely had enough to eat for dinner.

My husband recently published a book about this grandmother Carrie, from Alstead. As we spoke about what the lives of our grandmother had been like, we both noted the gathering in the home for music and laugher. And how back then folks made their own entertainment.

Yes, I know some people do so still. Maybe you are one of them. But it is so very easy these days to simply turn on our computer or look on our cell phone and find some kind of entertainment (music, movie, a game, etc.) that is ‘better’ than anything most of us could ever create.

Now, with the advent of AI, this has become even more true. It is getting to the point where it is hard to tell what has been AI generated, and what is real. As in a human-made creation.

And this can be rather perilous, psychologically speaking, for it is ultimately the act of creation itself that fills a place in our soul that way nothing else can. Even if what we create is far from perfect. And especially because it demands of us effort.

In fact, it is precisely for this reason that art (as defined in the broadest and widest sense) can often be so healing. Sometimes unexpectedly so. Art can even serve as a kind of antidote to some of the perils and traumas of life and living. And for this reason may be even more urgently needed now, at this pivotal planetary tipping point, than ever before.

So I ask you what may be inspiring you right now, as you laze beneath the summer sun, soaking up the heat and light? Is there some kind of creativity you would like to play around with joyfully (and imperfectly) – not in a future life, but right now?

Unlike my mother, or grandmother, I have never felt any call to music. What does beckon me is writing. There is something in this process that I can lose myself in for hours, and makes me keep working to improve. I am also sorely aware of my many imperfections with this demanding craft.

Recently, I pulled together some of my recent poems. Poems I liken to a kind of poem-prayer, with a touch of Spirit. A talented graphic designer helped me compile the book, called “Heart of the Universe 21”. I thought making this book was sufficient. But recently I realized the poems are waiting to be spoken out loud, in public.

I am very grateful to our wonderful, locally run bookstore Toadstool for offering its Keene venue for a reading on Saturday, August 23^rd at 11 am.

While this article is a tiny plug for the upcoming reading, it is a larger plug for Toadstool Books. They have a long history of supporting local authors, in a way not unlike my grandmother’s boarding house used to serve as a cultural hub in its community and time. A role that may be even more important now than ever before.