Marissa Flaxbart

All Walls Are Analog

Earlier today I clicked on the link to this site from my Instagram bio. I was showing someone (someone a couple decades older than I) how the whole “link in bio” thing works. Right at the top of landing page, just where I left it, was my last post. How could it possibly have been from so long ago? I wondered, embarrassed. It was a doodle of a stranger.

Between the podcast, social media (especially the aforementioned Instagram, where I control a small army of accounts), and my other writing work, I have this feeling that I am generating work. Work, work, work…or at the very least, “content.” Simultaneously, I worry constantly that I am failing to share my voice with the world in a meaningful way — when I say I “worry” about this, I mean that it is the foremost shape that my anxiety takes these days, 50% the feeling that I am shouting into a void, 50% concern that I am not shouting loud enough. 

Having a blog is pretty old school. I have never been good about posting regularly, and I have often thought about using the blog as a repository for all of the things I’m making. Or documenting. Or, in a more recent development, collecting. 

For the past (nearly) two years, ever since my pilgrimage to England (much documented on this blog) I have been “collecting” photographs of wallpaper. And for the past couple months, once a week, I have been posting images from that ever-growing collection on Instagram with the hashtag “#wallpaperwednesday). Much to my surprise, people (mainly my friends, whom I'd never known to be wallpaper enthusiasts) seem pretty into it.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Yesterday, I was at a coffee meetup with some volunteering colleagues I don’t know very well outside of social media. One of them asked me to explain the whole wallpaper thing. Suddenly I found myself speaking at length about how and why I had started collecting and posting these images. Maybe it was just because it was an easy conversation starter, but I and half the gathered group went on to talk about wallpaper — and social media — for quite some time.  I posited that I think wallpaper may be making a comeback. “It’s kind of old-fashioned, but in a cool way that’s novel. It’s like record players or cursive…wallpaper is analog.” I paused, proud of my observation until I saw its flaw. I amended: “I guess all walls are analog.”  

At one point, someone described the wallpaper thing as “your passion.” Well, that escalated quickly! I thought it was just something I like. I like a lot of things. But…a passion? Maybe it is a passion of sorts, but if so, that escalates many of my interests to passion-level. Perhaps all that is part and parcel of my void-shouting-angst: more passions filling me up than one body can comfortably contain, and still only 24 hours in the day, only 7 days in a week, only this finite quantity of weeks in a lifetime. Wall-wise, I feel more passionate about street art and murals than wallpaper (out of thin air, I have been fantasizing about PAINTING murals of late). One of the gathered suggested I implement “#muralmodays” and I might just. I would promise to post about it here when I do, but given my track record, I wouldn’t trust me to start posting regularly if I were you. But who knows. Maybe blogs will make a comeback; everything old is new again. 

 

"What Is Art?": The Mystical Magic of Taking Something Too Seriously

When I started the Sweet Valley High Podcast, my aims and questions were much the same as when I started the blog of the same name:

Wouldn't it be fun to examine these frivolous, over-the-top books through a tongue-in-cheek-but-still-very-powerful microscope?

And would other people find the books as shocking and fascinating as I did?

The blog, started in the blogger's heyday that was 2006, proved that there was an audience of Sweet Valley readers who were eager to revisit the literary soap opera of their girlhoods. The podcast has done something a bit more: it's proven to me that I can hand one of these books to practically anyone I know and, after they've read it, work them into a high-pitched frenzy by casually discussing the plot. Seriously, it happens at least once an episode.

It's so much fun.

Because every main episode of the show is devoted to recapping the book in question (and because I don't have the time or wherewithal to book a guest, record, and edit a new episode every week), alternate weeks feature a "bonus" episode that takes the form of an extended conversation on some theme in the book. They're usually pretty fun, and no two conversations have been remotely similar.

Today, though, I released a bonus episode (recorded with my friend and fellow deep thinker Kali Baker-Johnson) that has something more to say. It's about art, artists, and finding the courage to share what you've made. Listening back to it this morning, I was struck by what we were able to bring out of one another in the conversation. I really think it's something that I'll return to whenever I'm not feeling particularly eager to share my work and myself with the world.

The following is not a great example of what Sweet Valley Diaries is usually like, but it is a perfect example of what good stuff you can uncover when you take something silly too seriously. 

The Reservoir

 

I was driving down Silver Lake Blvd. toward three quick errands I would knock out bam bam bam so I could get to the next thing. But then I saw the reservoir, and I pulled over. I found a pen and paper and wrote that down my pen running out of ink. The idea of the reservoir's metaphorical significance – a back up body of water, a back-up peace zone, one available to me here and now – didn't occur to me until I wrote down the words.

I got out of my car, jaywalked across the street, and tried to decide how I could get a good picture, one where the fence around the reservoir didn't make the whole thing look kind of like a nature prison, as it didn't feel like one. It felt like a miracle. I saw the yellowest little bird I've ever seen, and I watched it flit from bush to fence and then through the fence, away toward the water. I didn't even reach for my camera. 

I walked across to the bench and sat silently for five minutes. I know it was five because I asked Siri to set a timer for me. There was no one else in the park, but I heard voices behind me on the sidewalk, in French and Spanish and even Italian, which made me smile. I don't usually hear much Italian outside of Beverly Hills.

It was such a good and necessary five minutes. 

It's ironic how the busiest times and most hectic days are the ones that most demand we make a place to sit and be silent in them. The more we think "there's no time today" the more desperately that day calls for a moment of peace.

Another Big Scoop Onto the Compost Heap

​In my second childhood home – the one I know best, where we moved after leaving the city apartment that's probably much smaller than I recall – we had a huge yard. In the back of the house, there was a fenced in portion of the yard where the dogs ran around, and that was where Mom's garden was. Accordingly, it was also where you could fine Dad's compost heap. Separated from the garden by a chickenwire fence was this huge pile of rich, decaying soil and he had to stand in it and turn it with a gardening shovel. It was hard, dirty work and I never really understood why he went to the trouble. Our garden looked great. The landscaping he'd done looked great. We didn't need more dirt, did we? 

When I sat down today, I wasn't planning to write about compost. I was planning to write about writer-painter Maira Kalman, who is my newfound philosophical soul mate and creative...muse? No. Mentor? Can someone be a mentor without knowing you or talking to you? Let's go with "hero." I listened to her interview on Krista Tippett's resplendent On Being and hearing her snapped me right out of my last-day-before-Monday funk. It wasn't that what she was saying moved me or soothed me, exactly. it was that everything she seemed to say about her outlook on storytelling, humanity, the world around us, and creativity was so precisely in tune with my deepest held feelings on those most-mattering of all matters. Some snippets:

 

Ms. Kalman: I mean I worry and suffer tremendously, I must assure everybody. But I just somehow am able to eliminate that and come across as a very optimistic and joyous person — which, in fact, I also am. So I’m completely confused...It’s taken me these many years to understand that a human being can encompass very contradictory ideas and feelings at the exact same time. They’re not separate; they don’t even follow each other so much. They just live in you. And for me, to clarify what I love, to do what’s amazing, to understand my confusion or my sorrow and to still continue to — I mean the thing about it is that you persevere. 

 

and

 

Ms. Kalman: I’m so curious about so many things that I surprise myself with my curiosity and my desire, my delight in seeing all of this stuff, because at a certain point, you’d say, “OK, enough already.” But clearly, it’s never enough. And it’s a surprise. You just don’t know what you’re gonna see.

 

and

Ms. Tippett: And this idea — I mean these are your words, but that the subject of your work continues to be “the normal, daily things that people fall in love with.” That’s very resonant with that. I’m just curious — we’re talking in the early afternoon. Have you fallen in love with something today?

Ms. Kalman: Oh, yes.

Ms. Tippett: [laughs] Tell us, what have you fallen in love with?

Ms. Kalman: [laughs] Too many things.

And remember last week when I was writing about "vitality" as my "word" for September? How it was taunting me all week? Imagine the beautiful chill of hearing Krista say to Maira, "another juxtaposition that you hold together, and you hold together is vitality, is life’s intrinsic whimsy and quirkiness and, also, life’s intrinsic sorrow." This after I'd already decided that I was listening to my philosophical kindred spirit. Suddenly I saw the word could mean so much more.

 

I loved her without seeing her work. I looked it up and, of course I HAD seen it. In the New Yorker, or out in the world somewhere. I suspect it would have seemed familiar even if I had never laid eyes on it.

​

I wrote her an email. I said "thank you thank you thank you." I got her book from the library and read it at stoplights and in between meetings. This morning, I read a children's book she wrote about Lincoln and I cried at the end. (Spoiler alert: he dies but his spirit lives on.)

 

I was, and am, awash in delight at finding this woman and her words and art. Quick on the heels of my delight, however, was a kind of icky creative feeling that I sometimes get when I discover work I love: "that's what I should do." I say "icky" because it's not really creative at all. It's uncreative. I can't, and don't really want to, simply copy other people's artistic style. In the case of Maira Kalman, I also literally cannot copy it, because I don't paint in gouache. But...I could learn to do paint in gouache! I could take a figure drawing class! I could just break out my acrylic paint sets and see what happens...and thusly does the mind run wild.

 

It's not just the conscious mind either. All my life, if I'm reading a book by a particular author with a distinct style, I will find that my natural tendency is to mimic that style. Rereading this post, I can see that the phrasing I used two paragraphs ago (just under the picture) was pure Maira Kalman. But I didn't do it on purpose. Psychology probably has a name for this phenomenon, but I have always referred to it as "copy brain."  I think it's the same mechanism that turns my thoughts into potential tweets if I've been looking a Twitter too long, or that makes it so that I keep on mentally playing a puzzle game as I go to sleep, after I've put my phone away. What does it mean, this instinct to absorb and reproduce a style of words or pictures? That can't be creativity, can it?

 

But then I remembered the Roy Lichtenstein exhibit I saw at the Art Institute of Chicago several years ago. I love Lichtenstein, whose images are original and iconic, but borrow and play with a very familiar medium (the comic book). But this exhibit included pieces of his I'd never known existed. There was an entire section of Lichtenstein's work, much of it from late in his career, in which he recreated artistic masterpieces of history, but in his own style. In one sense, he was reproducing; but the end result was unmistakably him. And, of course, artists have been doing this throughout time.

 

 

I thought about Maira Kalman, about about Lichtenstein, and about other artists, writers, and thinkers, the living and the dead. And then I thought of that compost heap. The way the contents to make the soil rich had to come from outside the pile. The way the soil couldn't progress without time, without being turned over and over again. How hard it was. The creative mind is a compost heap, and it needs to be fed and turned. The richer the mix, the better fed, the more fertile ground we have for new growth. 

 

Here's what I will do with my newfound love: I'll continue the lettering work that has been such a joy for me my whole life, and the wily mixed media art I've recently been having fun with. I will take a note from Maira and give myself permission to fall in love with all the beautiful things that enchant me every day and really revel in the joy they bring me. I'll remember to think of the grocery store as a kind of museum (we both love grocery stores but I never proclaim this fact like she did in a way that made it wisdom). I'll keep letting my observations lead a path to a story, but I will not apologize for it. I'll keep reading, take time to ponder, and see what springs up.

 

 

Florilegia

There’s a podcast I’ve been devouring (you know, with my ears) since it was recommended to me in July: “Harry Potter & the Sacred Text.” I could (and may) write a whole post about that show. But for now I want to focus on a word it put into my consciousness, “florilegia.” 

Florilegia is a variation of a practice that I (and maybe you) have been doing in one way or another my whole life: collecting and noting down phrases that sparkle for me as I read. Though this practice dates back to medieval times, it holds something new for me: it asks that we take these little plucked flowers from the text and replant them beside one another. Reading them this way, separated from the original source, they can offer us new insights, spurring us to find unseen depth through a newly contextualized examination.

And look how pretty my book is!

The word itself is actually the plural of “florilegium,” but as I plan to put several “reading gardens” in my little florilegia book (it has enough room for many beyond the “garden” I’m currently plucking from Elizabeth Glaskell’s Cranford), I stand by my use of the more mellifluous word. 

I look forward to continuing the practice and perhaps sharing some of the treasures I find — standing alone or planted together —  in the future.

Side note: anyone who knew came to my house in high school may have been witness to another, more visual kind of florilegium I kept, though I didn’t know to call it that: my “wall.” The a-frame walls/ceilings of my attic bedroom were plastered with clippings and ephemera from my life, carefully curated and laid out into a kind of spastic collage. When we moved out of that house, I took down these panels and saved them in a scrapbook I rarely look at. I cracked it open today to share a glimpse here, but be forewarned: I’m really struggling to choose which panel is least embarrassing! 

Fun with Percolator

I recently found out about this fascinating, albeit somewhat pointless, iPhone app called Percolator. Basically, it's an adjustable filter for photos that turns them into beautiful dots of color. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I'm guessing it has something to do with pixels.

I made a few Percolator images that I'm using as iPhone wallpaper, and I thought I'd share them here; I think they're pretty neat. See if you can guess what the original picture was!

 

 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

 

 

Miracle Fortune

I have a new part-time job, some exciting prospects for the future, and a whole lot of the unknown to face. Here's hoping.

The End is NOT Near

In today's installment of the New Yorker cartoon newsletter that Bob Mankoff sends out, he talked a bit about the political scene. As there's rarely a candidate willing to support my staunchly hippie-esque love, nature, and pacificity stance, I feel this cartoon pretty much sums up my personal feeling on politics in general:

Also, not to get too uppity or anything, I feel like sharing some prudent analogies from my friend Kevin's Facebook status, which I hope he doesn't mind: 

Let me ask you this: If your hands are cold, would you pour boiling water on them to warm them up? Then, once they are burning, dip them in liquid nitrogen to cool them off? Seems stupid, yet we do it with politics all the time. Minor corrections will keep a car on the road, going full lock to full lock will not.

Kevin is a restaurant owner and an a car aficionado, which may shed some light on his choice of metaphors. Good work, Kevin.

 

Tonight I learned…

Tonight I learned that I come from a family of strange and unique geniuses. It is a burden we must bear, but we will do so with dignity.

Tonight, I learned that love is confusing. It has little to do with size or shape or gender. It seems connected with history at times, but not always.

I have to figure out what my life is for, and it won't be easy. Nevertheless, I'll have the love and support of my family and friends at my side all the while. That's pretty sweet. A simpler person could be satisfied with that alone.

A New Camera, a New Coffee Maker, and a Story

I have been putting off getting a new camera for a long time now, saving up for something really nice. It wasn't what I originally planned on, but when I came across the new Olympus PEN, I fell in love. I can't explain it, but somehow the camera seemed perfect for me.

I was inspired to trust my gut and purchase the PL-1 in part by something unexpected my father did just last week. Let me spin you a tale…

Our coffee maker broke three weeks ago. I love coffee, but I am perfectly capable of getting through the day without it (not that I don't have a caffeine addiction like the rest of us; I can be sated by Diet Dr. Pepper, nectar of the gods). My dad, on the other hand, drinks a pot of coffee before noon every day; in fact, on weekends I would sometimes wake up to an already emptied pot, dad jumping to his feet to say "I guess I should make some more coffee." Our little coffee maker had worked hard for five years, and then it stopped, right before my dad left town for two weeks.

While he was gone, I was at Williams Sonoma, a place I often go to lust after things, dream of future space and money, and buy nothing. I spotted a beautiful Moccamaster coffee maker that had Dad's name ("Dad") written all over it. I figured it would be one of the candidates in an exhaustive body of coffee maker research. I was wrong. Dad walked into the store behind me, looked at the specs of the gorgeous machine, and said "well, let's get it."

I was shocked! I even suggested that he look around a bit and think about it before biting the bullet. But much to my surprise (again) Dad said it was something I'd told him that made him feel like going for it. After reading Dan Ariely's Predictable Irrationality, I'd talked non-stop about Ariely's study showing that comparing similar things with totally different features can be more frustrating than helpful, and often leads to an (economically) irrational choice. Dad stated his reasoning simply: he didn't want to frustrate himself with a big search when it was already clear that this was the ideal coffee maker.

Long story short, I bought the PEN. I didn't consult my photographer friends. I didn't do a particularly thorough side-by-side comparison of the PEN and other cameras. And I couldn't be happier with my decision.

All photos taken by me with my new camera! Yay!!! Check out my Flickr.