Category: Music

Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Chrys Buckley

MPs coverSo here we are (again, for me, so many times over), Week One.

I’ve had a lot of false starts with The Artist’s Way, AW for shorthand as it’s known around my journals, so this chapter is well-trodden ground. So much so that some parts I know so well that I could give a good gist without reading it anew. Like knowing almost all the lines and all the music cues in a favorite pilot episode.

Technically, Week One in The Artist’s Way book will span two weeks here, since next week’s focus is on the Time Travel tasks from Week One (for the full schedule, check out the bottom of this post). So we’re easing in a little here.

Since this is the first post based on a Week chapter, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to structure the posts. I’m thinking I’ll go section by section through the chapter, giving a bit of commentary on each. I’ll pull out a favorite of the quotes scattered throughout the chapter, and then discuss or post excerpts of the tasks. I’ll pepper questions into each section. If you’re joining in, now or in the future, feel free to answer as much or as little as you’d like.

The picture on the right is a picture of my current Morning Pages journal, which is almost all used up.

Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Shadow Artists

In this section, there are several examples given of how a blocked creative person can be a shadow artist. Sponsoring a creative person but not allowing your own creativity (there was an amazing story about a blocked billionaire who gifted an artist with a year’s living expenses so they could focus on their art, so I’m just saying that if there are any benevolent billionaires out there looking for creative people to sponsor, I’m right here). Investing in supporting a loved one’s creative career while never igniting your own. Representing artists, working as a critic, becoming an art therapist or a marketing exec instead of an artist, going to law school or med school instead of writing (ummm ooops?), all these ways of being on the periphery.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety” →

Music, Pop Culture, TV, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In August 23, 2020

Chrys Buckley

Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

goals5

  • journal about Moonchild (writing project) at least once – oops, I completely forgot. I usually journal about it on Sunday mornings and today I just got up and went to my regular Moonchild work.
  • collect all relevant old notebooks from storage and bring them up into my apartment – still on here, gotta do it – DONE today!
  • work on Moonchild all seven days – and to get more specific with what I’m working on with this book project, my goal convert all reeeeeally old Moonchild files that are locked in old ClarisWorks and AppleWorks files (.cwk) into files I can read and search – DONE – there were two files that were too corrupted to be salvaged, but all the rest are salvaged, converted, and saved.
  • work on blog at least five days – DONE.
  • journal about blog at least once – DONE.
  • bank two Better Call Saul recaps for this site – DONE – recaps for “Uno” and “Mijo” are written and scheduled.

Music

  • seven guitar practice sessions – did six, will do one extra this coming week
  • get up through song 90 of book one of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book – instead of a new lesson this week, it’ll be a lot of practice integrating from the last several lessons – DONE.
  • seven keyboard practice sessions – DONE.
  • get up through page 55 in my Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner book – yes, this is the same page as last week; it’s a loaded page – and get through the G major/minor scale building and exercises – DONE.

Lifestyle

  • sleep without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – this will put me at 153 nights (five months) in a row – DONE, except my math last week was bad, 147 + 7 = I’m up to 154.
  • read through page 477 in All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which I’m reading for the NOAH (National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation)’s PWA Book Club – DONE. I’m LOVING this book, sad I’ll soon be done with the whole thing!
  • write Morning Pages every day – six out of seven.

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In August 23, 2020” →

Metaphysics, Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Re-Starting the Journey

Chrys Buckley

complete awIn previous posts in this Artist’s Way Reflections column, I’ve written about having a two-decade relationship with this landmark book on creativity and its basic tools (Morning Pages and the Artist Date) and its essays and exercises and tasks, all aimed and at opening, or re-opening a connection to creativity. Discovering and recovering your artistic self.

And now that the Basic Tools have been covered, next week I’ll move on to the main text of the book.

I’m hoping that some of you will join me on this Artist’s Way journey. Later in the post, I’m going to give a sketch of my plans for doing the book and this column, and different ways to join in. To find that, you can skip ahead to the section titled The Plan.

First though, I wanted to give a little history on my latest re-launch of the journey.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Re-Starting the Journey” →

Music, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In August 16, 2020

Chrys Buckley

goals4Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

  • journal about Moonchild (writing project) at least once – DONE this morning.
  • collect all relevant old notebooks from storage and bring them up into my apartment – still haven’t done this, so it’ll remain on the list.
  • work on Moonchild all seven days – currently working on Nick timeline (the timeline for a relationship that figures prominently in my memoir project, explained in the reflections section of this previous check-in) – DONE.
  • work on blog at least five days – DONE.
  • journal about blog at least once – DONE.

Music

  • seven guitar practice sessions – yeah, I actually did ten! I wanted to make up for the lost sessions last week.
  • get up through song 86 of book one of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book and introduction of the D chord – DONE.
  • seven keyboard practice sessions – eleven! Also making up for lost sessions last week.
  • get up through page 55 in my Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner book – DONE.

Lifestyle

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In August 16, 2020” →

Music, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In August 9, 2020

Chrys Buckley

goals3

Goals from Last Week – How Did I Do?

Writing

  • journal about Moonchild (memoir) project at least once – DONE.
  • collect all relevant old notebooks from storage and bring them up into my apartment – nope, didn’t do it, still want to.
  • start constructing Nick timeline (the timeline for a relationship that figures prominently in my memoir project, explained in the reflections section of last week’s check-in) – find all existing references in Moonchild – I did technically start this but barely worked on it, and think I need a more concrete goal for this going forward.
  • work on blog at least 5 days – DONE.
  • journal about blog at least once – DONE.

Music

  • seven guitar practice sessions – yeah no, I did four – I’ve been practicing every day, with very few exceptions, since early mid-April, so this drop-off is out of character for recent months
  • get up through song 83 of book one of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book – DONE – even though I didn’t do the amount of practice sessions I thought I would, I still did go forward since the previous lesson was the Em chord, which I was very familiar with already.
  • seven keyboard practice sessions – yeah even more of a no here, I only did three (and two of those were today) – like with guitar I’ve been doing keyboard pretty much every day for months, so this does have a falling off the wagon type feeling.
  • get up through page 52 in my Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner book – also no, I’m up to page 50 and have some catching up to do.

Lifestyle

  • sleep without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – this will put me at 140 nights, aka 20 weeks, in a row – DONE – 20 weeks, baby!
  • read through page 226 in All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr – DONE – this book is sooooo good; not easy but good.
  • write Morning Pages every day – I wrote them 6 of the 7 days – I couldn’t exactly write a big post about them, and then not write them.

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In August 9, 2020” →

Blindness and Disability, Music, Science

“So I’m Leaving Out the Side Door”

Chrys Buckley

This morning, I did a thing. It has to do with what is for now still unsayable but which came up a lot in this anguished post earlier this week. This thing I did is a huge step towards being able to talk openly about it, which I’m dying to do.

This song was playing at the crucial moment of doing the thing, and that’s where the title for the post comes from. Even though my situation is so different from what Taylor Swift and Bon Iver are singing about, everything feels like it fits. It’s my current favorite off of folklore, and I don’t think that’s an accident.

Lines that stick out for me at the moment, aside from the one used in my post title include:

“you’re not my homeland anymore”

“you were my town
now I’m in exile seeing you out”

“second third and hundredth chances
balancing on breaking branches”

and the one line I always want to scream along with the perfect bridge of this song

“I gave so many signs”

Spoiler alert: The sequel to this post, “You’re Not My Homeland Anymore” is now live and spills all the tea on this cryptic post.

Until next time,

-Chrys

Music, Podcasts, Pop Culture, Science, TV, Writing

I Can’t Sleep With or Without You (My iPhone)

Chrys Buckley
MXM82_AV2
The closest pic I could find to my own beloved phone and case

Sung to the tune of the U2 song “With or Without You.”

In some of my recent goals posts, I’ve mentioned a goal to sleep without my phone. This has been an ongoing struggle for me ever since I got an iPhone (and I was just telling a friend that I got one the day they became available to Verizon people), and in different iterations even before then. I thought it would make sense to give some background on this habit that I’ve struggled to break.

Because the thing is, I know all the things. I know that you’re supposed to get off electronics before going to bed. I know taking the phone into the bed with me, scrolling endlessly, listening to podcasts, having the blue light in my face (and I hold the phone much closer to my face than the average person, thanks legal blindness) is all bad. I know when I fall asleep with the phone, my sleep is worse. I don’t sleep as deeply. I wake up more often to pee or just to wake up, most likely because I’m still in the lighter stages of sleep. I probably miss out on a lot of deep sleep and all the goodies that it provides. I even read somewhere, years ago, that screens in bed has been linked to weight gain.

Continue reading “I Can’t Sleep With or Without You (My iPhone)” →

Music, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In August 2, 2020

Chrys Buckley

goals2

Goals from Last Week – How Did I Do?

Writing

  • read and take notes on the final chapter of my old version of Moonchild – DONE – this was a pretty easy, one-time thing that I did Monday morning.
  • journal every morning, contemplate what I want to do with Moonchild and where I want to go writing-wise, from here – Did 6 mornings (all except Monday, when I did the first goal) and it was more fruitful than I thought it might be. More below.
  • work on blog at least five days – this doesn’t mean I’m going to post five times, more just wanting to find chunks of time to work on this site – DONE

Music

  • practice guitar every day – DONE
  • get up through song 78 of book one of my guitar book – DONE but struggled with the new material a lot (alternate strumming)
  • practice piano every day – sorta done? I skipped one day but made up for it the next
  • get up through page 47 in my piano book – DONE

Lifestyle

  • sleep without my phone (this will put me at 133 nights in a row) – DONE but it was a struggle
  • read parts One and Two in All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which I’m reading for the NOAH (National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation)’s PWA Book Club – DONE and I’m really loving the book!
  • write Morning Pages every day – yeah no. I only wrote them 4 days, and two of those were were “evening pages” where I wrote something at night to say I’d written something, so technically only 2 days of true Morning Pages

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In August 2, 2020” →

Music, Pop Culture, TV, Writing

My Pop Culture Digest – July 2020

Chrys Buckley

With these monthly posts, first introduced in this post, I’m in no way trying to be exhaustive or objective. I’m merely sharing some of the media I’ve consumed that month that I want to share, because I am such a big consumer of pop culture. I’m also going to put an ongoing 2020 book list at the end with what I’ve read this year and what I’m currently reading.

Podcasts

sawbonesHealth Media Literacy Episode of Sawbones

A med student friend of mine suggested the podcast Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine podcast to me when we both realized what big podcast listeners we are when chatting across a big conference table in the same room where we all once interviewed, while waiting for our OSCEs to start (our end of block exams where we “play doctor” with standardized patient actors). I don’t listen to a ton of medical-themed podcasts so I subscribed.

The recent episode “Health Media Literacy” looks at how to evaluate some of the covid literature that’s coming out, and specifically looks at some studies claiming that immunity from covid wanes quickly. Worth listening to regardless of familiarity with science, as it gives some good tips for appraising these types of stories. Health and science literacy is such a huge passion of mine, only made moreso by this pandemic, and so this episode is one of my favorite things I listened to this month.

Continue reading “My Pop Culture Digest – July 2020” →

Metaphysics, Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – My Origin Story

Chrys Buckley

AW1This past March, I picked up The Artist’s Way again after many years away from this famous creativity book. It’s been an interesting ride since then–expansive, challenging, difficult, combative at times (I definitely don’t resonate with everything in there), illuminating. So, it’s one of the things I wanted to post about when jumping back into blogging and thinking a lot about creativity.

I went back to The Artist’s Way, or AW as it’s known in my journals and to-do lists and calendars, after some tough decisions that set off a real transition time for me that I reeeeeally want to write about but can’t right now. It had been awhile since I’d cracked the book, and it makes sense to talk about my origin story with this book.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – My Origin Story” →