Milkwood Magic!

Rick Rubin's Stages of Creativity and a Dumb Poem

I am at Milkwood in New York, an old farm transformed by Sophie Blackall and Ed Schmidt, into a real life picture book full of magical humans and creatures, spending the week writing, drawing, cooking, and sharing stories. I am here because someone else isn’t, and I saw — at the right time — the golden ticket floating around instagram.

I brought a not good poem about getting unstuck by a magical other, and thought if I put it into book form, it would set me free. But it has become it’s own stuck thing.

I was reminded of Rick Rubin’s four stages of the creative process by a fellow retreater:

Collecting seeds
Experimentation
Crafting
Completion

I appreciate this reminder because I often feel that I am eternally in stage one — collecting seeds. (I just returned from a literal collecting of seeds from Milkwood’s wild gardens and have so many other kinds of seeds from the week in the form of poems, photographs, and notes) Upon reinspecting, I actually often travel through stages two and three. It is the fourth and final stage: completion, that gives me the cold sweats. And it looks like I am breaking the rules, sharing my playing here before reaching completion. But this is what I’ve signed up for for now — it moves me past the seeds and past the experimenting and into crafting.

I am just going to share the first stanza and hopefully by next Thursday I’ll feel good about sharing more. This may always be a not good poem though…

It’s early enough on a Sunday
To fetch my barking girl from the hilltop
Who is she up there talking with today?
I bring my fruitless scribbling to a stop.

I’ll start with what I love - this colour palette! and how the different medium look together in this old paint tin.

I began out in the fields of wildflowers with a slurry of paint on my pages (I forgot a sketch book! so working in these small books I made).

Firsts from Home

And now, Milkwood!

Wildflowers

The Ducks!

Me in the Hall Mirror at Milkwood

The Barn and this Magical Morning Sky

Me and the Moon in the Morning at Milkwood

Now to navigate completion!

Update: The Colours in My Tin!

The palette! For those of you inquiring, is s vintage water colour tin whose paints I removed and replaced them with:⁠

⁠@stonegroundpaintco : Olive Green (Gouache and Watercolour), Gamboge, India Red, Diarylide Yellow, Florence Blush, Summer Pear⁠

⁠Clay pots and Paint made by me from found and purchased pigments: Malachite, Seemsville Black, Flouresent Yellow, Magnetite Black

⁠@carandache New Colours: Salmon, a pink I cannot see the name of, Chinese Green, English Red⁠

⁠@sennelier1887 Chalk Pastel (green number worn away) and Tangerine Oil pastel number also worn away⁠

⁠One small Green @prismacolour ending with 05⁠