I recently wrote answers to a set of questions for a Canvas Rebel Interview, posted in October 2023. Here's the answer to one question. The rest can be found on their website:
https://canvasrebel.com/meet-maja-trochimczyk/
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
My small publishing house, Moonrise Press, is an outgrowth of my own creative activities. I did not think of myself as a poet or photographer, when still living in Poland, I was a listener, an audience member, a scholar… Then, after moving to America, after losing the ground under my feet, my native culture, language, land, family, friends – I had to re-create myself to survive, So the first benefit of being a poet was creating and asserting my own identity as “me” through my art. Finally, I was not writing about what others thought and did, I was writing about what I felt, what I thought.
While this “poetry as self-expression” is at the root of so many bad books, so many failed artistic efforts, it is also healing, it is also empowering. It gives you the strength to survive and go on. These aspects of creativity should never be discounted or ignored… Artistic criteria and “taste” change in time, evolve with shifting fashions – but being true to yourself in your words, expressing the deepest emotions and the most personal thoughts will never go out of fashion!
The joy of being creative is in the very act of creation. Someone said that when creating we become truly Divine, we are the Divine co-creators of this beautiful world. Therefore, we are responsible for the worlds we conjure up with our words and images. Are these worlds dystopian, hideous? Are these worlds full of light, joy, laughter, beauty?
When I was studying music history, I was told to never write about “beauty” in music, only about “know-how” of compositional techniques and the mechanism of the artwork taken apart in analysis like a clockwork… I never fully agreed with that, so in my own poetry and photography I happily capture and share with others what I find beautiful, inspirational, good, true…
I still believe in Platonian trinity of beauty=goodness=truth. Also in the Three L trinity of Life=Love=Light. Creating beauty, building new, fantastic worlds – what could be better than that? Self-expression is good, but my advice to poets is borrowed from Clancy Imislund of the Midnight Mission (where I worked on grant proposals for a while): “Absolutely No Whining!”
The photo above is something to "whine" about - chemtrails, made deliberately by planes in the past, drones or planes more recently. What for? Who knows? Dimming to sun because of, gasp, OMG, climate change"? Or increasing the amount of metal nanoparticles in the atmosphere and organic matter to make it all more visible to the machines? Or changing the weather, so we get rain or no rain, drought or floods, depending on the "weather-controllers"' whimsy? There are plenty of patents and plenty of proof worldwide. But no "official" acknowledgement. Event a White House petition I signed many years ago failed to reach 10,000 signatures. ... Oh, well, what can I do?
Instead, let's read two different "whining" poems just for fun; since the time of the great contradiction comes, the time that somehow impresses shopkeepers and shoppers so much they want to recreate cemeteries and skeletons to scare us at Halloween. Another reason to go on a shopping spree and buy imitations of severed hands and bloody eyeballs. Sick.
But what if we are not afraid of death at all? What if all we want is to celebrate life? In the material world death is inevitable and necessary; otherwise there would be not enough room for all of us. Imagine living along with all the dinosaurs that ever lived, in forests forever full of gigantic mushrooms and ferns... trying to run away from pterodactyls, and the dreaded T-rex teeth...
What Do I Know About a Crow
This crow has
ambitions of a diva,
in her shiny black
dress of smooth feathers
bejeweled by jets
of black beak and eyes
She wants to sing
in the opera, bask in
the applause of an
enraptured audience
This crow years to
be a primadonna
on the stage, yet
her beak emits
rough squacks and
grating kra – kra – kra
not enchanting in
the least.
There is a note of
exasperation in her voice:
“Why me? Why can’t
I sing? Why this voice?”
Who knows. We need
crows and nightingales.
Light and
darkness. The fluted polished
Melodies. That
thrill of electric current
down the spine and
the harsh warnings
“Go, go, go, time
to go,
it is over.”
Published in Zwierzenia Zwierza anthology
in Poland (Bezkres, 2020)
Of fate, their harsh voices carry far through the valley
Go, go, go it is over, it is time, go.
They fly through blue skies like smudges of wood smoke
A warning. Think what you do and why.
They announce the verdict. They invade your space
in the black hour of retribution.
You do not believe me? When you locked yourself
in my house, and suddenly homeless I stood outside, calling 911,
at least twenty crows paraded on the street, screeching.
Why? Crows are the messengers. They come back
if you do not heed their warnings. Remember when
you knocked at my door, on the run again, seeking shelter?
Ready to take over my life, as if I owed you?
I half-listened to your pleading and watched
two crows on the pine branch behind you
passing morsels of bread to each other. A warning?
A lesson of what to do? Of what not to do? Should I forget
that my mom's jewels had disappeared with you
like smoke from last year’s fires?
Did two crows in the pine tree tell me
to turn you away? Did they ask me to care?
I’m not skilled in reading signs. I followed my heart,
the fortune cookie said so. Always walk in the path of your heart.
So I said no to you and yes to my children. And that’s all
for today, the end of the crows and of you.
Published in Zwierzenia Zwierza
anthology in Poland (Bezkres, 2020)
The Egyptian Book of the Dead said that after death the heart is weighed on a scale against a single feather. If the heart is lighter than a feather, the soul can float up into the realm of bliss, if the heart is heavy with fear, worry, hate, anger, resentment, dislike - the soul has to come back and redo the lessons again and again. So let's try to be light as a feather. The first step: "absolutely no whining!"
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