Creative Communities
It’s Saturday morning and I’m doing everything except writing although my mind keeps going back to writing. I’m watching a documentary right now called “Laurel Canyon” on Prime but in the back of my mind I’m restructuring a creative nonfiction piece I’ve been working on for a while.
Ok, so I stopped right there because the docu was really good and I fell into a canyon rabbit hole for a few hours. Sixties music was a big part of it and, to be honest, I was a small kid in the 60s so a lot of the musicians in the show are not ones I listened to until I was older and then only if they came on the radio. But it was really interesting to hear about the creative community that sprung up in Laurel Canyon in the 60s. Through old footage we get to see the countryside, the quaint vine-draped bungalows, the barefoot and carefree artists. We see snippets of now legendary musicians hanging out and I learned things about them I didn’t know. I was never a reader of Rolling Stone or celebrity heavy magazines so I really know little about musicians outside of listening to the music. Honestly, I don’t care about their personal lives. But. It was fun to watch all the same.
The main thing that impressed me was the mystique of Laurel Canyon itself, as a community, at that moment in time. I felt like I was watching a lost world that will never be again, a world more personal than the one we live in today. People trusted each other, didn’t lock their doors, wandered in and out of each others homes. Their lifestyle was free, innocent, expansive. It seemed it was a community that shared, without envy and competition. It’s hard to believe in our current world that this ever existed.
The landscape itself was verdant, moody, primitive, even dangerous in the way beauty often is. I can imagine being bewitched, living there at that time in such a richly creative, beautiful, and nurturing environment. It oozed creativity that came through in the old home movies and photographs. It really cast a spell on me for several hours. I can relate to how music and art is inspired by being immersed in the natural world, how the peace of it empties the mind of chaos, replaces it with wonder and a calm that allows creative ideas to grow.
Interestingly in the wake of David Crosby’s recent death, there happened to be lots about Crosby, Stills, & Nash - Crosby dipped in and out throughout the docu. I wasn’t a fan. Never bought his or CSN albums although I’m familiar with some of the music through radio as a kid and just general exposure as an adult. Now, my interest is piqued so I plan to pull up some of the music on Spotify.
There was a nice section about Joni Mitchell I enjoyed very much. For most of my life I only associated her with “Both Sides Now”, “Woodstock”, and “Big Yellow Taxi” which even reached rural Mississippi radio back in the day. I didn’t know any of her other music until the last few years. During the early days of the pandemic I listened to and became obsessed for a while with her album Blue. The beautiful imagery in the lyrics are so much my jam. (As is lyric essay which I intended to write about today but I’ll write about soon.)
Toward the end of the piece it dipped into the 70s a bit, my musical era, with Linda Ronstadt (who I saw in concert in the late 70s), The Eagles, Little Feat (saw them then too), and an older Jackson Brown. Would love to see more about the mid 70s to mid 80s music scene.
Well. I really hadn’t planned to write about this today but there it is.
Speaking of creative communities, I’m sharing two flash fiction pieces I read recently, found through the writing community on Twitter. I’m a little sad lately about the fragmentation I’ve seen in the Twitter writing community since the Musk takeover. I’m surprised by the knee-jerk exodus simply because people don’t like him. If I ran away from people I don’t like I’d be running a lot. Change happens. Might as well make it work for you.
Lisa Lerma Weber spins a wildly creative and deliciously dark story in Roi Fainéant titled “What Death Knows of Love”. I loved this story so much I was mentally rubbing my hands together reading it! Here’s a snippet:
“Death flicks his cigarette and walks around the couple. He looks into the man's grey eyes, sees the woman through them. The way her golden-green eyes sparkle when she's had too much wine.”
In Five South, Hema Nataraju spins a tale of loneliness, emotional isolation, and desire in her story “07:15 Fast Local”. Nema sets this scene so deliberately and expertly and we are drawn in with our hearts in our throats. This small story reminds us of a big thing: how much we need another human being in our life. A snippet:
“From his spot, he can see the woman in yellow standing by the door with the wind in her hair. She’s only a vestibule away. He could thank her now; she might smile again, and things could happen, and he could start taking 07:45 instead of 07:15 every day, and . . .”
I just love stories - fiction and non-fiction - about people, relationships, and the struggle & ecstasy of people in relationships. Both of these stories hit the mark for me.
Oh, by the way, I have a little flash fiction coming out tomorrow (Sunday) in Roi Fainéant. It’s about small town teen girls in the 70s, wandering hands, and revenge. I hope you’ll read it.
Have a great weekend and enjoy this video of “Woodstock”.
Like you, most music got to me through the radio, often a year or two after the songs were popular on the west coast. I grew up always a bit behind the times. Not too long ago we saw a concert with Joni Mitchell, hosted by Belinda Carlisle. It was such a relief to see her, see the honor given to her, especially to hear her sing. Her voice is different now, of course, but she still made it work, like a lovely old instrument that has taken on a new deeper richness.
Joni Mitchell is quite amazing. A songwriter, such a vocalist singer and an inventive musical guitar artist. She uses different tunings on the guitar. Her songs are blessings to us listeners.