A Jazzwriting Experience

I’d been looking forward to the Steven Skaggs and Eliza Schulte Holidays’ Jazzwriting Workshop in Buffalo, NY, albeit with quite a bit of trepidation, curiosity plus a desire to do something that would "loosen me up". Some of the curiosity was met by attending the pre-workshop lecture on the Friday evening, meeting Steven and Eliza, hearing what the objectives of Jazzwriting are, and viewing some of their work. It was obvious that these were two highly talented people. Saturday morning couldn’t come too soon for me.

Saturday came, of course, and so did the beginning of several learning experiences for me, the first of which was with the very first exercise. I had been conscious that I was in some awe of the talented members of NCG, but that first exercise brought me face to face with this self imposed intimidation and became a healing agent for me. We were asked to use any black medium and tool and make any quick stroke or shape on paper, pass the paper to someone else, make another stroke on the paper passed to us, and again make another paper pass and stroke on the third paper. At second stroke time, I was looking down on a paper that had a strong, powerful but graceful stroke (done, wouldn’t you know it by one of the talented members of NCG!) and I blew it. That awe was right there and my pitiful, weak second stroke ended up as far as possible from that power stroke. With the first exercise papers put up on the studio wall for discussion and assessment, I saw so many examples of what I could do if I confronted that gremlin called "intimidation". It was time to deal with that once and for all. So, thankful there was a second opportunity in a repeat of the first exercise, I did my second stroke right across someone else’s stroke, fast and boldly. So there!

Boy, did I feel better! And the timing of that healing was so right - the start of the workshop, among so-o-o many talented people. This left me free to admire their work, learn from it, listen better to Steven and Eliza and start to discover what I could do. Courage, Christine, courage! As the workshop that day progressed, I found, to my joy, that the exercises and others’ work were getting me better acquainted with different tools, inks, paints, effects, and so on, all of which I sorely needed to learn.

I couldn’t sleep Saturday night - the mind was still at the workshop, loaded with ideas of what should or could be done, and especially so far as getting my tools, inks pens, etc. etc. better organized. I had gone to the workshop loaded up like a bag lady, with my tools badly organized in this box and that bag, etc. I wasted a lot of time hunting for whatever I needed.

My interest in water colour work was brought into play and, on the second day in particular, my interest in writing or authoring. Oh, what delight to have these interests come together and become active in this workshop. I was loosening up! And, what’s more, Stephen and Eliza, were on their feet all the time, stepping over all the boxes, bags and other gear in this crowded studio, giving each and every participant, including me, their personal attention and instruction.

There were two exercises in particular that appealed to me. One is where we were asked to close our eyes and just listen to a recording and then "translate" it onto paper using any media we liked but using only the words "sweet in the morning". The recording was an a cappella solo of sound by one voice with the track over-recorded by the same singer, several times, somewhat like a fugue. No words, just the voice as instruments - like strings, percussion and wind. I listened carefully and began to see what to do, and went ahead to put it down on paper. Wet on wet blue and burnt sienna watercolour across the paper. Then stretch writing in fine point pigma "sweet in the morning" along the bottom part of the blue into the sandy colour - five lines of writing in this style. Then overwriting the same words on top of themselves, here and there along the five lines. Then some more writing of the same words by pen and ink. Then the words written at an angle upwards and downwards like a seismograph needle at earthquake time, and then some black daubs higher up on the paper. All these represented the different instrumentation sound of that singer as I heard it and visualized it.

Well, here’s where my lack of knowledge of inks and tools came in! The ink I used ran, the paint I used for daubs became so dense black on drying, and my table and myself weren’t clean enough after using some charcoal earlier, and, you guessed it, some of that charcoal found its way onto the paper. Oh, what a mess! (The husband’s comment, on seeing this piece later was "Dunkirk!" He was right. It did look like a battlefield beach.) But I still felt good at having visualized the sound and making the attempt to see some artwork out of it. This was confirmed for me by our hard-working instructors - they were able to point out where I had done well. I’ve enjoyed doing this exercise again at home and this time it looks like a peaceful beach and ocean scene with birds in upward flight. At least, that’s how I see it!

The other exercise I’m working on again is the result of random words called out by participants on a word association basis from a sheet of printed words. Writing down the randomly associated words as they were called out, we had to compose some verse or prose out of some of these words and using calligraphy and artwork, put some or all of the composition on paper. Again, I found I knew quickly what to do and went ahead.

The only problem was ……….! My calligraphy is limited to Italic, of sorts, and this I used, but Italic and the subject matter didn’t match up. They were far from copesetic. Eliza, with her patience and tact, confirmed what was good in my production, and then she put it so well that my need was to "get a palette of calligraphic hands" so that I could work more freely, using whatever calligraphy is suitable to the text, without having to think too much of how to form the letters. She is so right! (Needless to say, it was a daughter, inspecting this effort, said immediately and bluntly and without Eliza’s tact, pronounced: "The writing style doesn’t match the subject!")

So, what have I learned? - plenty, including the following: