Random Wednesday: Solstice Candles, Family Dinners, and 52 Weeks of Creativity

Welcome to the last Random Wednesday of the year. Farewell 2016, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Sometimes what goes wrong in a ritual can be a source of insight. My usual little Winter Solstice ritual is very simple: I light several candles and lamps and leave them outside (safely!) overnight, to hold and guide the light. This year I lit those candles right before sunset, and headed out to teach a class. When I got back, all but one had gone out — some freak of wind, or damp wicks, or something.

But one candle is enough to light many others. Something to remember in dark times.

My mother came home for dinner on Christmas. She still has several more weeks of physical and occupational therapy to go before she can come home for good, but if you’ve been reading this blog over the past few months you know that its a Christmas miracle that she is on her way to recovery. I hope your holiday was one-tenth as bright.

Last January, and the one before that, I did a Fun a Day, one bit of creative art each day of the month. But as we move into January, there’s no one organizing a show in Baltimore, and I’m behind schedule on a lot of things.

So rather than one intense month, I’m making a year-long commitment — one piece a week. A new song, poem, piece of digital art, whatever. And as this new year starts on a Sunday, it aligns very well with that. I commit to posting one new artistic creation (however humble) each weekend in 2017.

If you’d like to take up the same challenge — well, by golly, do it! Let’s put Neil Gaiman’s advice to work in 2017:

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Make it on the good days too.

Happy new year. (And 2016, if I ever see you again, I’m gonna kick your ass.)