Fine Lines

All Good Things

17.2 Summer 2008

(David Martin is the Fine Lines Creative Writing Summer Camp Director.)

“All good things which exist are fruits of originality.” John Stuart Hill

Fine Lines creates summer writing camps for those young students of all ages who find peace in words. Our camps are places where writers of all abilitites share stories, essays, poems, and songs. These writing communities become a universe of combined wisdom in metaphor.

As “Woody” Gruber, one of our best camp story tellers, likes to say, “Each writer brings a candle of light and insight to the written page, and when those many sources of energy are united, they create a lighthouse that shines into the darkness and helps ‘those alone on ships at sea.’ Years ago, Arch Bishop Fulton Sheen used to have a television show called The Christophers, and his motto for each program was, ‘It is better to light just one candle than to curse the darkness.’ The most important thing writers can do is to light their candles by writing.”

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A fox lopes across the gravel road, and a flock of geese head their “V” north, chased by the heat and humidity from the south. Dogs lie in the shade with their tongues hanging out. Patiently, hay bales wait to be picked up and placed in the barn. The wheat fields will soon become heavy with natural gold. Large, cumulous, thunder clouds heavy with tears of moisture loom on the horizon. A man walks down the road and thinks he could leave his troubles behind. Maybe, he should just move on down the line, searching for new dreams and adventures.

Campers have many ideas to write about in their journals.

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Last year, when David Mainelli entered the room, he wore an open shirt and worn jeans. He yawned after taking a drink of coffee from a cup he held in one hand, while balancing a guitar case in the other. When introduced to the group, he walked to a simple, wooden chair in the middle of the room. Soon, he was surrounded by eager students, and they quieted down when he took his six-string instrument out of its case.

“Artists are uncomfortable human beings,” he said, as he rubbed more sleep out of his eyes. “I can’t remember ever playing in front of group before 9 a.m. No one should be expected to play before noon. The longest days are great metaphors for life, aren’t they?”

They looked at him and wondered what he meant, exactly. One girl wrote that last sentence down in her spiral notebook. A young boy started drawing his likeness on lined paper instead of writing down words.

“The blues come slowly, and the blues come fast. This guitar always talks to me. It is one of my best friends,” he said. “My best poetry comes from my gut. We are surrounded by pencils and pens, and there is so much ink in our world, but there is never enough time to find the right words to say what we mean. Don’t you agree?”

He held his head in his hands, thinking. As the guitar strap held the instrument over his shoulders, he took a long drink from his coffee cup.
Sitting close to him, a sixth grade girl said, “I like to sing, too.”

Slowly, a smile began to escape from his lips. He sat up straight in the chair, pulled the guitar into his hands and sang, “Boom, boom, boom. Bang, bang, bang,” and stopped.

The silence was loud. He asked the girl who said she liked to sing, “Now, what comes next?”

She said, “I don’t know. What do you think comes next?”

He smiled and said, “Writing songs is like writing poetry. We take the verses and put them with tunes to make music. Any kind of music is good for me. It helps me hear what I think. I know I have a good poem when I can sing it.”

The girl laughed. “I never tried to sing my poetry. That would be fun.”

He strummed the strings for a minute, then he said, “I write songs for those people I like. Once I open myself to words, they start to come easily. The more I write, the more words I find. I’ve written over 1,000 songs.

I play the piano, harmonica, drums, Congos, and I am teaching myself the violin. I have fourteen guitars in my house, and each one is like a different friend. The more I play them, the more I get to know my friends.

Usually, when I start to play an instrument, I feel like I do when I pick up a pen. The words start to flow.

Look out! The Beatles are saying, “Here comes the sun.”
“Here comes the sun, do do do do
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right”

At the end of his one hour performance, he started to leave, but the young girl in front said, “Don’t go. Play one more song or three.”

He closed his eyes hard, while he thought of another one they might like. As more words escaped his mouth, his emotions emptied his soul with “Blue Suede Shoes,” “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” and “Mary, Mary.”

Then, as he stood up to go, he said, “All writers should turn their hearts on every morning with a song. It will help your writing, too. From Elvis to Eric Clapton to Jack Johnson, your heart and mind are affected by that other language called music. Find the music in your soul, and write that.”

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Campers also write about the world and how to improve it. According to an Associated Press article, “The richest 2 percent of adults still own more than half of the world’s household wealth, widening a global gap between rich and poor.” James Davies, a professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario, one of the authors, said in a report by the World Institute for Development Economics Research:

• The richest 1% of adults, mostly in Europe and the USA, owned 40% of global assets.
• The richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of assets.
• Any person who owns assets of $2,200 or more is in the top half of the world’s wealth distribution.
• Owning $500,000 of assets puts a person in the top 1%.
• Wealth in the USA averaged $144,000 per person.
• The bottom 50% of the world’s adult population owned barely 1% of the world’s wealth.

To use a title by Mary Pipher, we should use our “writing to change the world.” Let our words bring the light of understanding to our own corner of the world. Someday, our efforts and our writing might improve the world and help reduce its inequalities.

“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.” Rene Descartes