The Bridge #146
in which we write like everybody's reading
Hello
& Welcome ! The Bridge is a newsletter connecting the professional and the personal creatively across cultures and a diversity of topics, until we are not only full of ideas but also ready to take action. Thanks for joining in the conversation.
You might not read my little taglines, and you might read every single one. It’s a little quirky thing I add in there to set a tone. You get it, right?
This edition I wrote something a bit tongue in cheek. For the longest time, I put pressure on myself to write in a way that would please ALL the voices in my head, all the teachers and the scholars, the family members and friends, the critics and the “thought leaders” … and I wouldn’t get very far. Whatever I did get out, it took such energy to squeeze it out, to wring my mind for the exactly right word, I felt so judged and embarrassed before I’d even shared it with one actual reader.
Of course we can’t write for everyone. Just like we can’t please everyone with the way we live or the way we talk. We need to be ourselves. We want to be accepted. We want to create things of quality… It’s complicated, you know. We all know.
So if you (like me) want to write, then (as far as I’m concerned) write for yourself, for those you love, and for those who love you.
Something to Talk About
I’m writing a book as a series of letters to my adolescent daughter. I’m wanting to show why I believe the study of history helps us live well. I’m pouring my heart and soul into the project. Please forgive me my over-enthusiasm. 😆
Studying history (as far as I’m concerned) shouldn’t mean memorizing names and dates in preparation for a multiple choice test. 😎Studying history means being so curious about the humans that came before, we learn about their lives, their cultures, the things they did, the ways they thought. And the fascination and wonder we can feel in contemplating their lives, it has the potential to unveil sense and meaning for our own futures. We understand better our context. Why things have happened, and what led us here to begin with. Then we can imagine better what might come next!
Too often in our day and age, the distractions and such are meant to help us forget what we were doing a minute ago. Remembering what happened 30, 40, 50 years ago… that requires some serious work to have first made space in our lives to do that kind of remembering. Investing time to learn and relearn what happened 500 years ago, it’s like seeing beneath our feet to understand the ground we stand on. It’s a miracle we are here, after all. Let’s take time to appreciate it.
In the book, I illustrate how the tools of history (like critical thinking, imaginative storytelling and committed research) are useful skills to cultivate. To get really good at it is like weaving magic. ✨
And we need that magic because the narratives we’ve inherited, the stories told of how things happened in the past (the things we were taught in school, for example) — sometimes those narratives need to be questioned, or even re-written.
The past is a much messier reality than we’ve been led to believe. Yet if we can embrace the liveliness, that disorderly confusion of what happened — who was there, why it happened — then we give ourselves the chance to embrace our own lives with more kindness.
Everything appears clearer in retrospect. I want us to look closer and find the smudges on the mirror and feel the way our spirits can pass through to bygone eras (time travel) and find inspiration. What it’s meant to be human is much more interesting than we’ve been led to believe. History can show us. The creative new ways of living we might want to explore in our own lifetimes, someone somewhere has already done it before. This is validating, and liberating. We have space to try, and we have precedents we can follow.
More to share soon 😊
Something to Read
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Sybil Van Antwerp is a character woven together by debut author Virgina Evans. Evans has written many books before this one, but all were rejected by publishers. The Correspondent though has gotten on several bestseller lists and won a few awards.
It tells the story of a 70-something woman, a straight-talking career woman who has maybe seen better days but she remains committed (as she’s been all her life) to writing handwritten letters to everyone she knows.
Stubborn she might be, and open to changes she might become. The delight of the novel is that it’s written entirely in letters (and emails), so you have to read between the lines as you might do with a detective story, piecing together the clues to find a heartfelt message in curmudgeonly sauce. I highly recommend.
Something Intriguing
“Jump Up” by Elvis Costello / “Hello Goodbye” by Paul McCartney (feat Stephen Colbert, Jon Baptiste, Louis Cato, and the Great Big Joy Machine)
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is over. Being able to bring joy by making light of the news, keeping us informed from multiple points of view, this show was a gift. Grateful for all the laughter.
To end an era, Colbert and team filled the final episode with surprise. The concluding minutes were full of music. “Jump Up” is an obscure song picked out of the Costello archives. (Costello has described it as a commentary on campaign promises and election rhetoric placed within an invented landscape. Real anxieties were disguised through exaggerated and sometimes absurd language. In case you were curious.)
“Hello Goodbye” is a McCartney classic with super-simple lyrics that express an openness to life and all its meanings. Let’s take hold of that, singing along, if we can.
Jump up--hold on tight /
Can`t trust the promise or a guarantee /
’Cause the man ‘round the curve says that he’s never heard /
Of you or me
Something to Practice
Find something you love and write about it. Write me a letter. Write a friend. Write your future you. Each time you put it down, it’s like you’re gathering love — like squirrels their nuts. We’re getting ready for winter.
Take it easy, friends.
JPC