Open Heart Writing - Garbe and Gravatt

Below is the twenty-ninth in my 31 day writers series; each day I feature a different person and ask three similar questions about a person's writing process. This post features two musicians. I met both at the Concert for Epilepsy while I was in Washington, D.C.

Wil Gravatt operates Gravatt Entertainment the entertainment company who helped Chad Barth organize the benefit concert. As soon as I met Wil, I knew the production would be successful. Will is both professional and personable. I wish I had the chance to work with him more often.

Wil is also a D.C. area country singer. His band, the Wil Gravatt Band, played before Trailer Choir. I keep singing his tune Somebody's Romeo. (You can listen to a Vimeo video here.) Between sound checks I photographed him on the tenth floor at 101 Constitution Avenue. Even before I took the pictures, I knew we had some good shots. I included a couple in the slide show.

During the event, I met Janet Emma Garbe. Janet is a singer and song-writer who pours herself into her lyrics... and I am guessing, everything else she does. In 2009, Janet was nominated for three Wammie's. I photographed Janet with Wil together during the concert.

Janet is one of those acquaintances who seem to know me better than someone should, probably because she has spent much of her life learning and writing about herself. I love Garbe's three answers below, especially to the writer's block question. She contemplates how blocking love and blocking pain can be related to writer's block. In some way, that started my project more than a month ago. I had been blocking love and pain. Lastly, I think she coined the term for the next year's writers project -- Bryan Farley's Writing Quest. It sounds organic. 

I hope I see both of them before next year.

Gravatt and Garbe - Images by bryan farley

The poet's aswer's follow. To hear her voice, visit her website and listen to some clips of her music. 

1. Why do you write?
As a kid, I adapted to very stressful or traumatic situations by entertaining folks by talking, being funny, disarming, whatever it took. I became the Chameleon with the "Gift" of Gab. Talking became a survival mechanism. It was not designed, in my young experience, to allow me to express myself or my feelings. It was a tool that was used to ward off danger, and, very often, to camouflage fear. As I grew into and adult, I became painfully aware of this "gift", but had learned at an early age that a few shots of something strong and some comic relief, "rescue monologue" (when trapped with people who had nothing to say or who had adapted to their own fears by drifting into a lifetime of anxious QUIET loneliness) or even self deprecating chatter, could at least partly camouflage growing self loathing.

In my thirties, my marriage began to suffer and I found that I was easily made to feel cornered and confused the moment voices became sharp or were raised in debate or argument. I found it harder and harder to make sense of conflict with spoken words, or to feel capable of expressing anything that made sense or was understood. Spoken word, the raft that had rescued me from the sharp rocks and threatening rapids of my dysfunctional family life as a child, was no longer proving a life preserver for me into adulthood. In fact, I felt I was being flung into the river and could not catch my breath.

Anyone who has ever written or expressed anything worthy of experiencing knows that perception is what comes before expression. Sometimes we only have time and energy to perceive what threatens us so that we may use our energy to preserve ourselves...to survive. We perceive what we allow ourselves to perceive. As a youngster who perceived danger all around, I filtered what I heard and saw and listened to. That "skill" proved less than useful in development of "listening" skills over time, and it has required effort to relearn to "listen" more openly and to more than just what is perceived as threatening. Great writers are great "perceivers" of the human condition and/or of nature. I was blessed with substantial intelligence, and keen senses beyond simple hearing. But developing into a more skilled and less fearful listener has proved a worthy challenge, and one I will continue to develop all my days.

I had always written around my darkest or most profound, life changing moments. I had tried this sort of silent "speak", this way out of what was inside without anyone hearing me get out. There was something comfortably anonymous and safe about getting the thoughts, the feelings, the dread, or the hope out of me and into the light without anyone being able to challenge or contradict me on the spot or convince me that what I thought, felt, or saw was irrelevant, ridiculous, stupid or impossible. Somewhere along the way, it started to make it's way onto paper without my permission or concerted effort. Once or twice along the way, my writing made it into the hands and eyes of a kindred spirit, and connections were born.

Music was my "drug" of choice from and early age, and even more so when I abandoned mood altering substances to try to avoid certain institutions, insanity or death. Music became my savior. How ironic it was that the first time I lifted my VOICE, the same voice that hated itself for the noise it made...once I lifted it in song, whether with my own vulnerably scribed lyrics or those bravely spilled by someone else, I found a connection with what I now believe to be God.

Now, in music, my secret, my writing, my escape, has found a partner in crime! What better way to fly away than on the wings of a song! The release is there for me now. But make no mistake, it can be a painful process...a stretch of sorts...to put my guts to paper, my insides, my visions and secrets and hopes...the same ones that I had once felt so exposed and vulnerable for...to choose to lay them out in the open. And as crazy as it sounds, the key for me now is not only to put the words to paper, to find them a home in a melody, but then to stand, emotionally naked, in front of friends and strangers, lovers and haters, and SING them. "SING". The word alone seems an impossibility to me, still. I have been singing my songs on stages everywhere for almost 12 years, and I still cannot believe the miracle in that. I am a "songwriter". A songwriter. The only voices I could hear in my darkest hours were those of songwriters. They were the "Gods" to me. God still speaks to me through them. Clearly. Acutely. Cuts through. Punches me in the sternum with a minor chord and a confession. And every time I lift my voice and sing the written word, it is nothing short of my prayer.

2. What motivates or inspires you?
Everything. All is useful. Loss. Gain. Sadness. Joy. Heartbreak. Joy. Belly laughter. Hope. Despair. Depression. Darkness. Light. Balance. Contrast. Breakage. Healing. Children. Elderly. Bored people. Nature. My dog's unconditional love. My children's love. My children's hatred. Anger. Forgiveness. Death. Birth. Photos. Visions. Love. Empathy. Compassion. Giving. Taking. Starting. Stopping. Letting go. Holding on too tightly. Looking back. Looking forward. Living in the Moment. Tears. Salt. Oceans. Distance. Rage. Sorrow. Grief. Exhaustion. Failure. Success. Rain. Floods. Sunshine. Clouds. Storms. Farms. Eyes. Windows. Wood. Stone. Iron. Grass. Leather. Horses. Kites. Sky. Earth. Color. Sepia. Black and White. Do you have all day? A year or two? A lifetime?

3 How do you get past writer's block?
Sometimes I don't. For a while. Sometimes I have to accept that I am drained for now. That I gave it all. Sometimes, just when I've given up, accepted I am no writer, the words come. They breathe. They move. They ask to be free. They make it to paper. Sometimes I am..um.. lazy. I refuse to let them out. I promise I'll remember them and let them out later. I forget them. They hate me for that. But they get over it. Sometimes someone asks a question and the answers come. And they surprise me completely. They were in there all along, but they surprise me. Sometimes resentment finally makes it way to the surface. Other times Love trumps all and pure joy floods onto paper. Those are not always the most compelling pieces. Sometimes the pain is what resonates. With others. Humans, I mean. Sometimes pain is what we want. Sometimes pain is ALL we want. So we let the minor chords knock the breath out of us and we inhale words of despair. But then sometimes we can only dance. Sometimes words are simply overrated, even on paper. But sometimes, they connect us. Writer's block feels fatal sometimes, just like when we block love, or the sun. But sometimes "writer's block" is nothing more than the place we go to allow ourselves to discover what we know that calls (or cries) out to be written.

Links:Wil's Band: (that is Wil, not Will Gravatt) - Wil Gravatt Band
Gravatt Entertainment- Producers of a variety of live entertainment, including the Gaylord Inaugural Ball

Janet Emma Garbe - Washington Area Recording Artist

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