Dialogue with Persons

Ira Progoff, the father of modern journaling, cited six main types of dialogues in his groundbreaking volume, "Intensive Journal Workshop," published in 1966. Dialogue with Persons is one of these six main types.

By a dialogue, I mean choosing a dialogue partner and writing back and forth between yourself and your "partner." In a Dialogue with Persons, your dialogue could be with a person of the past, present or future, a person living, passed on or not yet born. And you don't need to know the person to have a dialogue. This is not channeling or any other hocus-pocus, but a way for you to cut through preconceived notions to what you may discover is the deeper truth about a person, persons and especially about yourself. Think of it as a letter that can't be delivered, but somehow it is, and somehow you get a letter in return.

For example, you might choose to dialogue with a person you really admire, who may possibly serve as a role model for you, and perhaps you have never had the opportunity to meet. You may initially feel that you can never measure up to the talent or accomplishment of this person. But through your dialogue, you may discover that your partner tells you how hard he or she had to work, how long of a wait and how high of a climb it took to leave an impression. Perhaps it really did. Perhaps it really didn't. But this dialogue may at best give you insight into what you feel you must do yourself to progress to the next level of your life and your personhood!

Keep a Da Vinci Notebook

In today's world, with nearly unlimited access to information and our culture's tendency to multitask, we might consider ourselves a Renaissance society. We aren't interested in just one or two things, but many. The original Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci, kept a journal or notebook with him at all times in which he jotted down ideas, impressions, and observations, as well as recording:
• jokes
• fables
• observations and thoughts of scholars he admired
• personal financial records
• letters
• reflections on domestic problems
• philosophical musings and predictions
• plans for inventions
• treatises on anatomy, botany, geology, flight, water, and painting

Our busy lives and job responsibilities drive us into
––hard conclusions
––measurable results
On the other hand, the exploratory, free-flowing, unfinished, non-judgmental practice of keeping a da Vincian notebook fosters freedom of thought and expansion of perspective.

Dialogue with Creative Work

I have a day job, but I don't necessarily want to dialogue with it. I may argue with it a good portion of the eight hours I punch in, but I have other avocations that make more appealing partners. One is musical theater writing. Besides actual dialoging with a composer/collaborator, which is the most satisfying, my journal serves as an ideal stage to work out the answers to what drives the piece in the first place.

Some of the questions I pose consist of "What does the main character want?" and "What is the musical about?" When I ask what it's about, I don't mean the plot. The plot is what happens, scene by scene. Instead, I mean what deeper meaning is the piece trying to bring out? If it's about belonging, does the character discover that he or she can belong or that it may be impossible to really belong. If it's about connection, what might a character do to continually reinforce disconnection before finding a path to connecting with other people.

If working on a play or musical, you might have a journaled dialogue with your character asking directly what he or she wants, believes, avoids or regrets. You may not only find out your answer, but also find ways to smooth any bumpy parts of the script your characters trip on or redirect their steps when they wander away from where they and your piece are ultimately headed. [Intensive Journal Workshop][Ira Progoff]

Write a Letter That Can't Be Delivered

In my journal writing workshops, I guide participants in writing "Letters That Can't Be Delivered." A letter might be written to a close friend or relative who recently passed away, to a favorite neighborhood tree, to an ongoing illness or even to a bout of blocked creativity. We can't expect an answer. Or can we? Every good conversation isn't a one-way experience. The best part of the dialogue is, indeed, the answer that comes back. And of course, the answer doesn't really come from the loved one, or the tree, or the illness, but from deep inside ourselves. And what we have to reveal to ourselves is often surprising.

Future of Food

Move over Brangelina. The bigger news about who is in bed with whom concerns Monsanto and the U.S. government. You can get the gritty details in the documentary "The Future of Food," an eye-opening, not-to-be-missed expose on genetically-engineered agriculture and government subsidies on par with, if not more in depth than, a Michael Moore film. Saw it last night at Facets Multimedia during the Chicago Humanities Festival on The Climate of Concern. The Future of Food ran double feature with an excellent German film with no dialogue called "Our Daily Bread," a behind-the-scenes look into the modern means by which we get our beef, chicken, pork, olives, salt, and greenhouse vegetables, a film which some have compared with "Koyannasquatsi." It was one of the most dramatic, thought-provoking evenings I have spent in recent history. I highly recommend both films, particularly the former.

The Future of Food film cites that 75 percent of farmers of the world use seed from the previous harvest for next season's planting. According to Monsanto, farmers that do the same with its patented corn, wheat, soy, canola or cotton face stiff fees and civil suits. Even if the gene gets accidentially cross-bred with a farmer's standard crops, the farmer is liable. Mexicans are terrified of finding their diverse array of native corn species fiddled with and their culture destroyed through the threat of a mono-crop Franken-species. Will the family farmer soon be in debt to do serfdom to the chemical lord of their estate? Is this the 21st or the 13th Century?

What does the future hold? Technology is in the works to perfect so-called "suicide seeds" that produce one crop and do not reproduce. Also on the horizon, seeds that do not geminate unless you buy and spray them with a chemical from the same manufacturer who sold you the seeds. So much for solving world hunger through bio-technology.

Wordswimmer

The web is a place for journal writers to dive in and make creative connections. You might like to check out Wordswimmer, a blog by Bruce Black, who uses water and swimming analogies in his posts about the writing process to inform and amuse web surfers. When there, also discover links to myriad other writing sites, writers and editors blogging, book blogs and author websites.

Check out the post called "Surfing on the Edge" which gives a nod to this site.

Online Journal Writing Resources

Besides Journal Writing Tips with a Twist, discover other excellent websites and blogs floating out there in the cyperspace blogosphere.

Check out websites such as Annette Lamb's The Topic: Journal Writing and Journal for You, or blogs such as Heather Goldsmith's A Creative Journal.

These sites underscore the great notion that journaling and creative writing ideas can come from everywhere -- unusual visuals -- lists -- overheard conversations -- letters that either can't be answered or are unlikely to be delivered -- life's questions -- wishes, lies and dreams.