Feature in Angle Magazine

I'm currently living and working in Ulsan, South Korea. I've been able to connect and share my autoethnographic writing and poetry with other artists from Ulsan, Daegu and Seoul. I've just featured in Angle Magazine. Cima Bar (in Ulsan) will be hosting it's next Cypher Open Mic session on the 8th October and I will feature as the main poet for the evening. You can find the link to the article here: Marcia Peschke Feature in Angle Magazine

Don't drown in your tears babe

The universe is my friend.  I remember this each time I feel I'm in a terrible position and unable to move forward.  Should I decide to focus on finding my treasure, I will continue on a path where experiencing some not so subtle pains is a part of the process.  The process means looking at the difficult experiences and deciding who you are after that.  I had a wonderful weekend recently, meditating, observing the plant near the balcony window and marveling at the lines and patterns on each leaf.  I was eager after this to notice and pick up on all kinds of shapes and patterns in nature.  I observed heart shaped stones I picked up on the beach and thought how the Universe might be sending me some love each time I visit the ocean and come across heart shaped stones.  Your heart, it tells me, is something you've also got to nurture.  You cant bury it under your work all the time, it'll feel sore under all that weight.  Maybe I should live at the beach, so that I can breathe in bliss and be delighted with every stone I pick up.  Maybe I should also pay a little more attention to the heart inside so that it can also drift freely swimming in an endless sea of happiness.  I like this feeling, I think the heart shaped stones are all little pieces of me. 

Passing it on...Veronika Decides to Die

The Red String theory suggests that those destined to meet are connected to each other by an invisible cord which can stretch or tangle but never break.  The television show Touch, which ran for two seasons in the US, based a part of its premise on this wonderful thought and like another short lived show, the beloved Firefly, holds a special place in my heart.

Created by Kiefer Sutherland, who also stars, the storyline centers around a fascinating eleven-year old boy, Jake Bohm, who uses numbers to communicate and see patterns of events.  In the pilot episode, a passenger loses his phone in an airport, a rather traumatizing experience for him as the phone contains pictures of his deceased daughter.  The phone travels from the airport across continents, connecting individuals, some lost and some in need of hope.  In what could have been an altogether tragic event, the phone travels across the globe playing out that idea of interconnectedness. 

I loved this idea and wanted to be able to cross the paths of different people and their experiences.  A smart phone isn't very practical for me so I had to think of something else.  What is it that could connect and speak to the hearts of others? My first blog post hints at my love for writer Paulo Coelho's work by mentioning a book which had an astounding impact on my life.  Veronika Decides to Die spoke to the best of me, to that part of me that wants to find my treasure or my sword.  I have an idea...I want this book to travel like the phone did.  I'd like it to find those who are in need of hope and in search of their travels.  Perhaps this is the start of an idea I'd like to nurture...a book I need to pass on, a book that needs to drift from soul to soul, each time having thoughts placed into it.  Each new soul finding their hopes within and leaving their thoughts behind for others to read.  And then I would like this book to come back to me, to see all the souls its has drifted to and to feel the hope in finding one's treasure...the universe will conspire to help me find my treasure...

The Writer

During my holiday in the Eastern Cape I decided to put down my title of desperate writer (a feeling I've been experiencing recently with my MA dissertation) and allow myself to find a fresh perspective on writing.  I am eager to engage in the beautiful feelings of spoken word poetry and the other forms that creative writing bring, but also have to get on to completing the theoretical component of my dissertation. 

I was fortunate enough to find a book titled Research Writing (2007) by Cecile Badenhorst and it has surpassed my expectations of pretentious academic discourse to open up myself as the reader to a world of possibilities in writing.  In my creative writing I often experience bursts of energy and confidence, much like having a dream waking up and quickly writing down all the details before they disappear.  Academic writing however demands more consistency and the ability to conceptualise something worth the academic community's time.  I hit page 11 of the book and had to rethink my approach to engaging with and writing my dissertation.  Lets just say I am now writing on coloured paper with funky gel coloured pens.  Never has a book gotten me more excited about the power of a purple pen! I'm on an amazing journey as a writer, meeting myself, challenging where I stand with my research and changing my perspective on how enjoyable my research could actually be.  I've completed a number of exercises in the book and the first one I did asked me to consider what kind of a writer I believe myself to be.  Below is the paragraph I wrote describing me as a writer:

THE WRITER

I appear to be quiet, contemplative and deeply thoughtful on the outside and have a million screaming ideas on the inside.  I have bouts, or what I will playfully refer to as 'flouts' (for their random nature) of happiness, grand ideas and images that play in my mind.  I then experience doubt, a scrambling in thoughts and then a flatness in energy and creativity.  I regard myself as an all kinds of writer.  Struggling, uninterested and unmotivated.  But among all those crushing words there lies some determination and potential joy.  I'm a desperate writer, but when I can enter the same state I experience in my dreams the anxiety becomes a thought I don't remember.  I'd like to meet myself in my writing rather than just letting the pen dance on paper.  Let me write what I like.

What you do to be

I've walked the same route to work for almost two years and have memorized many other routes to the shops, flea markets and taxi ranks.  My familiarity with the route means I have switched off, thinking mostly about negotiating traffic and people moving at the same pace as I am.  That feeling of sameness begins to creep into your life and you're eventually walking it.  I feel like Josh Radnor's character, Jesse, in the film Liberal Arts (2012) who feels time passing at what must be a painfully slow pace, with New York city and its people blending into concrete slabs.  That is until an encounter with Zebby, played by Elisabeth Olsen (a student at the university he once attended), who allows him to appreciate his passage into new areas of life, where we age, we cry and we do more than just simply breath while we trudge from one day to the next. Through Zebby, Jesse is introduced to Beethoven and  various other writers of glorious music and grows to love opera music.

Walks through New York City for Jesse become more magical with opera playing as the soundtrack to his encounters with sidewalks and people who appear to be more beautiful and more welcoming then they did before.  I do this on my walks too.  I walk with music filtering through my mind.  Some music makes me feel more adventurous on my 'sameness' walks and there are certain songs which slow down the rushing that all walkers become accustomed to.  I realize that we don't have to keep walking the same routes.  In Liberal Arts, Richard Jenkin's character Professor Peter Hoberg suggests that if we become trapped in places of sameness and redundant patterns we become prisoners.  When we are fearful of changing our routes or being in a space other than what we are accustomed to we retreat as prisoners walking the same path everyday.  This blog is an acceptance of meeting different paths, making all routes interesting and peaking behind doors just a little bit...even if the prospect of change or a different path appearing may seem frightening at first.

The First Steps...

This year I experienced a bit of a battle with completing and successfully submitting a proposal for my Masters thesis in Drama and Performance Studies.  After a few struggles with confidence in writing and honing my study into a specific areas with direction, my work was approved.  Key to this experience was allowing myself to remember what sparked my initial interest in that area of research.  In the thrill of starting a new project we want to routinize and plan to the point where we can find no creative paths into what we're trying to develop.  Too much routine deflates the creative spirit.    

I have this wild dream that I am am going to commit to completing the Santiago de Compostela Pilgrimage.

 I will do the necessary physical preparation and I will pack lightly, but I will remember that it is as much a mental walk as it is a physical walk.  This is just one of the possibilities I'd like to explore with Driftwood Dreamer.  Through this blog I want to write about experiences and encounters through reviews of films, books and live performances; of adventures in my own backyard and places outside of my doorstep, and to offer my perspective on social and current issues.  One of the most important elements of this blog is my creative writing specifically with what I call my monopoems, very close to spoken word, a form I'm falling deeply for especially after coming across...

 Button Poetry

http://buttonpoetry.com/ 

 Hollie McNish

http://holliemcnish.com/ 

Shane Koyczan

http://www.shanekoyczan.com/ 

Mark Grist

http://markgrist.com/

Will I develop any business ventures out of this experience? That would be an exciting direction to step into.  I am happy to be presented with a few mysteries along the way.  I hope it will continue to take me to very creative paths.  This blog is my creative walk.