Random Meaningless Cubist Unblocking Post

'The Poet' - Pablo Picasso

'Oh, 500 channels and nothing on....' D'you ever get that feeling where there are so many things to do, so many thoughts to think, so many ideas to write about, that you can't possibly settle yourself to sit down to do just one???!

There are all these ideas floating around in my head like dust-motes right now, but until they're lit by a passing sunbeam (focus/inspiration/realisation/eureka/aha/yes), they'll just stay there as random meaningless entities. 

That's where I'm at at the minute. Synapses flaring, but nothing going to press. Yada, yada, yada/nada, nada, nada. I've been flirting with writing ideas for the last hour or so, but none gaining any worth in weight over the other. But I have to write something, so here it is - a nonsensical blabber about this existential grey area of writing (or any kind of creating - or doing - for that manner.)

I feel like a Cubist painting, a Picasso to be exact, all jagged pieces all over the place. (See aside and above). My blog posts are usually neat and themed and organised, so I thought I'd now chance a random roulette type of post, because that's all I got folks at the mo. And because today feels like a rock day, as Ernest Hemingway so bluntly put it: "Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly: sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges."

So here I go with the blasting. This blog set out to be mostly about thoughts on writing, so here's some I've been having. (Granted, written not today, but somewhat relevant I think - pardon my opportunism.)

This reflection would come in pretty handy at a writing group equivalent to AA; or as a defence to an editor when deadlines are passed; or as a definition of a writer's job description; or as a balm to calm the neurotic babblings of the inner writer self while in block or disillusion mode; or as a justification of the see-saw writing curse; or an explanation for that numbed zone, the Bermuda triangle of the mind so to speak (where I am now, latitudes, longitudes I no longer can see.)

***
Ah-hem...Here goes:

I am a reluctant/rampant writer. Schizophrenic, even. Meaning, I do and I don’t. Write that is. To write or not to write.? To be or not to be? Double-sided double-edged sword dilemma. 

Writer and non-writer. Pick up a pen, put it down. Jekyll, Hyde. Do, don’t.  Do or die. One side doesn’t know the other. Me and my doppelganger self. Lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) 

Binge, block - that’s my days. Stoicous, sober. From verbose to vacant. Overflowing to overwhelmed. Motor-mouth to mute. Raving random writer. Sometimes it’s white page wilderness. Big blank block. The weight of the world hanging over my words. Arctic cold isolation. Icy death. The page is too white; I could get lost there. 

Others, blessed white. Blessed blank, clean slate. The world hanging in my words. Arctic pristine landscape. Glittering ice-rink for show-stopping back-flips. I want to stun, shock. Fly free, trapeze through words.  Arctic wide open possibility. The page is so white; I could get found here.

I write to live, I live to write. Sometimes I think I have it. (The gift.) The tongue of flame, rain of words, lilt of language. The words write themselves, they write me. I write and feel right. I’m in a meadow of possibilities, blue skies, green daisy smiles, horizon inked with thousands of tonnes of pages. I’m the little mermaid, voice found, singing the song of myself. I’m every fairytale’s end. Sparking. Alive, alight. The world was blank; now my words colour it Impressionado style. 

And then, sometimes, I don’t. Sometimes it is transient, comes out of the elusive ether, like a snow-storm; settles, then melts away. Sloppy words and wishy-washy sentences. Dark, dank depths of winter quiet.

I can’t write, I can write. Angel of inspiration battles the devil of delusion and I shoulder the strife. The words stick, stutter, clog up the passages of thought and trapped, fester. They want out but I can’t let them. I can’t do them proud, will only sell them out. They fall to stick-image words, scrawl, and crawl away. I feel like a toddler muffled by a language I don‘t know. Tongue-tied-cotton-wool-stuffed-mouth silence. I’m deaf, dumb, blinded by the script of silence. I don’t write for a while and things feel numb. Bland. Like I’m colour-blind. Word-weary makes me world-weary. (Yawn).


Words come and go. They’re my allies, enemies. I live in words, I love words, I cower before their might. I listen carefully for them. Feel them float up from some hallowed place. Unknown portal. But first I have to put my hands to my ears and listen. Quiet the static. Quell the voices. Remember how to tell a story. Remember how to tell the story. 

I collect stories like a magpie, shiny silver fragments of life. I sift through days for the gold of poems. Little shavings of meaning I carve carefully into words. Putting them together is the hard part. So I stash them away. Until they grow. Grow up, grow old, stray away. Fall through my fingers like sand, unwrapped, untold. Sometimes I feel brave enough to write them, sometimes I don’t. I get rusty, out  of practice, afraid to get on the saddle again incase I fall off, fall to earth, break a leg, a wing, dream. 

So much to say. So much to tell. So many ways through the snow. Why can’t I write right? Is there a right way to write? The way is lonely, cold. The way is bright. Watch the pen shake in my hand. Watch it saunter, soar. Go-getter, then gone. Bound in words, blinded by words. I’m up, I’m down, written, un-written, black, white, blank.

I write and don’t write. Am and aren’t. Juxtaposing joker. Ambivalent anti-self, schizophrenic split-self scourge. I pop pills of placebo poetics, drink inspiration as a tonic, while I wait for the lightning strike. From depth of shadows to buoyancy of light.

But in the end, epilogue, last word honour, I am nothing without my verbal skin. Shed, re-grow, shed and grow again. I carry my word-world around as a satellite, seeing lamp, moon by my side; sometimes light, sometimes dark, full, fingernail-thin, but there, nonetheless. Always there. I feel it pull the tides of my mind. Keeping its quiet orbit. Keeping me in orbit. Writing keeping me right.

***

Until the next right time, 

~ Siobhán.

How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Poems...

Love, love, love. The most written about subject in poetry since poet first put quill to paper! Since it's Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share a few love poems.

For those of you who aren't familiar with poetry, love poems aren't all cheesy. There's a lot more to them than 'roses are red, violets are blue....' squabble.

From classic Shakespeare - the infamous rhyming couplets of Romeo and Juliet and his 150+ infatuation sonnets - to the more traditional poems that worshipped the beloved from afar, to the besotted unrequited romance of Yeats played out in his oeuvre, to the more modern quirky lyrics dealing with love in all its modern guises, you'll find all kinds of  poems written through the ages to suit every elation, emotion, heartache, break and high of this thing we call Love.

I've just picked a few here from Penguin's Poems for Love, a great collection that chronicles love through the decades in all its forms and expressions. In the introduction, the editor explains: When we try to say exactly how we love someone, it's difficult to sum it up. Our feelings can be so powerful, and so personal to us, that we struggle to put them into words. But that's where poetry can help - for if one of the conditions of being in love is feeling somewhat lost for words, then perhaps one of the conditions of being a poet in love is a belief that the right words can and must be found.

Here are some of what I think are the 'right words' found by poets and beloved by masses.  Enjoy. (And please feel free to share/recommend your favourite love poems, I'd love to hear - there are so many out there!)

Happy Valentine's Day, 

~ Siobhán.

 

From the superlative and famous:  

How Do I Love Thee - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with a passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

To the classic definition: 

Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

To the original, modern, witty and weird:

Valentine - Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart. 

I give you an onion. 

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. 

It promises light 

like the careful undressing of love

Here.  

It will blind you with tears  

like a lover. 

It will make your reflection 

a wobbling photo of grief. 

I am trying to be truthful. 

Not a cute card or a kissogram. 

I give you an onion. 

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, 

possessive and faithful 

as we are, 

for as long as we are. 

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring, 

if you like. 

Lethal. 

Its scent will cling to your fingers, 

cling to your knife. 

And finally, truly, madly, deeply, beautifully:

i carry your heart with me - EE Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you 

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

A Romantic's Creed

'We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.' - Oscar Wilde

'The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.' 

As Valentine's day approaches, I'm beginning to wonder what exactly it means to be a romantic  - or Romantic, should I say.

I'm a romantic by nature, by default. Always have been, always will be. And I'm not just talking about romance. I'm talking about being a Romantic, a believer in beauty, dreams and ideals as well as just love. A believer in being devoted to that what moves us, discovering the extraordinary in the ordinary, seeking the best possible versions of ourselves and our world and of following the heart first and foremost in all endeavours of life. It's an entire way of life, a way of thinking and acting, feeling and appreciating, not some misused lovelorn label. 

The dictionary defines a 'Romantic' as being one who is 'marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious or idealized.'  Also as 'imbued with or dominated by idealism, characterized by a preoccupation with love, a quality or spirit in thought, expression or action, and above all, an emphasis on the imagination and emotions.' It's all about the imagination and emotions, their power, their importance in creating and marking our lives.


How typical and trivial of the realists to belittle us as 'hopeless romantics,' soft-hearted saccharine suckers who live for candlelit dinners and flowers! Rather, being a 'Romantic' is about having a view of and whole-hearted approach to life that is not cynical, not hardened, not resigned to reality. It's about being committed to the highest pursuits of the heart: beauty, truth and goodness, in all aspects of life, not just love. As Romantic poet Keats remarked: 'beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.' 

But in today's world, Romantics are dismissed as naive, babbling, sentimental fools.  A world where materialism, cynicism and oh-so-boring practicality reigns, where it's deemed 'foolish' to pursue the heart's prerogatives over the head's. I've had a lot of unpleasant run-ins with realists in which I try to defend my passionate principles against their steam-roller sense of reason. It really gets me down how they dismiss anything other than what 'makes sense', what logically adds up. What does their life add up to then? Numbers and rules and routines and dreams quarantined to the realm of ridiculous, locked and shut away. Where's the fun in that!

Life is for dreaming and imagining and creating and ultimately living; for experiencing not tut-tutting. We only get to live once, why shouldn't we get carried away with it all? we Romantics sing, swirling notions like ribbons around our world, decorating days with dreams and ordinary with a tapestry of wonder and meaning. The realist's creed goes something along the lines of: savings - check, routine - check, work, work, work - check, mortgage - check, marriage (or attainment of suitable partner for society's sake) - check, duties completed - check, checklists - check, staying within the box - check. It's all have tos and shoulds, nos and nots; not curious maybes and wishes and whimsy, no dreaming, indulging, affirming, no passionate displays of anything,  no smelling the roses, no even noticing the roses, well, because face it - what's the point of that? (Readers, here's where I throw my arms up in protest - ahhhhh!)  

Instead of looking at the stars, their eyes are on the ground and they expect everyone, including Romantic souls to be the same, to give in to this drab version living. To give up our swooning souls for a luke-warm lacklustre existence. Well, never! 

We won't give up.  Romantics are tough, not stereotyped softies. Just look  at the Romantic movement in literature, music and art in the late C18th century. Romanticism, as it was known,  was characterized by a heightened interest in nature,  an emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination. It was a marked departure from the strict and confining attitudes and forms of classicism, and most of all, it represented rebellion against established social rules and conventions.   This can be seen most vehemently in French Romantic painter Delacroix's famous painting Liberty Leading the People. This painting was more to do with the spirit of rebellion and freedom of ideals than head-in-the-clouds daydreaming.  Vive la liberté is definitely a slogan of a Romantic if you ask me! (As is an affinity with the arts, needless to say.)

The Romantics held the imagination in the highest regard, and with it, emotions and the Self as a whole. It was the first time in literature that the individual began to take central focus and the imagination was revered. The literary Romantic movement began with the great Wordsworth, Coleridge, visionary metaphysical poet Blake and then bad-boy rebel Byron. Their poetry focused on nature and the great powerful spectrum of the imagination. Wordsworth encouraged us to 'fill our paper with the breathing of our hearts' and learn from nature, not the materialistic world which 'laid waste to our powers.' A new climate in the arts was engendered by Romanticism, one which led to avant-garde and bohemia and art for art's sake and being different and revelling in that difference and freedom of expression and living for the moment and smelling the roses, phew!

A Romantic Enters the World

But in this world, Romantics are backbitten at every corner by the snarling hordes of cynics and realists. (Like in the picture here, a classic by Richard Stine) Why do these people feel that they're always right and their opinions the right ones, the only ones? Who bare their teeth 'all the better to eat you with my dear' at every turn, huffing and puffing and trying to blow our big beautiful house down with all their cribbing and sniping. I've been looked over caustically by cynical peering eyes, my dreams dashed by their dismissiveness and irate sense of reality - but, oh no, in the real world, that would never happen! But I know better. Because I believe in better.

See, what exactly constitutes the real world? Is the real world not as how each individual sees it, 'if you can, you can and if you can't, you can't'? One of my favourite quotes is from Ayn Rand's novel 'Atlas Shrugged' which talks about this illusion of the real world: 'The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.' The real world is what we see as real. Einsten once said that reality is an illusion, and Picasso that 'everything you can imagine is real,' so it figures that we create our own realities. Life is a blank slate and it's up to us to fill it. If it's black-and-white or grey, linear and logical, so be it. But if it's multi-coloured and shining and flowery and starry, then even better. How dare others criticise it? It is as much as real to us as theirs is to them. But more than that, it's better. Maybe they're just jealous.

Romantics don't give in to these cynical predispositions though. We keep smiling, keep smelling the roses. It's not that we're ignorant of the rain and the practical must-dos and all the bad stuff that goes on, but rather, we choose to rise above it, to assign more importance and energy to the good things in life, to the wide open world of dreams and imagination and all the possibilities it offers, over the boundaries and restrictions of reality's iron fist, to what really makes life worthwhile. We live by possibilities, not restrictions; hope, not doubt; faith not fear. We don't settle for indifference, because we know there's real treasure out there to be found. We push the boundaries; we know rules and routines are not the be all and end all, that there is something beyond. We choose to believe in this great big beautiful beyond and navigate towards it, pinning our hearts to our sleeves and setting sail on a wish and dream, a wink and a smile ;)

Granted, maybe it's a bad thing to be a romantic,  a starry-eyed sentimental focused solely on love and its ideal. But to be a Romantic -  is quite an accomplishment. How lucky to be endowed with a love and appreciation of all the wonderful things the world has to offer (love included) and  having the dedication to honour and pursue them and the freedom of mind and heart to unabashedly express and embrace them.

I'm proud to be a Romantic. And I'll defend my grounds - whimsical or no - passionately, courageously, infinitely.


with my heart still furiously beating, 


~ Siobhán.


'Late Fragment' - Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

'Gray Room' ~ Wallace Stevens 

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

February Fervour

'Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.' - Rilke

'The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring'.  ~Bern Williams

Today is the first official day of Spring, yay! And to celebrate its energy (lots of green, blue, and sunny energy), I'm going to dedicate a post to it.

Today, here in Ireland it's St Brigid's day, one of our patron saints. It's also Imbolc, the first of the four Celtic celebrations of the year. Today is a day for celebrating the first signs of Spring and today there were many: golden sunshine, big blue sky, daffodil shoots appearing, and now, a beautiful amber-warm and blue-cool dusk. And of course, that buoyant fizzing energy of Spring ahead.

In T.S. Eliot's groundbreaking poem 'The Wasteland,' he begins with stating that 'April is the cruellest month/breeding lilacs out of the dead land', but somehow, I always think of February as a lilac-coloured month, before all the greening ahead. Like the colour of a bud before blooming. Or crocuses. It's also supposed to be the month for clearing out before the  growth of the months ahead. A breather if you like, between the darkness of winter and the fresh green hands of spring. 

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Roll on the greening!

~ Siobhán
 

And some Spring poems. The first by American poet Carl Sandburg, whose dreamy mystical renditions of nature sing through his poems. (To read more on him, click  here)
And Irish poet, Paula Meehan, whose homage to the transformation of Spring in 'Seed', both within and without, is lyrically and profoundly affecting. (To read more on her, click here)

'The Wind Sings Welcome in Early Spring' ~ Carl Sandburg

The grip of the ice is gone now.
The silvers chase purple.
The purples tag silver.
They let out their runners

Here where summer says to the lilies:
“Wish and be wistful,
Circle this wind-hunted, wind-sung water.”

Come along always, come along now.
You for me, kiss me, pull me by the ear.
Push me along with the wind push.
Sing like the whinnying wind.
Sing like the hustling obstreperous wind.

Have you ever seen deeper purple …
this in my wild wind fingers?
Could you have more fun with a pony or a goat?
Have you seen such flicking heels before,
Silver jig heels on the purple sky rim?
Come along always, come along now.

 Seed ~ Paula Meehan

The first warm day of spring
and I step out into the garden from the gloom
of a house where hope had died
to tally the storm damage, to seek what may
have survived. And finding some forgotten
lupins I'd sown from seed last autumn
holding in their fingers a raindrop each
like a peace offering, or a promise,
I am suddenly grateful and would
offer a prayer if I believed in God.
But not believing, I bless the power of seed,
its casual, useless persistence,
and bless the power of sun,
its conspiracy with the underground,
and thank my stars the winter's ended.

Freelance Writing: What Is It Exactly?

 

Freelance writer. Has a ring to it, doesn't it? Freelance loops around the tongue and finishes in a high-kick hi-ya! But what exactly is a freelance writer many people would ask? 

So here goes. An explanation as much for myself as anyone else. If freelance writing were an element, it'd be air. If it were a colour, it'd be steely pencil grey, sometimes dull, sometimes shimmering silver. It's the complete opposite of a static fixed routine job. It has no boundaries, no timetables, no bosses. It's all on you, the freelancer, the free launcher, sometimes freeloader, the free minded to go out and make your (inked) mark on the world. 

Vaulting. That's the first word that comes to mind to describe the process of freelancing. Pole vaulting to be exact. (Yes, pole vaulting.) Being a freelance writer is like being a pole vaulter. A highly skilled profession that requires poise, balance, strength and timing, skill, showmanship and flair. Just like the practical jump, there's the leap of faith involved too. You must believe to succeed. 

Arch yourself to the work required, bend and flex and tilt and turn and swivel, all in the aim of finishing triumphantly, achieving what others deem as the impossible. Indeed, getting work is like going through the motions of a pole vault; it requires all kinds of strenuous skilled manoeuvres, application and much whizzing through air until you're over the hurdle of publication and into print. As a freelancer, you must be flexible and willing to push yourself forward; forward with clenched muscles and a whole grinding of spirit. In other words, it's all up to you. 

Pole-vaulters, like all athletes, are dedicated, as are freelancers. There's a thin line between a  freelancer slacker and a failure.  Also, you need to have vaulting ambition to do this. Shakespeare enthusiasts might recall Macbeth's tragic flaw of 'vaulting ambition', an ambition that threw him so hard up and over the lines of rank, he fell into murderous ways. You need to be made of stern stuff to take every knock on the chin, every rejection in your path and move on over it. You need to be able to spur yourself on, to want to get over that bar, that fixed mark. To harness your desire and turn imagining into momentum. And especially, to not let others, those on the ground, hold you back, knock your stride, throw you off.

What is at the heart of freelancing? Striking out on your own of course. With a pole -pen  -as your only prop, support, supplies. You must make the most of what you have to offer. Vault yourself out there onto the heaving writer's market, the podium where everyone is watching, reading. You must rely on yourself only, no one else, especially readers, critics, comments.  You must spur yourself on. Self-motivate. The equivalent to lifting your whole upper body weight up and over that pole.  Freelancers are lone, solitary creatures with the strength of their own convictions, honed to an almost invincible level. Their self is their only asset.

Also, it's quite like being a knight in a way (from 'lance' .... stay with me!) A knight jousting with words. A knight on an honourable quest for not just fame and glory, but more importantly, truth and beauty, great sweeping banners of it.  To forgo everything for freelancing is indeed a chivalric attempt to uphold the honour of words, the status of them, to do great things with them. To inform, to entertain, to enlighten. A pioneer of some sort, going out into the unfathomable jungle of the written world, with only your own skill as a talisman.

Being a freelancer is also about taking chances. Taking chances on yourself, on your trade, on your skill. And being curious enought to take these chances. Chancing your arm, your heart, your rent, your bank account, your social life... All for the triumphant glow of seeing your words in print. Taking a free jump into sky with no scaffolding below. Enjoying the ride. Not knowing what's around the corner, but leaving things to good old Chance. Like a vetted gambler who respects Luck, but aslo knows their own hand  well and how to use it. Freelancer: re the chancer, the risk-taker, the gambler, the vaulter into the unknown. 

Maybe the most seductive element of it is the freedom. Essentially, it's about being free. No rules, no timetables, rotas, restrictions. Free to do things your own way. A flair of independent bohemian bon-homie. Making it on your own, on the back of your ideas and thoughts. In other words, being 'free' to do what you've always wanted to do, free in the sense of doing your own thing, flinging wide open the doors of yourself and shouting: 'here I am world!' Going at it (the big bad world) by one's self is scary; but the prospect of tackling it head-on in a high-jump, o solo mio, is irrestible to a free-spirited freelancer (one and the same, most often).

And where would we be without the thrills? The high-jinks. The roller-coaster up-and-down spiral your life becomes. The frenzy it induces when things are going good, when you're swinging from one branch to the next, singing merrily, at one with yourself and the universe and everything.  The energy, the excitement of it all. Not knowing where you're going to land, what job is next. Then the inevitable crashes, the lulls, the falls, which lead to the getting-back-ups, which in the long-run define who you are. Outline your strengths in black ink and mark you as strong.

For the final note, the successes. When you succeed, at a freelance endeavour,  how it's like reality is bending to you, with you, not the other way around. You're soaring, sailing through sky, back-flipping gracefully over that bar, knowing when you land you''ll be on your feet and the applause will be deafening. The success of getting a foot-in in the frenetic fast world of freelancing, with all those fantastic creatives and chancers and the feeling of taking that bow, announcing to yourself, to the world, 'Ta-da! Look what I can do!' There is no other satisfaction like it. No other high-faluting job to equal it, or wage to surpass it or career to outdo it. You live for the inner pride and glory, not the money. The reward of real achievement, not the high-ranking offices of other ordinary pursuits.

This is what you were born for. The high-jump, the touching of sky, the freefalling into flashing lights and the stage-show of your words, your creations, manifested for the whole world to see.

Thank you & Goodnight! (Bow)

~ Siobhán.

That Eureka! Moment: The Genie of Creativity

'Had I Not Been Awake' - Seamus Heaney

 Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore
And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,

Alive and ticking like an electric fence:
Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
It came and went so unexpectedly

And almost it seemed dangerously,
Returning like an animal to the house,
A courier blast that there and then

Lapsed ordinary. But not ever
After. And not now.

Last post, I wrote about having no inspiration. This post, au contraire, is about feeling inspired and marvelling at the whole process of creating. 

The above poem by Seamus Heaney perfectly describes the feeling when one is inspiration-struck. If you substitute the word 'aware' for 'awake' then you'll get a better understanding of the meaning behind the poem: the metaphorical wind of inspiration, whooshing in and shaking up recognitions, but only if we witnesss it, accept it.  I love the line  'the whole of me a-patter/ alive and ticking like an electric fence'. This is exactly how it feels when you're inspired creatively. When you are literally buzzing with energy and everything once ordinary  suddenly becomes hyper-real and extraordinary.

And it happens just like that, out of the blue (those blue bolts again), usually, in the middle of the night, as Heaney implies here. Infact, did you know that 4am is supposed to be the peak hour for creativity? When the waking rational mind is silenced just enough to comprehend things more fully, when the dormant dreaming artist's eye opens and ideas light upon it like stars. I've written some of my best stuff in the wee small hours of the morning, scribbling so fast it inevitably turns to shorthand. These instances are brief but brilliant, an epiphany of a kind, radiating light and realisation and regrowth on all that has been fallow and dark. A most welcome gift. A high-five Eureka where all is answered.

And what fascinates me is how I myself have absolutely nothing to do with these happenings, no control, no say, no ability to instigate them, schedulue them or summon them. They simply happen. From that great blue beyond. And I know a lot of you out there will agree with me on this. So many writers and artists have professed to this 'other' source from which their best ideas come, and talk of being merely the 'channel' through which these ideas are made manifest. 

In other words, they let this creative source work through them. I remember when younger and doing the whole school exam thing, the common cliche  doing the rounds of 'hoping for divine inspiration.' Something to intercede on our behalf and fill up the pages for us. And sometimes it worked. Ideas just came, out of the blue with blessings of what we didn't know (or maybe, didn't know we knew).

I like to refer to it, as many others would, as taking dictation. It's like cocking an ear and listening. Not even. Sometimes ideas, words, lines just fall into my consciousness, like floating bird feathers. They just come to me. Instant whispers from some wise source. Readers sometimes praise me on my use of vocabulary - how did I come up with that word, it sums it up exactly! And it's not as if I rummaged around amongst my inner thesaurus or dusty real book one, the word in question just sounded out of the ether, ping, just like that, as a light bulb pop ups up in cartoons above a character's head. I didn't need to think or find it; it was just there. Abracadabra. And I feel guilty for accepting compliments; it wasn't me really - it was that other voice, the creative space that hovers around us, elusive, ethereal, but eager to assist.

As I said, this theory resonates with a lot of creatives. I recently watched Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the hugely successful 'Eat, Pray, Love' talk on this and other aspects of creativity. She talks about how the ancient Greeks and Romans would refer to this aspect of the creative process as artists having a 'daemon' or a 'genius', like a genie or magical spirit that would assist in their work. She also mentions a poet who talked of how she would 'feel' poems coming at her and references singer-songwriter Tom Waits in this analogy too! *(See video below)*

Similarly, in the iconic 'The Artist's Way', the author Julia Cameron refers to creativity as a process of 'surrender, not control.' She is of the opinion that the universe takes a direct hand in our creative pursuits, adds that 'other' dimension to it, the divine, transcendant, inspired aspect.

Artists of all kinds respect and acknowledge this part of the process. But we also know that our part must be done too. When I said that words just come to me, I should also add that it's not all the time that this happens. Just some of the time. Other times, I do have to do a bit of thinking and scribbling. Creativity is a two-way street: we show up for our work and only then maybe the Muse will too.

Most of all, we must keep ourselves 'aware' incase we miss it - that wind in the night, that illumination, that electricity, that whooshing of ideas, that genie spirit whispering to us.  Keep ourselves awake. That's what I've been doing these last few days, and I'm delighted to announce I'm making my way out of the trough I'd fallen into (with a helping ethereal hand) and on the yellow brick road to creating once again.

It's a process that continually amazes me. Hence this post!

Keep Creating,

~ Siobhán.

Elizabeth Gilbert: A New Way to Think About Creativity:

Palette of Inspiration

Well. It's January, and January being the particularly grey month that it is, my inspiration tank seems to have hit an all-time low. I'm thinking maybe it's also an after-effect of reading too many books: now my words have stage-fright. 

As I said many times before, there are highs and lows to writing. It's a bi-polar process. The high energy bolts of enthusiasm that keep you up all night planning projects, scribbling notes, mind on fire with sense of possibility and purpose are random and irregular. Other times, it's the low troughs of despair, doubt and blocks. Like now. When nothing works and nothing wants to work.

But not to moan. I'm going to be pro-active about it. Right! Throw some colour at this bleak blasted month and mind. Some splashes of inspiration I've come across along the way, from artists and writers and all kinds of creatives. And because I need to write something, if I don't I feel I'll dry up and blow away, a tumbleweed in the desert.

So here goes. Some attempt to fill the void. Some lovely lines of inspiration from artists and writers alike. You've probably heard some of these before, but indulge in them again. They're like a zing of energy, zapping the lead frustration of non-writing into smithereens. Paw, bam, zwah!!! (Gibberish is also a symptom of the lows, but on a brighter note, a symptom of recovery, I hope...)

Anyone care to share their views on the lows? Their experiences? Their inspiration? I'd be glad to know!

moping and museless, 

~ Siobhán 


Every writer I know has trouble writing.  ~Joseph Heller


Writer's block is a disease for which there is no cure, only respite.  ~Terri Guillemets

 

If you hear a voice within you say that you cannot paint, by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.  ~Vincent Van Gogh

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.  ~Sylvia Plath

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.  ~Charles Horton Cooley

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.  ~Vladimir Nabakov 

Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and sister, and occasionally mortal enemies.  ~Terri Guillemets

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make.  ~Truman Capote

Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.  ~Jack London

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.  ~Michelangelo

The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination. ~Emily Dickinson

New Year, New Beginnings, New Books, New Me

'The Old Year has gone.  Let the dead past bury its own dead.  The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time.  All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!'  ~Edward Payson Powell

Happy New Year everyone! Happy 2012, year of impending Mayan-prophesised doom - or, auspicious astrological alignments and the dawning of a new higher consciousness, according to your inclinations. (I prefer the latter).

And indeed the New Year always starts with a 'snow-storm of white vows', the most important of mine being to be more creatively productive. Specifically, read more books and write more. Yep. Starting from now.

And I've got a good head start. For the holidays this year, I spent most of my shopping time book-browsing, for myself, and for friends, because a book is the greatest gift you can get!  (And by the way, a bookshop experience is oh so more satisfying  than a shopping centre or any other shop really. A bookshop browse in a Christmas rush is like a cooling quiet oasis in a desert sandstorm...) And I've been enjoying  my acquisitions ever since, spending most of my down-time snuggled up by the fire, hopping in and out of all kinds of printed-word worlds - fantastic suspenseful adventure (sci-fi trilogy The Hunger Games), mesmerising  travel writing (anthology of arctic and Antarctic writing The Ends of The Earth) symbolic  seasonal pickings (short story collection A Winter Book), magic, mystery and intrigue  (circus novel The Night Circus) and aww-inducing  relating (endearing quirky love-story The Lover's Dictionary) and pending enjoyment from a whole lot more of course. (Intrigued? Click on the titles to read more ;)

What's Christmas without a good book? There's nothing more delightful than snuggling up with a good book, a glass of your fancy, and a blazing fire, while winter wails outside. I love the escapism it offers, but also the magnified realism. I've learnt a lot from books. About life. About different viewpoints. About how people act and why.  I love how I can enter a new world with a new book and be totally immersed in it, so as everything else becomes secondary. Because the reality the book offers is reality viewed (not skewed) through the lens of the human mind, and focused upon with the full strength of the human heart with every little minute meaning magnified into momentous, all with the intention of making this world a little clearer.

Most of my Christmases are categorised and remembered by what book I was reading at the time. All beginning with Roald Dahl when I was first starting out on my reading journey.  Infact, it was the books I read then that remain fixed in my mind still, not the films or even the (shock!) presents. I remember best sitting with a new book in my lap, palms caressing pages, head peeping in and out of  pages as visitors and games and days whizzed by. These things were transient, the story a permanent presence.

So, that's that, just a hats off to my books this year. I've thoroughly enjoyed poring through them and having my days and hours filled with excitment, adventure, happiness and that great pleasure only books can bring - when a reader personally relates to the story, when the individual psyche meets the collective and sparks of recognition flare.  Here's to a  new year of reading! (Have you read any good books over the holidays?? Please share your experiences here, I'd love to know! What was your favourite holiday read or yet-to-read? Or classic you read every year? Dr Zhivago has always been my choice, but unfortunatley I can never get to finish it, the prose gets so dense like snowdrifts I'm afraid I sink into and freeze into submission.....oh well.)

And before I go, a little toast to the 'new' in happy new year. The new beginnings, the blank slate of the year as it appears to us now, horizon up ahead still to be seen, created, formed out of actions, thoughts, all our hopes and dreams and wishes for the year ahead hanging in the air around us like electricity, waiting to swoop in and be realised "our hopes such as they are/invisible before us/untouched and still possible." Still possible. According to Mr WS Mervin below, our hopes that have not yet been realised, still possible. Yes. (I love the lack of punctuation in this poem - it creates the feeling of freedom, the weightless, restraint-less feeling of being free to do anything we want...)

Read a few novels, write a novel, paint a masterpiece, scale a mountain, go deep-sea diving - whatever it is, now is the perfect time, in the birth of a new year, to do whatever it is our hearts desire. Most importantly, to believe that we can.  And to begin, simply begin. 

May 2012 bring you what you wish from it,

~ Siobhán.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
                                                               ~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
                                                                                ~T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

To the New Year - W.S. Merwin

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible