Coiner of Names
As far as I can tell, there is no “get out of jail free” card for the maker. There are, perhaps, skills that make imprisonment by self-doubt, stuckness, numbness, lack of imagination and failure less daunting and shorter-lived. For example, as I look forward to the next four months of being at home in my studio, my writing side is dormant, unresponsive and uninteresting. Thoughts of failure and leaving writing all together rise to the surface.
I remind myself that I can change what happens, leap from a negative state of mind, by changing my behavior. I remember my dream from what seems ages ago:
“Our summer made her light escape into the beautiful.” —
On this side of the world, outward-looking summer has ended just as spring is beginning in Australia. Wherever we are, we feel the shift of seasons and time passing. Here, the equinox, the balance of days and nights, is a reminder that even the happiest life requires balancing success and failure, glad and sad, right and wrong, pain and love. The movement into longer hours of darkness turns us inward. There is often a sense of loss when the long days of light recede. What is lost has the possibility of being returned to us in a new shape; a recognition of something deeper — seeds hidden in darkness.
Isn’t this what creation, the occupation of makers, is all about? Finding a new shape? Or recognition of a shape that is both new and has always been? In this short pause of equal days and nights, what is it that we wish to bring with us from summer into autumn? Or, on the other side of the world, what sleeping promise is ready for a new beginning?
The Lit Corridor
How do I hear my own voice in the midst of the world’s clatter and disaster? The truth of change and impermanence leads me back to the same question: Where do I find refuge from all the heartbreak of our world? There are so many competing demands that it is a struggle to preserve some sense of order, quality and dignity.
I ask myself these questions heading into my studio to write and paint. For me, the answer is always the same — get still enough to hear the voice inside. In my studio, I get quiet with my hands. I reach for my favorite fountain pen, or that tube of Vermillion. This is the way I can eventually come down from my head-full-of-doubt-and-fear, rest in my body intelligence, and open my imagination.
Consolation and imagination can also be found by paying attention to night and dreams. Even if I don’t remember a dream, staying still when I just begin to wake up, staying in that liminal place, is a lovely way to catch ideas and dream fragments. Solutions come unbidden that don’t occur to me in full daylight. Any thread of thought or dream will do — there is nothing too small, too ugly or too silly — and then I make a note of it. Or sometimes I just notice how my mind has already begun to spin and worry, and stay put,
refusing to get out of bed, until I find one moment of delight.
The Invisible Driver
All these dreams about being in a car — mostly as a passenger with an invisible driver, headed for disaster. There is always a tragedy about to happen: the car is on the wrong side of the road or careening out of control down a steep incline, or in a sudden slick ice blizzard.
Just as in the “impossible tasks” theme in the old stories, there is no apparent way through. It is terrifying. I am in one of these dreams; this time I can see the driver, but he is facing backwards. His hands are not on the wheel, and he can only see where we have already been. I am in the passenger seat, looking, and unlike the driver, I see what is ahead. The road has a hole in it large enough for a truck to fall into, and deep enough for a dozen. The faraway caw of a crow draws my attention to the distant hill, where a crowd has gathered. Then, somehow, the crowd vanishes. The driver and I are alone, heading at rapid speed toward the cavernous opening. When I try to speak, no sound comes. At the last moment, the driver, still facing backwards, adeptly navigates the car over the hole with the compass of a blind seer.
As in the old stories, help comes from unexpected places. In these dreams it is the invisible driver, as most often I cannot see who is driving — I only know it isn’t me.