The Creative Hurricane

You will have to excuse me if my writing is as messy as my desk. I have never taken Writing 101. I know nothing of verbs, nouns, adjectives, past or present tense, first or third person, punctuation, sentence or paragraph structure, where to use a colon: or semi-colon, character development or even spelling. I am cloudy about the differences between simile and metaphor, biography and fiction, prose and poetry. I have been writing and singing my own songs since I was fourteen. I didn’t attend Berklee or Juilliard, never participated in a weekend songwriting workshop with the pros, studied theory or even played the piano. All my creative impulses have arrived exactly the same way: random, unexpected and as a complete surprise.

Less than two years ago, I gave away or donated the contents of three separate libraries that l had collected over 50 years of interest in therapy, healing and spirituality. There were hundreds of volumes housed in my own home, the Hospice Centre where I volunteered, and the Psychiatric Group Home where I worked as a counselor. This purge was initiated by my Buddhist meditation practice and a realization that my efforts were scattered across a plethora of interests and disciplines and dozens of healing modalities. This was a concerted effort to simplify, integrate and bring under one roof, the teachings of an entire lifetime of study, learning and seeking answers. I kept only two written books besides my own: Natalie Goldberg’s’ Writing Down The Bones and Pema Chodron’s Wisdom Of No Escape.

One inspiration, one breath, one teaching and one focused desire to use only what I know as truth, what lies within, to unburden myself of the rest and to continue to write.

This cleansing process reached its zenith when my family exiled me to Mexico in the early spring of 2019, after a winter of cloud and endless rain on Vancouver Island. My body was racked with aches and pains, my heart fumbling in the dark with depression, faced with the realities of old age and a series of herniated discs that left both my legs numb from severely pinched nerve bundles. With little to do and knowing of the neuroplasticity of the brain, its’ innate ability to create new neural pathways, I painstakingly taught myself to walk again, one slow step at a time. It was not until I arrived in Mexico that I realized the greatest casualty of my handicap was my exhausted spirit. This revelation began a new period of soul healing, intensive inner work that often found my writings drenched in tears: of regret, sorrow, past traumas, relief and release, joy and ecstasy, of a life pared down to a suitcase, guitar, pens and paper. I truly discovered I needed very little to thrive and survive, to live a truly fulfilling life. Out with the old!

Along with my new downsized life, I also discovered a new way to create, what I now call the creative hurricane. Previously, when my energies and juices were low, call it writers block if you will, I would get out all the accumulated writings I have done. I would flip back and forth and forth and back between obscure little pieces of paper, journals, notebooks and collections of songs that I no longer remembered or played, taking out a line here, a line there, a verse from one song, the chorus from another, trying to piece together something new and different. Then I realized I could make all this less of a chore and more of an adventure if I got out the scissors and simply cut out what I liked, spreading them across the table in different combinations, creating a jigsaw puzzle of word salads. I randomly put together a verse or chorus from disparate sources, pairing the old with the old to create something new. I am recycling the past into the present and filling more notebooks to be disassembled in the future.

I use scissors, nail files, kitchen knives, combs and even my pen to score the writings and literally tear them apart. It is a magnetic reassembly of phrases in my search for the lost song or the lost chord. This process has never been neat, tidy or organized. There are rare times when poetry or songs come unbidden in a wholeness delivered out of the ether. I can’t pretend to be in control of any of it. I am just grateful to be an active participant. The chaos of this process is balanced with a meditation practice that lends notes of silence and calm to it, the eye of the hurricane. Poetry and song are paintings that are never quite finished or polished before the next onslaught of imagination takes hold. Occasionally, a small treasure emerges, beauty glimpsed out of the muck and debris, the pond settling to a temporary clarity. All of it is clearly a work in progress.

Here is one offering of this manual cut and paste process of this creative hurricane, inspired by the Mexican celebration of The Day of The Dead, where the ancestors are joyously honoured for their contribution to the present.

FOR ALL SOULS

Intro: St. Augustine and St John of the Cross, Teachers in joy and in suffering. Whatever I am is surrendering, I offer it up for all Souls

Verse I am in this monks’ cell, with my face to the wall, I offer it up for all Souls. The longer I remain, the world spirals with change, I offer it up for all Souls.

Chorus Every mountain has fallen and risen again, From dust word and song have been given. Sometimes it bleeds a richness of being, Suspended between, all of our breathing.

Verse Everyone is moving, the colours surreal, I offer it up for all Souls. Every ecstasy, every vision, every glimpse, I offer it up for all Souls.

Chorus Every tear I have cried, every glory abided, Every rocky shore I have tumbled, I have felt the sharp edge of all of these dreams, Every prayer, I’ve ever mumbled.

Verse Can the world be so different and still be the same, I offer it up for all Souls. A world stripped naked to Love and to pain, I offer it up to all Souls, I offer it up to all Souls. All I have left to give, is this heart where I live, I offer it up to all Souls.