Creativity, Creation and Waiting...
for inspiration, for your kids... oh and have you watched The Bear?
Can you bear with me on a little poetry analysis journey? It’s not my poem! It’s much better! In one of my loftier moments, I subscribed to Five Points literary magazine and as Robert Frost said, “it has made all the difference.” Anyway, that’s where I found the poem The 5th day.
I thought I’d start with this lovely poem that might be my newest friend, and then work my way down to a poem of my own. Shall we?
The 5th day
By Jean Nordhaus
It takes a lot of energy
to make a bird
to take a heap
of feathers without
form or measure find
the theme and wrestle
out of cloud and fire
a creature that will fly
better instead to fashion out of scraps and sticks
a little house
with an open door
set in a shady spot
above the grass
and the let the spirit fly in
Of its own accord
It was the third time I read it that I realized how much I needed to hear this. I’ve been beating myself up about a lot of things and this helped.
“It takes a lot of energy to make a bird.” Let’s start there. What are you creating that takes your energy? Whatever it is, in the end, it must be a “creature that can fly.” This is a big task. The pressure is on. The brainpower that is required is immense. You are creating something from the bare elements and you don’t even know for sure what it is you’re trying to make.
So often, we try to force our creations when instead we could do well to open our hearts and just let in that which will present itself. But oh, that’s a lot of relinquished control. That’s a lot of letting go.
Summer days so often present themselves like inspiration. A phone rings, someone gets a text, an idea presents itself that cannot be ignored. Suddenly the day is gone and the flowers need watering and the mosquitos drive us inside. We have to be open to what the day presents.
“Fashion out of scraps and sticks a little house with an open door.” I think They Might Be Giants meant the same thing in their song, “Make a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul” even if that song has a lot of other riddles in it.
But does Jean Nordhaus worry about these similarities? No. She’s a competent and confident poet! She’s just asking how do you create a bird? Even if you’re God, who imagines a bird? I am forever in awe of the imagination - the books, the art the entertainment it creates.
(And btw, Birds really are miraculous little creatures - even if my husband calls them hollow and even if they’re downright scary when they’re trapped in your garage and so you don’t even go in there because getting too close to one sends chills down your spine.)
It’s about creation! The difficulty of creation and of being creative. I would guess that even if you don’t consider yourself creative, you spend the summer curating a multitude of beautiful moments and photo opportunities, memories and meals. All of these do well to let in inspiration rather than force.
If you, like me, have FOMO, you are watching or have watched the series The Bear, and you’ve seen the second season’s Christmas episode where Jamie Lee Curtis is a drunk mother trying to force the world’s most insanely busy Christmas dinner, complete with some unknown symbolism about the 7 fishes. No one gets the symbolism. No one really wants that dinner, but dammit she’s going suffer for it. She’s going to make it happen and then make everyone feel like garbage for how much work she’s done. It’s an extreme example, I know, but it’s a sense of personal martyrdom that we’ve all either experienced or participated in. It hurts to see it.
We don’t want to crush our own creations. We want the things we’re working on to fly. And we don’t want to crush others in the process of our own creations. These things must be done within the confines of society. We’re not just God sitting in his house on a grassy knoll, waiting to decide what miracles to create (and then let evolve).
But dammit sometimes the spirit just won’t fly in. For example, I would like to be writing every day but of course, it’s really hard to actually write every day. I’ve never been disciplined about it before. The distractions are endless. Everyone’s talking about the new season of The Bear for god sake! it’s summer and all three of my children and both parents have summer birthdays! And even if the spirit does fly in, someone is likely to shout, “MOM!” In the middle of my bird-making.
Ironically, the book Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott sat on my shelf for years, talking about how hard it is to write, how frustrating the empty page,how real the self-loathing, and yet how important it is to establish the routine. I have yet to fully heed this advice.
When it comes to writing, I’m much more in the camp of “let the spirit fly in,” but I need to do more wrestling with clouds.
The truth is, creativity is probably a decent mix of both work and sitting in the grass with a birdhouse in your soul. Last year, I bought John Cleese’s book Creativity: a Short and Cheerful Guide, and he discusses, rather scientifically that being creative is a lot of hard work and that when the hard work hits the wall on its way towards creation, it is best to walk away. If you’ve concentrated hard on the problem, you can let it go and your subconscious will likely do a lot of the work for you.
Well, Subconscious, if you can hear me, I promise to start concentrating on something for you to fix. Maybe we can do it on a Tuesday, just when all of my children are miraculously engaged, and I decide I can sit down at my computer for an hour. And if I don’t accidentally start making my grocery pick-up order, or shopping for birthday presents or sorting photos or scheduling upcoming events, well, then, we’ve got a date.
I’m convinced that if I were to simply stare into space and actively try not to accomplish anything, I would be uninterrupted for hours. However, should I show an interest in even the smallest of tasks, I am suddenly needed beyond all reason and needed even by those who otherwise have doors locked and headphones on. And if the time is there, the inspiration is not.
The last thing I’ll say about the Bear (seriously) is just how they create anxiety through background noise. No matter what they are trying to accomplish, there’s someone shouting, or a printer that just keeps printing, an alarm, or a Trent Reznor-like score.
For me, as I write this, my son is sitting on the toilet, talking to his iPad. If you were inside my brain, there’d be all that noise too. And just as I’m about to drown that out, my next eldest yells, “where’s the kosher salt?” And then my third says, “You have to see this video called ADHD trap.” It’s mesmerizing.
A poem of My own
As our children’s schedules take over our own, I’ve been thinking about that state that I’m in when I’m sitting in the car, waiting. When I’m tired and annoyed and singing Jean Valjean’s “Who am I?” but also peaceful in the alone time, knowing that my music or podcast will be shut off and that thought interrupted as soon as the task of picking up is at hand.
It’s whiny I think, and I know I’m supposed to be embracing these moments of waiting to drive a teenager around with some sort of #blessed. But I had a moment to fill, with no one in the car but me, so I took a crack at it.
When I am the mom who waits I am an empty vessel, my lifelong disdain Hollow unless filled by a vacuous task. I can crochet. I could needle with Time, weave in and out of the void, biding time with purpose and progress Like the quilting woman in A Tale of Two Cities, It will include my enemies’ names. One of those enemies will be called Waiting. But at least there will be this thing at the end Of the waiting. A receipt for service. A thing that signifies existence and marrow and Time.
And for putting up with me, and in honor of everyone’s Summer Vacations, I offer you this beautiful nihilistic gem.
Jack Handy continues to invade my brain. Sigh. But more importantly, I can’t figure out how to watch the second season of The Bear. Because, honestly, there’s no time to figure it out, even without children in the house. Thus, creativity evades me. But you got it, girl, for sure.
Good to hear all that. I am nearly 65, with two grown sons. My wife and I had busy lives, to put it mildly. During the time from age 25 to 55 I wrote 25 poems, less than one a year, even though they woke me up and danced in head during the day. I was a carpenter and my arms were always tired. Now, life is very different. I have written, in this, my first real year of retirement, about 100 poems and some of them are decent. So, I understand your current state but I think you will do great things because you are already doing amazing things. Here is a poem about the limits of poetry and probably imagination.. https://westonpparker.substack.com/p/some-poems