midwife
Sun 11.22.20
When my first novel, COMICS, was staged at the University of Maine in Orono it felt like I was living in a bubble; wasn’t quite real. What’s more, winning is not the be-all and end-all of one’s endeavor. As I watched the actors bringing the people that I had created in my book come to life it came to me that they were never my creation but they had a life of their own that I merely illustrated. They were real, had been out in the world all along.
The play was a standing room only success. Everybody recognized the characters, knew their habits, identified totally with them. I was merely a theatre attendee like everyone around me. Creativity is a strange process; you are birthing someone or something that is never your creation. You are merely the midwife.
On my vision quest where I spent four days in the woods fasting I had two very powerful visions that have guided my life’s work. I knew that wherever the visions came from is where my creative voice, the stories that needed telling come from. The stories are out there, the art is out there, we are merely the tools that illuminate them. I watch the play and chitchat a bit with other attendants after it is over. Then I go home fix myself a hot chocolate and hop to bed. In the next few days there are congratulations, reviews in the papers and you sit in front of the computer waiting for the next vision to light your way into the new story.
Going to court is an interesting phenomenon because at first you think that it’s about whatever you decided needed correcting. At some point, it comes to you that this is not what’s going on at all. There’s a much higher principle at stake then your particular situation. That’s when the law takes over and shapes the conversation away from the personal, looks at your particular situation and decides how this is going to play out for the benefit of all. You are now in the creative moment, like the vision experienced, you understand that you are working at something worthwhile that will be of benefit to all. It’s bigger than you and you want to do it right, you want it to reflect what is honorable and generous within you. You want to do the right thing. Winning lasts for a very short time, a small moment of glory, But the struggle is really the high. You are allowing the spirit to use you as its avatar, to speak, write, fashion, create what the spirit cares to divulge -- the midwife.
