7:30 BELLS: The Fire of Creativity
Last week I posed a
question: The stone girl in the fountain holds up the vase spilling bright
streams of water—like the streams of creative power. Yet she’s bowed by the
weight How do we keep the force of the creative flow from shattering the
vessel?
I received some thought-provoking answers on
Facebook:
From Shaula Zink: “ .
. . the flow is the very thing that keeps the vessel from shattering. If the
vessel had to contain it all, the tension would build up more pressure—that has
to give somewhere.”
My reply: “Sometimes
I feel the force of all that bright streaming will wear away the rock.”
Shaula replied: “Ah,
but the wear is the essence of life. It’s our tears, our trials and triumph. It
shapes us into who we are. The wear is unavoidable, but it doesn’t have to make
us “less than.”
From David Pecchia: “A stone wears away permanently while a person becomes worn-out from exertion of any kind, but only temporarily. Fatigue passes and leaves us incrementally stronger.”
What true and marvelous
insights! They made me wonder why I really do believe—why I know--that I could break
“permanently” from the force of the creative stream. Why am I so different? Probably because I
have a mild form of manic-depressive illness (bipolar illness)--called Bipolar
II.
TOUCHED WITH FIRE is Kay Redfield Jamison’s book about the fascinating relationship between
artistic temperament and manic-depressive illness.
“Characteristics . .
.also link the manic side of manic-depressive illness with artistic temperament
and imagination. Many of these are
related to the fiery side of the manic temperament, and, when coupled with an
otherwise imaginative, observant, and (ultimately) disciplined mind, they can
result in literary, musical, and artistic works of singular power. The sheer
force of life, the voltage, can be staggering in mania, and it often singes
if not scorches the ideas that come in its wake . . .” and the people too, I
might add.
Although I’ve never
been manic, I’ve often been hypomanic (a lower level of mania). The “voltage”
of hypomania is more than staggering enough
for me. Jamison comments that the
hypomanic state correlates with maximum artistic production. (Those in full
blown mania often don’t think coherently enough to produce anything.)
People with
manic-depressive illness on any level can die, and often do die--from suicide. So, for me, bearing the weight of the creative stream running
through the urn is a real issue: the stone could crack, the stone girl fall.
This makes the question of
how to stay well while letting the creative stream flow critical for me.
I’ll explore that in
next Tuesday’s 7:30 Bells post.
LORE OF THE BELL: Understand the nature of the bell--to keep it from breaking.