Creativity
This morning, I received something in the mail that made me smile. It was a gift and the gift made me think that there is hope for the future. It is only slightly likely that I was exaggerating. It is only a little bit possible that I overemphasized the ramifications of this little gift but… receiving it caused me to pause. I started to think: people can be very creative, the creativity will save us, heal us, repair everything. We will have a fixed world. I think we can repair our personal selves with creative thinking, too. I saw my own subconscious mind at work being creative.
Today, waiting in my mailbox, was a letter hand-addressed to the space where I live. The message was not addressed to me, personally. It was addressed to ‘Our Neighbour’ and that put me off at first. After I read through the first sentence, I understood why it was addressed in that manner. It dawned to me after the salutation that this was a message of comfort and courage from the Seventh Day Adventist group. My intitial dismay that it wasn’t a completely personal letter melted away. I realized that was a good thing. I knew that the letter writer had not done an internet search and trolled my personal information. They had simply run down a list of addresses and mailed out their quota of contacts. It seems that Covid has restricted the movement of the evangelists and they cannot attend your home, personally. They apologized for this and I easily forgave them.
That was a stunning bit of creativity from those particular followers of Christ. They did not call on the government to fix a problem, they didn’t fly in the face of rules, they didn’t gather in protest, they smashed not one single window, they didn’t call in the television cavalry. They just went about their business in a new way. I smiled at their ability to ‘work around’ the situation we are in. I knew instantly that if ‘they’ can, we can, I can. Our falling apart world is not at it’s end…not for a while. The collapse is urging us to find other routes, other ways of getting from A to B. ‘A’ being entrance and ‘B’ the exit.
Before I opened my mailbox, I had been agonizing through the endless loop analysis of a dream I had. It was an unpleasant dream. It was unpleasant in part because I hadn’t dreamed of the gorgeous Simon. Sigh. He hadn’t leaned over and given me the willing and eager kiss I imagine I desire. The dream did not feature his entirely fit self in the too-tight but just right clothing. No, my dream was from another part of a personal universe. It was a music and art involved dream. I had yet another ‘don’t measure up’ dream. I had another ‘why are you here and why are you speaking’ dream.
I dreamed that I had been tapped at random for making announcements to the audience before a symphony concert. They asked ‘little ol’ me’ to introduce the concert! They didn’t have any one else and saw me, lurking in the shadows backstage. “Hey, can you read this? The whole thing is on the ipad. It will be easy. Anyone could do it.” “Sure,” I said, in that way I have of happily diving in to a perceived spotlight – even when the spotlight should be for someone else. …even when it isn’t exactly a spotlight. It is a thing I do, knowing full well what I am doing but denying that fact to my conscious self.
So, I marched forward to the microphone stand. I was ready to go! Here was my moment at last! “Here begins my fifteen minutes!” The instant I began reading from the perfectly well-lit and legible screen, things fell apart. First the ipad window collapsed and I had to excuse myself while I searched through to find the document again. I huuumed, hemmmmed and hawwwed to the best of my ability. It wasn’t pretty. As I struggled to find some framework for remarks, I filled in the space with my usual decent-sounding bullshit. I kept the air full of words and feverishly flipped through the device, looking for the text I should have been reading. After putting several minutes effort into what should have been a moment or two’s explanation, I gave up. I was losing the audience and had to close as best I could. I did do some quick thinking and included a call-out to the concert master and the symphony staff. Then, I excused myself and quit the stage. “Whew,” I gasped to myself, thinking I had pulled at least something off.
As I struggled through my haze of frustration to the wings, a young girl there hissed at me. “What? not a mention of my solo? Why did they have you speak?” She stomped off into the dark of the backstage, leaving me flopping around like a half dead fish, full with self-loathing at my failure to measure up.
That element of my dream was ruminating this morning. A feeling of self-loathing was what I struggled with as I opened my letter-gift from The Seventh Day Adventist Company Crew. Reading through the first sentences and realizing what it was, how remarkable and clever a thing to do, I relaxed. My head cleared and I could see that my difficult dream had been an explanation. I had reached into the box of creativity and pulled out an enlightening journey through the day previous. A bit of cleverness on my own part. It was a method of explaining my horrible day, in a somewhat comical, gentle way that I could understand.
I dreamed what I did because I had been deeply upset by the Zoom chorus seminar of yesterday evening. It was a sort of homecoming with lots of people I have sung with and for in the past. At one point in the evening, we broke up into section groups for special learning that addressed the methods and means peculiar to a voice type. At the close of our section meeting I misunderstood a request for a summation from our group leader. I thought he was speaking to me, he was not. His query had been directed at someone else named Robert. I spoke up and tried to bullshit my way through, having no idea what he wanted as a take away. I didn’t realize until he acknowledged my response with, “Ah, yes, of course, thank you, the other Robert.” I immediately cringed as he then requested a response from a Robert I hadn’t noticed.
This music fellow is absolutely brilliant and has had a career in singing since he was quite young. He impresses me in a thousand ways. I did not know he would be attending our chorus event and the moment his face came into view in our Zoom world, I felt old feelings of complete inadequacy. At the moment, I didn’t recognize them, I just felt uneasy, uncomfortable, bad. During the days this guy was directing us, I felt a lot of tension if we had opportunity to speak together privately. At each such time, I could feel a strong sense of his ‘tolerating’ rather that ‘inviting’ my prescence in the chorus. In fact, he often avoided my approaches to conversation. I know I have no real skill or knowledge but I try to fit in as best I can and I try to have conversations about music with those who impress me. I want them to like me. The dynamic I felt in his case was one of, “Oh, hi Robert…uh, excuse me a moment.” I assumed it was because he didn’t want to labour through a conversation…that I had nothing of value to offer.
My unsettling dream this morning had been my subconscious mind explaining why I felt so awful after the Zoom meeting. At the time, I didn’t know why I felt so bad. I only knew I was extremely uncomfortable. The mind is a smart boy and can lay things out for you in a way that you can understand and accept. Sometimes, it can be an amusing view, one that wakes you with it’s humour. That does happen, just like getting an amusing letter from the Seventh Day Adventists. Sometimes, it is more painful and less funny. Sometimes, you wake concerned and worrying what the dream meant. That was today for me. Receiving the letter helped unlock the dream. I saw the Adventist’s creativity and the humour of it. Seeing that, I drew a parallel to my dream. It was mind being creative and teaching. When I knew that, I was able to look at myself and dispel a bit of the horrible ‘not measuring up’ feeling that yesterday left me with. I felt awful because of my misunderstanding, my misreading of a remark, my doing my best and not succeeding the way I hoped. Understanding that and that my inner self had revealed the whole scene in ways I could evaluate at arms length helped. Cleverness, creativity really gets you around an obstacle.
We are going to be okay. Folks are already finding amusing ways to go forward into the unknown Covid world and continue doing and being and living. The Adventist letter was one evidence. Others are the clever things that suffice as a mask in public. Lots of humourous things going on there. At the beginning of this, I watched as folks lined up to attend WalMart in a profusion of mask inventions. The recent ‘we have had enough’ feelings are surrender to rigidity, to a need for things to be as they used to be. I surrendered last night to the familiar and clung to the feelings I have had in the past. It wasn’t necessary, it was painful and a waste of time. Rigidity and a lack of cleverness brought my old thinking habits forward last night and gave me a few hours absolute grief. Rigidity and the lack of cleverness are at the root of the angry discussions going on now about losing our freedom. The letter from the Adventists proved that we can be creative and carry on with life. I saw that letter and relaxed, laughed and came to an understanding of my own bad self. When I realized that I didn’t do anything yesterday except make a mistake, have a misunderstanding, that it meant nothing about my value as a singer or human being, it was a lot easier to let the whole thing drift away. I can pick my soul up, dust off the negatives of the past and carry on in a new way. Ha. Now, I can just say ‘Ooooooops’ and on we go. No biggie.
Robert On The Air 