Rabbit Holes

I'm a curious person and I have an inquisitive mind...it's a blessing and a curse - think adult version of the child who always asks "why?". I haven't been posting my usual Wednesday Wonderings but that doesn't mean I haven't been falling down the odd rabbit hole and getting lost in a world of thought, I have, it's just been more internalised.

On the subject of thought, I just listened to Lady Antebellum I Need You Now and I love it! I don't know why this happens but certain songs 'speak' to me, they create a reaction in me that goes beyond goose bumps to lost for words and lost in another world. It is hard to verbalise what I mean by this without some of the magic I experience being lost in the mundaneness of verbal communication. To try though, at times songs transport me into scenes and create images in my imagination, all it takes is first few bars and I'm tumbling down a rabbit hole into another world suspended between reality and ...I've no idea where to be honest.

To paint you a picture, when I was at university studying for my Bachelors I was also studying for a GCSE in Maths, every week I went to see a private tutor in Richmond. The walk took me over Richmond Bridge and up the hill, I always paused at the top and looked out over Richmond Park, just the sight of it shrouded in a mist on a fresh Autumn morning was enough to suspend all reality for me. But I'd take it one step further and play P.O.D Alive on my mini disc player...and as if by magic I was riding a dragon through the morning mist, swirling and diving while I took part in some epic battle. It was beyond words, I'd tingle all over, my cheeks would flush - as much from the cold as from escaping reality - and time stopped while I inhabited a Labrinthesque bubble.

Lady Antebellum I Need You Now is no different, when I listen to it I'm thinking of a particular scene featuring the main character in the story I'm writing. The scene is only half formed in my head, like I'm seeing it through some kind of veil and so the precise details are obscured but the feelings are all there. I think if I listen to the song enough what I'm imagining will coalesce sufficiently for me to be the conduit to the page, until I manage that I'm going to be wandering around the place never really being completely in the room.

I wonder if the creative process is like this for others - like being a psychic but for books and scenes? When parts to a story come to me they're never in a linear sequence, chapter one of book one is rarely followed by chapter two of book one.

So, reader, what's your creative process like?

Everything and Nothing

L and I no longer celebrate New Years Eve, the abridged reason is I can't be bothered and L just wants spring to arrive. He would rather we went straight to summer but he acknowledges there is a natural order to these things.

Every year as New Year's Eve approaches I start thinking about all the things I am resolved to do - chiefly what I want to achieve and this year was no different. My birthday, on the 29th, was hardly over before I was looking to the new year and creating a 'to do' list: 1) get a teaching job, 2) regularly earn money, 3) lose 10 lbs, 4) stop stressing so much, 5) stop living so much 'in my head', 6) stop being sensitive, 7) stop comparing myself and my achievements to others, 8) stop doubting myself, 9) stop letting fear govern me....I couldn't stop thinking and listing.

Was it any wonder I felt stressed?...Not really. I'd like to say I then resolved NOT to have any New Year's resolutions, to just let go and see what the year was going to bring me but I didn't.

A new year represents both everything and nothing, everything because EVERYTHING is possible and nothing because NOTHING is yet known: it has yet to be experienced.