drawn on a sheet of A2 paper,
in fine black ink,
and coloured in with caran d’ache,
labeled with more care than usual,
a window on an inner world:
‘enigma code-breaker’
‘French resistance worker’
‘Businesswoman-globetrotter’
‘Rebel with a cause (there’s no rebellion more radical than goodness)’
‘orphanage worker – or orphan’
‘good little girl’
‘Poet queen’
‘secret lover’
‘storyteller-pied piper’
‘speck’
‘dancer-choreographer’
‘Mountain climber’
an inventory of subpersonalities.
I am pregnant
with my own younger self.
She is waiting to be born in me,
an adult, almost forty.
I see her playing in the past,
skipping, smelling flowers.
When will she turn around
and step into her future?
I move closer,
hold my breath,
and I can hear her singing
softly to herself.
She sings the music
of the trees, the words
of butterflies,
and hums along with bees.
Held by the moment,
attention ripples
from her skin, her eyes.
She is utterly alive.
I call her name.
She looks around perplexed,
cannot see me,
scans the sky.
I call again,
regret the urgent tone.
How did that
fear get there?
And so I spread a blanket,
set out cups of tea and cake.
I read my book and let my presence
gently draw her close.
Yes, I sit and wait.
Last weekend, tucked away in a corner of my city, surrounded by beautiful handmade jewellery, a goldsmith friend and I worked together to create something in writing about her work.
A goldsmith’s workshop is a metaphorical and literal treasure-house. Scattered all over the place were tools, little bags of silver wire, strange little ladles and dishes. As we talked, she showed me gem stones from distant mines and pearls from seas in far flung places. As our conversation explored the events and moments in life which are marked by things made in precious materials, the goldsmith told me a story, one of the many secrets of the workshop…
The goldsmith had a customer who had recently become divorced. Still distraught, she brought her rings to the goldsmith; could they be remade, she wondered? Hidden in the liminal space of the goldsmith’s workshop, the customer and the goldsmith worked together to melt down the engagement ring and the wedding ring that had symbolised love, and commitment and hope and friendship. As the metals turned liquid, so tears flowed down the face of the customer. Something was dying; pain, disappointment and loss seeped out of the cracks of the broken heart. In the crucible of the molten gold, impurities from the former life of the rings burnt away.
And then the process of re-creation started. Moment by moment, the customer and the goldsmith designed something beautiful from the raw materials of the old. What had been was no more; what was left was a becoming. Slowly the customer watched the goldsmith work with her designs and her hopes to create something new. Wonder took the place of tears, and then joy and hope and delight. The new ring slipped onto her finger and with it new meaning, shaped from the wisdom of experience, for a new life.
The fire crackled, the conversation went on…
Today as I was walking along, I realised that the breakthrough moment of becoming a pianist and being brave to play the piano to other colleagues had actually started much earlier than I had identified.
It all started on the ballet retreat.
To sum up, I discovered a ballet retreat, signed up for it immediately, and then (after months of patient waiting) there I was, a total beginner, doing three hours of ballet every day for a week. And the rest of the time, I drank tea and ate chocolate in bed, reading. Oh, and I played the clunky piano I found in a room that was mostly uninhabited by other guests.
Somehow, I now realise, this mixture of rest, beauty, gentle movement, strong movement and tranquility allowed me to connect to some deeper part of my own feelings and real me. Playing the piano for fun (and practice) during the retreat was completely different from playing it at home at the end of a tiring working day. I was not on guard in any way; my defences were down. And some hidden, ancient part of me took advantage of this temporary truce to peek right out and join the rest of me. And I think that that increase in substance is what is showing in the rest of my playing, increasing boldness and expression.
And perhaps its also showing up in other places, in my writing, in my work, in my friendships. It’s really quite intriguing, and very joyful.
Perhaps we need to encounter tenderness to discover the courage to face our fears.
What makes up who we are?
Today on a street, on a piece of ordinary pavement outside an ordinary apartment block in a foreign city, I became a pianist. Or perhaps more accurately I realised I had become a pianist.
Some aspects of who we are are given: we are a man or a woman (usually); we are young or old; we are parents or not; we are married or not.
Some aspects of who we are are more ambiguous.
I have now been running with my running club for many years. There are many people there who run every single week. Yet sometimes they will not call themselves a runner. Are you a runner? No, not really, they shrug it off. But really, if you run several times a week, surely at some point you can accept that you are a runner?
Some people say that identity is performative. We are what we repeatedly do. This brand of thinking is the same one that can tangle itself in knots trying to avoid saying a man is a man and woman is a woman. It somehow manages to extract someone’s actions (or even intentions) from their whole selves, complete with body and mysterious inner world and surrounding community. The fact that a person can consistently run for years and not call themselves a runner shows to me that we instinctively feel that identity is more than performative; that there’s a mysterious something that is more than the sum of our individual actions.
I have been playing the piano now for three years as an adult, and when the hotel receptionist exclaimed this morning ‘oh you’re a pianist’, I shrugged it off. Not really, I said, the image of a concert pianist I saw playing the other day immediately lining itself up for a game of spot-the-difference. And yet today, after playing three different grand pianos in three different locations in three days, my inner world stepped itself over the threshold of the word.
I became something more than I had been.
Does it matter, really?
I think it does. Language has a substantiality of its own. ‘Pianist’ for me conjured up all sorts of criteria, and some of these I think have significance. Together we create what ‘pianist’ means. Some people may not have as stringent requirements as mine, but at the same time, we might object to someone who plays ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ once or twice a year calling themselves a pianist. We try to give dignity and respect to the word, by associating it with certain things: practice, diligence, love of music, love of playing, willingness to play for others.
And so once embraced, it has a magic of its own. Ting! It is a magic wand, a spark to the touch paper of transformation. Becoming a pianist already makes me feel more confident, more belonging with a piano. I think my playing is changing and will change. I take charge of the pieces with a greater sense of my own sensibility being valid.
Embracing any new aspect of ourselves is a transformation. Naming it is a form of welcome. It gives permission and space and belonging. The scale of the transformation is in proportion to the scale of meaning given to the name. It may feel initially uncomfortable, as when a new piece of art arrives in the house, or when you have building work. But the end result is an enriching of the home of our beings.
Some transformations, such as becoming a parent, happen to us, and we have a chance to begin the journey of living up to whatever meaning those words hold for us. Some transformations, such as becoming a doctor or a poetess, are the result of hard work and striving. However it arrives, a new facet of life is an invitation and a throwing down of the gauntlet; what do you make of this?
We owe it to ourselves and to the world to embrace as much as possible of who we can be.
extraplorer 