Hello again Fellow Adventurer,
Well, it’s been an absolutely hectic few months of ups and a lot of downs and even a crater I felt sure had no bottom. Things are definitely looking up at the moment, though, I’m glad to report.
However, it’s been almost impossible to write at all over the past few months or do much of anything on my own creative projects. That definitely sucked a lot. But I am slowly but surely feeling like I’m coming alive again, and feeling creative again (yay!).
But, yeah. Let’s just say that it’s been a rough couple of months. Like that GIF of the burning dumpster floating away on a flooded street type of rough.
Anyway…
The Wanderer
I listened to this new music, “The Wanderer” by Adrian von Ziegler which was uploaded a few weeks ago, and my mind (of course) immediately went to the Old English poem The Wanderer from the 10th-century (AD) Exeter Book. But first, here’s Adrian’s music:
Adrian describes composing the song: “The feeling I got while composing this piece was somehow that of walking through a forest, which at first is dark and misty, and gradually becomes brighter and friendlier.”
“Brighter and friendlier” is not quite what the poem The Wanderer is about, though. At one of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies gatherings that I attended at the University of Johannesburg (alas! We now only have a biennial conference!), one of the professors gave a paper in which she described the poem as a soldier speaking of and living through PTSD. (She also noted similar passages in other poems and pieces, but before I digress completely…)
The Wanderer is very dark and sad and, before hearing the paper on PTSD, the only thing I’d known about it was that it had inspired the brilliant bit in The Lord of the Rings (The Two Towers) that reads:
“Where now are the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the harp on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”
The Wanderer poem reads (in Greg Delanty’s Modern English translation):
“Where is the horse gone? The young bucks? The kind king?
Where is the banquet assembly gone? The merrymaking?
O the glittering glass. O the uniformed man.
O the general’s glory. How that time has passed.
Night shrouds all as if nothing ever was.”
(The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation, Eds. Greg Delanty and Michael Matto, pp. 61-63.)
The poem ends with these lines:
“Blest is he who holds true. No man should openly bare
his heart’s hardships unless he knows the cure,
that is his great fate. It’s well to seek solace
from the Maker, our only security.”
(The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation, Eds. Greg Delanty and Michael Matto, pp. 63.)
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Current Stories and Future Stories
Well, after that my mind started wandering and wondering about all the stories/written projects that I’m busy with. (Let’s not talk about my current Crochet WIPs. They’ve multiplied now that I have stuff to make for various baby showers.)
I had to really remind myself that, yes, the past few months had been a bit of a dud when it came to writing fiction, but that it didn’t mean that I had to suddenly stop writing and give up altogether. (Because brains are weird and sometimes overreact.)
Reading through my Ruon Chronicles notes I actually became excited again and want to work on it even though I feel like my creative brain is still playing catch-up. The same goes for Porselein and Where the Stars Used to Sing. Putting everything on the back burner has not been easy, but I think it was necessary up to a point. Sometimes the well really is just too dry and the days too short.
Finding Inspiration (Again)
I haven’t been reading novels, but have been reading the essays in Clara Parkes’ The Yarn Whisperer and Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World (be sure to also check out her Substack, The Daily Respite). These have really brought home to me time and again to look at the small things in life and find the magic in them.
I also think that, if I hadn’t been living in Bag End this past year, things would’ve been much worse. Having safe S P A C E around me, not to mention oodles of trees, animals, and plants has been a godsend. It’s amazing what even a walk in the garden can do!
Then there’s also looking at the things that other people are making, whether that be traditional/digital/textile art or writing or music or podcasts or whatever. Sometimes just seeing the creations of others can remind us why we like doing something or make us want to try something new.
In The Story Solution by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, there’s this:
“When do I feel my soul leaking out through my eyes? When I’m counting fruit flies.*
When do I feel happy and uplifted? When I’m writing.”
*He was working at a laboratory at the time.
And I think that’s what I’ve really been missing the past few months of not creating much – the happiness and upliftment that it brings with it. This is especially true when it comes to working on my own stuff (instead of basically only creating content for other people). There’s a definite balance that I need between “my own stuff” and “other people and business stuff” in order to keep my soul from leaking out through my eyes.
All this is to say that, while a break was necessary because of all the other things that were going on, that break has now definitely been long enough. I need to create with words again (not only with yarn) and, though there are new challenges on the horizon, I must make time for my own words as well.
Here’s to working on and writing my own projects!
Love,
Carin