Surprise!

So last night the Northern Lights appeared on my horizon, eerie and beautiful. I surprised myself in an audition.

I'm wary of trying to write this down, because such experiences are other-worldly, and often impossible to describe. I read someone else's description of such a moment recently and it just made me roll my eyes. Also, I have noticed recently that sometimes people I think aren't very talented are telling themselves the same things I am about why no one hires them. As you can imagine, this is disconcerting, and calls one's knowledge of one's own talent into doubt.

But any time you are involved in an audition or a play or, I imagine, any kind of creative endeavor, and your thoughts synthesize, leap beyond your conscious mind, and form something you couldn't plan, any time that happens, it feels fantastic. As if you have reached over the garden wall of your consciousness and plucked fruit from the trees that grow in the fertile soil of the unconscious.

Ok, yes, that makes me sound like a wanker. (Begging the question that even using the word wanker as an American makes me sound like a wanker, but let's move on.) Perhaps the sort of lightning flashes that are what we call inspiration are impossible to write about. I don't have them often enough, and after a long spell without them I start to feel drab, because if all I have to approach the world is my conscious mind and what I know, that feels pretty limiting. But we know more than we think we know, and that's very powerful.

It's as if everybody has that magic carpet bag of Mary Poppins, but we don't all have the ability to use its magic all the time, being mere mortals. You reach in at times and all you find is more carpet lint. But sometimes, if you're relaxed and not trying too hard, you reach in and the most astonishing objects come leaping to hand: a lamppost, three figs, a river. The bag is full and endless and entirely fascinating, and you feel so special at being given, however briefly, the chance to explore it. And the figs are especially delicious.

That's what happened to me last night. I often think about things too much, so the experience of creating something without thinking about it is delightful. That I made people laugh is even better.

So, wanker or no, I'm spending the day in small but fervent dances of thanks to the magic of the carpet bag.