Stoking the Creative Fires. Phil Cousineau

Joanne Warfield tells me that reverie comes to her “in the form of enchantment or trance. I watch thoughts, ideas, and images floating by like leaves on a stream of consciousness. Sometimes when I'm in the midst of creating, reverie appears as inspiration for me to try something innovative—but I have to be alert, which can be hard when you're enchanted.”

       THREE WAYS TO RECOGNIZE REVERIE:

      The shudder: “First a shudder runs through, and then the old awe steals over you,” says Plato. Don't be afraid of it. The muse is near.

      The shiver: Vladimir Nabokov, in his studies on American Literature, describes the moment of truth as the one that sends a frisson, a shiver, up your spine. Trust it.

      The amazement: Be amazed by it. Amazement is second cousin to awe, a friend of astonishment. Be wary of the snarky people who mock your love of life, your desire to make art.

       HONORING THE FIRE

      To take the first step on the path of the creative journey, you must honor any moment that sets your heart on fire, because it's a sign that you've fallen in love with the work. Your creative life depends on it. The life of your imagination swings on the rusty hinge of your commitment to your inward life. The wellspring of your creativity depends on the presence of Eros, the god of love, the archetypal force that brings forth meaning, wisdom, and beauty.

      If you're looking for clues to a robust creative life, you can find them in the courage to create out of a sense of unabashed joy. This is Rumi's “secret turning,” the slow revolutions in the soul of the dervish, the poet, and the lover that, in turn, turn the universe. It's the “creative breakthrough” that scientist Alan Lightman describes as the moment you finally flash on the answer to a crippling conundrum. And it's the “zest and gusto” that Ray Bradbury says is the prerequisite for honest and impassioned work.

      I've had to make these tough turns throughout my career if I wanted to create honest work. When I was stuck on the forty-ninth draft of a story from The Book of Roads, set in the Philippines, I had to plunge back into that sultry world by cutting open a mango. The explosion of smell immediately vaulted me back to the rice terraces in Northern Luzon, where I heard the fruit seller singing, “Mango, mango, manggggooooo!” That sensory surge helped me finish the story. To write “Pitch Dark,” a baseball poem, I opened my dad's old army trunk and retrieved a box of baseball cards I'd put there many years before. I selected a few cards and was transported back to Tiger Stadium where the poem unfolds. To write about the myth of Sisyphus in Once and Future Myths