Hello Friends & Hello February!
I hope you are all staying warm! The Nashville blizzard came at the perfect time for me. Being snowed in provided me an opportunity to focus deeply on rewriting a chapter in my book called The Power and the Glory.
I am closing in on this chapter, and would like to share an excerpt with you:
"I see songwriting as a kind of midwifery. Like children, songs show up knowing who they are. I make choices that influence them, but the songs arrive with personalities of their own. So, if songs are coming from somewhere else, my work is to be a receiver. With lightening rod in hand, I conduct electricity by collecting the flashes of ideas. As I work, I ride the edge between what I know, and what hasn’t happened yet. As I step over that line and create something from nothing, I get the sense that I am co-creating. I do not know what the electricity flowing through me will manifest, or what my efforts at conducting it will light up. Often, it is nothing at all! I am not in charge of the flow. I cannot switch it on or off. All I can do is show up, and direct my focused effort into it, and believe in the process.
Sometimes I sit at my writing desk for hours before I can access the state of mind where I am not “writing”, but instead, I am listening. There is a deep and profound mystery at the core of song creation, a sacred riddle. Each song makes requests of me, through my knowing, my gut, or solar plexus. My job is to remain authentic. It is the third chakra that helps me get rid of my lies. When I write untruths into a song and stray from the path of authenticity, my gut feels it. It senses the falseness and sends me a message to work harder. My job as a songwriter then, is to rid my song of my dishonesty. This is neither simple nor easy - the process is almost always one of discovery. I must work to see what I have not yet seen. Every song is a new beginning, a new life entering the world."
My experience with book writing is much like songwriting. I seem to be following the trail of something that wants to exist in a certain form, and my job is to receive it. As I write a chapter, the chapter becomes ripe and heavy and splits into the next chapter, like fruit falling off a tree. The process is rather amazing!
As always, thank you for being a part of my journey.
~ Mary Gauthier
