The flame in your temple

My mother loved going to concerts. One of her motivations here had little, or only obliquely, to do with the music. Rather it was that, as she confessed, "I like to fall in love with the soloist." She was capable of falling, and did fall, in love with painters, sculptors, filmmakers - so long as they were celebrated. So Dalí and Picasso were "geniuses" [speak the word with terrifying reverence] and, as far as I am aware, to this day she wishes for none other than Ludwig von Beethoven to welcome her personally when she arrives on the other side.

The human love of human 'stars' has, probably, everything to do with being overcome momentarily with the feeling that you've champagne, or even the cosmos itself, in your veins, rather than blood. However, I do wonder whether this feeling is aroused by the artwork you're apparently appreciating, rather than by the contiguity you find yourself in, beside awestruck fellow humans, all of them in a thoroughly heightened state. Mob mentality does not kick in only when it comes to demagoguery, violence and war.

In the arts, rock concerts have exploited this human weakness - the deliciousness, the necessity, even, of losing the self - to an extreme. The Dionysian frenzy that fans whip up in their orgasmic surrender, to whoever it is they are united in worshipping at that moment, has been obligatory for at least as long as we have had electricity - though several millennia back, thousands of ancient Greeks would apparently weep and tear their hair in unison on seeing Oedipus Rex or the Medea, performed live in their amphitheatres. The very word 'fan', used in this sense, derives from 'fanatic', which originally meant a "mad, enthusiastic person inspired by a god" and, even nowadays, is not imbued with wholesome meaning. 

It is naturally cathartic to self-forget, to lose oneself to something that is blissful or terrible, overwhelming and literally awesome. What worries me when it comes to fanship, however, beyond the excessive enthusiasm it can stoke, is the one-way-street of stardom.

At times, it feels to me as if we've lost touch with our primitive (wholesome) worship of the sun, stars, moon and planets, because we've put human beings in the place of the heavenly bodies - sacrificing how many new Prometheuses to be daily divested of their livers? For, as everybody knows, the industry of fame can be a gory one indeed.

What worries me, perhaps most, about that industry, is that it transactionalises love. The lovers are turned into a clientèle, whose hunger is fanned by their own fanship, which is by definition a state of being in which you do not inhabit yourself. Indeed, who remembers to nourish their own flame when super-ignited by spectacle and sound effects, heated by a fired up crowd? Nowadays, this kind of experience is available 24/7 via video footage with shrieking applause and mind-numbing lighting aerobics.

There is naturally a place for (harmless) madness in this world, and music fests are a cheery way of allowing us to express that madness. I share reverence for a particularly good phrase or piece of writing, or piece of art or music and, along with other poets and performers, I do love mesmerising an audience with my voice at times. But what matters ultimately is surely what is stirred in you, rather than what is happening outside of you? A resonance, a flame that continues burning even when the lights dim down and everything is quiet again.

The Latin word fanum, whence 'fanatic' comes, meant 'temple', 'shrine' or 'consecrated place'. If my work should enjoy devotees, I would hope that it's because I've managed to introduce you to a consecrated place inside your own precious soul - helping you to remember, rather than forget, your dear self.

Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash

'Lovelight' (ceramic by Silke Heiss)

S.O.S.! Respect for the soul at work

About two and a half weeks ago, my friend, Tony, from the days when we both still lived in Hogsback, called out of the blue.

Out of that day's unclouded sky, Tony brought renewed focus into my mind's unexpecting eye.

He asked me to clarify Table Love. He said he is busy writing about Table Love, because he feels it's important for people, for the world.

In that moment, he did something important for me: he took me back to a ritual, which my late husband, the poet Norman Morrissey, and I began for the first time on the 3rd of July 2010. It was really simple. We sat down together at his big oak table and absorbed ourselves into a companionable solitariness. Each listened to what came to him or her out of the silence. When something arrived that was more or less pleasing, true, satisfying, playful or significant, we wrote it down. In silence.

Whoever finished first, waited quietly, for as long as it took the other to complete 'their thing' - thought-string, piece, or poem. When both pens had been re-capped, we read our 'things' out to one another. Invariably we hummed and gave our sense, our understanding of what the other had done. Sometimes we commented, made suggestions, and sometimes we praised one another's creations. So there was a natural flow from companionable, silent solitude to sharing, responding and communicating.

There is nothing quite like sharing an absorbed, creative silence with another or, indeed, with others.

It occurred to me, after talking to my friend, that the Hiku Hikes are really extensions of Table Love, with the added benefit of being outdoors and susceptible to all the fresh air and stimuli offered there. In the Hiku Hikes, too, we move from silence to sharing, to further silent work, to further subsequent sharing. It's dynamic, peaceful and stimulating, nourishing both individual and communal needs.

The single most crucial aspect of both Table Love and the Hiku Hikes, I would say, is respect for the space of another human soul at work. The soul works in the dimension of what is sometimes known as 'the dreamwork', that is to say, in a dimension that is temporarily independent of pressing or immediate worries and concerns, a dimension whose concern is a lucid state of consciousness, whereby time and space are inhabited simultaneously without undue friction, and without the body necessarily being in action.

When you are truly engaged on a creative level, you cannot think yourself into another space, nor another time, than the one you are inhabiting at that moment. In other words, a kind of unification takes place between body, mind, heart and spirit. I venture that it is that unification, or unity, which we call soul. It is frequently felt as deep concentration - the choice of the word 'concentration' for this state of being-doing is not accidental. All parts of us are brought to a common centre or fulcrum. 

When a person has had no opportunity for and no experience of this, they cannot understand this process. A person who keeps their dreams away from the everyday, indeed, away from themselves, who is unaware of the needs of their soul, will automatically suffer impatience, there is a restlessness that prevents them from giving themselves or the other person silence and proper solitude. With this inbuilt lack of generosity and lack of respect for Time and Space, our industrialised, digitalised modern culture has been, to quite a large extent, dangerous to the dreamwork, if not lethal to the soul.

The peculiar need to throw stones into the still ponderings of others is motivated by mischievous jealousy and greed, not for anything material, but for the substance of their souls. It connects to a need to own the other person's time and space and to command it. It consumes what the other has, because oneself does not have it. Many people are anxious to prevent others from having what they themselves do not have. And many more compulsively inflict injury on others to avenge injuries they themselves have borne and have not tended to, let alone healed.

Human beings everywhere are doing what we can to remedy the situation in numerous ways, we are, many of us, occupied with the vital question of how to save our souls. The open secret, of course, is that it is for each of us to save our own, hence the emergence of healing modalities, such as soul retrieval, somatic trauma release, mindfulness workshops; bringing in fresh concepts and vocabulary to assist understanding, such as 'enneagram' and 'ecopsychology'; along with truly mindboggling advances globally in overall emotional and psychological literacy for everyman and -woman, for everygirl and -boy.

To paraphrase Pearl S. Buck, where the human soul used to be the most underdeveloped terrain on earth, it has become a hotspot of attention for the very good reason that reason alone has proved to be not enough!

It is a question of protecting the creative self, of preserving the creative flame, for it alone is the carrier of human souls forward. That, and the freedom of laughter, playfulness. Such insight comes not in garrulous, excited, or fretful company, but murmurs in the unruffled privacy of ponderings.

by Silke Heiss, published in Greater Matter

by Silke Heiss, published in Greater Matter.
The playful layout is thanks to Flow Wellington of Poetree Publications.