Inspiration

Aug 20 2012

You need not think

about your next breath.

The content of air.

The reflex

of letting in

and emptying.

The muscle memory

that separates

life from death.

3 minutes, more or less,

the hunger for air

the struggle against

constricting darkness.

Every second of your life

just that far

from the end.

3 score and 10,

measured out

in increments of breath;

 … the last

         … the next.

And like other automatic acts

of superbly trained bodies, the prepared mind,

you must distract yourself

from thought.

Do not contemplate

mortality

the cruelty of chance.

Imagine only

what lasts.

 As the title suggests, this poem is essentially about the act of creation (even though this was one of those poems that was actually much more of the  perspiration than the inspiration variety!)

In particular, it’s about that sought after quality of “automatic” writing that can best be described as channelling:  when you sit back, and watch it flow from the tip of the pen as you were simply a spectator.

In sports, they talk about muscle memory:  how you have to let go, surrender to your training in order to fluidly swing a golf club or baseball bat; how if you analyze or break it down into steps, the swing falls apart.

It strikes me that this is analogous to what goes on in the brain in that highly desirable state of flow:  you prepare, repeat, train; and then, when it’s working, something that feels as if it’s outside of you takes over.

Another kind of automaticity – that of breathing – provides the framework for the poem. The mundane act of breathing is taken for granted and mostly done thoughtlessly. We rarely pay attention to the 3 minute margin. This is not necessarily a bad thing. If one were fixated on mortality, on this incredibly tenuous life-line, one could hardly function. Without this kind of letting go, life would fall apart as badly as the swing:  nothing creative or worthwhile would ever get done.

Essentially, I set out to write about muscle memory. And how it struck me that this was analogous to the brain in its most creative state. And to somehow manage to do it without this becoming (degenerating into?) a baseball poem!