Creative Block… at Lughnasadh?

I know enough artists and writers to understand the suffering of creative block. In the madness of the current age, when we feel compelled to be continually and consistently productive, there is a disconnect from the natural flow of things.

It is entirely natural to experience the fallow time, and to need to rest, re-stock and in so doing be creative by making empty space for new ideas to grow. People who are deeply connected to the flow of the seasons, like Druids, understand this well, and as Samhain and the death of the old year approaches, retreat to their physical and psychic hearthfires for the dark, dreaming time and all the potentiality it holds. There is great acceptance in this, and even some exhilaration, and of course that deep peace that comes when we live in tune with the energy of the Earth itself.

To experience this at a time near to Lughnasadh, the first festival of the harvest, when the Earth is giving up her bounty abundantly, seems very odd. But that is where I am right now. And I am struggling to accept it – so am eating the words I offer to artist friends who complain of it during the winter time! Where is my Awen, the ‘holy grail’ we Druids seek, the divine inspiration which flows into our souls when we find it?

In the Song of Amergin, the bard Amergin of the mythic Irish race of the Tuatha de Danann, pours forth his Imbas, the Irish word for Awen, when he sets foot upon the shores of Ireland. The words “I am the god who puts fire in the head’ (which incidentally are all over the walls of Bewley’s tea rooms in Dublin, something I discovered to my delight) describe the creative process really well. When the fire is dwindling, embers, a pile of ashes in the hearth, or just a smoky cloud, the bard feels unsighted, disempowered, frustrated. The sharp sword of the creative flow has fallen from their fingers, and they are lost.

So we must seek to rekindle the fire in the head, the Imbas, the Awen. In preparing to do so, I am categorising old writings – and like all things we make – some things I like a lot, and some is cluttered, uninspired, clumsy, so it is going in the virtual bin. I found a poem I wrote on a workshop at the Druid Camp a few years ago, which speaks to me of the the death-in-life nature of Lughnasadh – whilst the earth is alive and all things are being brought to potential, there is also death and loss. Some things will never come to fruition, they will be forever lost. Just as some of my seeds never germinated, and a good many of my seedlings were given up to the earth in the form of slugs and pests – this is way of nature, and is to accepted and celebrated.

Thistledown on the Wind

Ripe, you break free
from that which holds you
in reality. Seeking truth.
Turning, ready to be reaped
from the body of the Earth.
Turning, struggling to birth,
pulsing, warm in mother love.
Becoming, or losing it?
Ripe, but lost, seeds
scattered in the wind.