February 3, 2012
Posted in Creative Fire, On Writing, Pagan Blog Project 2012
at 10:34 pm
by Shefyt
(I wasn’t sure I would be able to squeeze out this Pagan Blog Project post. Because the songs just wouldn’t stop coming….)
Kemet is rife with creator Gods, and we, their children, are creators too. Our words take on life, the breath of our mouths as we speak or sing or laugh; our hands with their skill give form, color, and texture; our bodies are eloquent in movement, tracing the shapes of our emotions, our patterns of our relationship to the space around us. Even if we don’t necessarily consider ourselves “artists” or “talented” — we write, we draw, we do crafts, we sing alone in the car, we arrange our homes or our rooms or our shrines, we collect things and put them together in ways that speak to us, we weave magic and rituals, we build, code, problem-solve, design, embellish, and adorn. And so much more. In so many ways, we shape worlds, and we fill them with what’s in our hearts.
Writing is my own main form of creativity, although I also dabble in various others. Whatever form it takes, though, my creativity tends to be compulsive, cyclical, and all-consuming. I get swept up by what I’ve taken to calling “enthusiasms,” which feel very much like what I imagine the Celtic experience of “fire in the head” must be. (“Fire of the sun” in a Kemetic context, I suppose. Or maybe “fire of Sia.”) Once I’m struck, there’s no letting go until the energy has burned through me. And then it passes, and I don’t quite know what to do with myself until the next round begins.
Sometimes it can be exhausting. Especially when I’m working on a song and I end up singing a tune over and over and over waiting for the words to come — my voice gives out, my brain feels hot and raw, scraped by the repetition of half-finished lines, and I just want to whimper, “Please, God, make it stop!” But I don’t really want it to stop. Because then I would miss the extraordinary joy and triumph of accomplishment when the work is finally done and ready for me to let it go. That feeling never dims, never gets old. Each creation is unique in its process, its challenges, its significance. Each one shines with its own light.
The work is part of my service, too, to my Mother Bast and all the Gods. Whether it be songs or poetry, fiction or blog posts, plays or rituals, it’s one of the gifts that I have to offer. I always hope that some reader finds pleasure in it, or insight, or fellowship, or even a moment’s distraction. But even if no one ever read me at all, I think I would still have to dance with the words. For the sake of connecting with and telling the story of whatever it is that inspires me. For the sake of the worlds that want to be born.
A glowing ball of pulsating light
that fills up the space before the dark night,
the thing that shines on the world below
and on me and you, wherever we go.
— my first poem, written at age seven
All You Creator Gods, may You bless the work of our hands and hearts! Dua Netjer!
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November 10, 2010
Posted in Creative Fire, On Writing, Thoughts and Reflections
at 9:46 pm
by Shefyt
A briefly golden morning, the sun slanting upward through a narrow gap in the overcast east to emblaze hilltops, thinning cloud trails, the highest branches of the trees. A lotus-light, fleeting and magical.
Last month I wrote my fiftieth song for the Netjeru.* I’m still a little incredulous at this, considering that I’d never imagined I would be writing songs at all. And it was for Amun-Ra, who started the whole thing nearly four years ago, as I knelt before His shrine and wondered aloud what special service I could do for Him. Sing! He told me emphatically, and from that moment, that first awkward, self-conscious rendition of the House of Netjer classic “Ankh, Ujda, Seneb,” which was the only vaguely appropriate song that I knew at the time, has somehow arisen a whole repertoire of songs for many different Gods and festivals.
The sources of creativity are certainly mysterious! But it makes perfect sense that it would be Amun-Ra who set me on this path. As the syncretism of Amun and Ra, He’s always seemed to me an embodiment — an en-God-ment? — of the creative process itself, the journey that extends from the Hidden to the Manifest, from the first leaping electricity of connection and inspiration to the particular luminosity of the finished work. And now that I’ve been reminded of this, I plan to offer my nonmusical writing projects to Him and to seek His help in getting those off the ground as well.
Dua Amun-Ra, Lord of the Hidden Wind, Lord of the Radiant Sun! May You bless all the works of my mind and imagination!
—–
Photo of my Amun-Ra shrine, with the statue featuring the new plumes that I *finally* made for Him this past summer (detail; click photo for the full shrine.).
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* And in the time it’s taken me to get around to writing this post, I’m already up to song #53. Note to self: Life does not stand still and wait for you to blog about it.
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October 19, 2009
Posted in Home and Temple, On Writing, The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections
at 4:43 pm
by Shefyt
On Sunday I went for a walk down the road and around the school, the first time in a long while that I’ve taken that particular walk. I often go for similar walks on my lunch break at work, around the university campus, down by the lake or along the canal, but they don’t have the sense of exhilaration that yesterday’s walk did. Was it something in the wind? Or was it because it was that wind, gusting down the length of the valley, that sky arching overhead, from hillside to hillside, that roll of the land and the rivers, the scattering of orange leaves like a drift of fire on the hill leading up to the cow farm’s main house, the pines along the athletic fields swaying against the ragged and illuminated clouds? Because it felt like coming home?
I’d never even realized that I’d been away, and yet, in some sense, I was. And is it a coincidence that I also spent much of the day writing, something that I’d been too busy or too anxious to do for a long time? There are a lot of distractions, a lot of ways to be absent to one’s self and one’s life.
O Netjer, may I be truly present. May I live. May I live.
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