CREATIVITY

An artist's most intense work is done in silence
When nothing seems to be happening
Waiting, waiting, waiting
For some unknown, unspoken
Voice to have her say, to make her contribution
Sing her song of joy
Giving new life to the creative process

The spontaneity of of writing, whether it be poetry, prose or song lyrics is one of the surprises in life  that makes me smile.  This surprise greeted me again in a text from a fellow artist when I offered him a musical analogy for living with cerebral palsy.  The comparison just "popped" into my head as I remember writing a poem to accompany a grad student's atonal music composition for his final to receive his Master's Degree.  My poem was an insert in the program that  day now lost in my memory.  I'm sure there is a copy of it somewhere among journals on my book shelves.

I am engaged in writing as I haven't been in many  years as I am allowing a friend   to read, comment and suggest changes as I write.  This adds a new dimension to learning more about myself as an author, a woman and a friend.  I am learning that I had absorbed some of the stereotypes society had fed me about cerebral palsy and my race that were never true.  I carried these false self images around as if  they were part of my identity and somehow entitled me to special favors.  Now that those misconceptions have been exposed, I can discard them like old clothing to ragged to even give away.
This is yet another wonderful thing about having a creative way of expression.  A mirror is held up to myself as well as to an audience and  the deceptions we have lived with, if we allow them, can fall away in an instant.