Writing and Health

Yesterday I held a talk on the Moon Con 23 Spring event with my publisher Moon Books who have taken 'Story Compass' and 'Trees are our Letters' out into the world. (Thank you Moon Books!) The talk was about the Bardic nature and trees. As I prepared for the talk, I went for a run to see the trees in my locality. I have been running around my neighbourhood a few times a week for a year and four months now. These trees are becoming more and more familiar to me and I have a few I would consider as significant friends. I didn't want what I was presenting in the conference to sound too contrived. So I worked out that if I could go for a run just before to be with trees then maybe I could bring them through into the talk and what they want to convey in this world would somehow come first.

In the talk, I did feel like they were holding me within something much wider. Yet again, I am reminded of the continual journey I have of having to 'get out of the way' of a lot of my ideas about things in order to let through something much more intelligent, nature-ful and deep. I do believe that when I open up to my Bardic nature, as Martha Graham writes, I am keeping the channel open. I feel myself in communion with a bigger soul that through the act of writing can reconnect my soul with its true longing. I am chaperone of a harmony that through me, you and everything is calling to come alive in or world.

Another thing I have been doing this month, is help my friend Ewan to create a documentary about queer stand up comedy in Glasgow. Through the act of enquiring and then listening, I am beginning to really appreciate some of the unique and heartfelt challenges within this community. I have been behind the camera and in one instance have taken the role of the interviewer. It is a touching and insightful experience as I watch the contributors excavate findings around this process of writing material that is delivered as stand up comedy stories and lines. The powerful impact of this material on the individual and our wider society is obvious.

A personal writing task that has taken shape, is the picking up of a novel I began 27 years ago to this month make into a short film. This is just the beginning as there will be a few versions that will in the end I know, tap into a wider myth. I began to write this novel at the age of 29, around the time of my Saturn Return and at a significant breaking point in my life. I flet like I was writing it to save my life. At that point, I didn't know what else I could do. I currently approach my second Saturn Return and following a couple of months of some health issues that have slowed me down . This all got me thinking how for myself and so many of us, writing is a necessary act of resurrection and it will bring ourselves and the world back into balance again. Writing is for health.

I used to think writing was an insular thing. But through time and through the countless stories, books and courses that have come through me over the years, I can really see clearly that writing is a funnel from wider fields. This funnel sieves the cosmos and zeitgeist through symbols of alphabet that will reach your eyes and careful mouth shaping and tongued oracles that travel to your ears with sound. Writing is for health. Writing sets us free.

Photo: The House of the Mysteries, Pompei (Carrie Day)