The Seriousness of Magic

Mount Grace

This weekend, the Butler and I went to an open air production of Sense and Sensibility set on the grounds of Mount Grace Priory, a National Heritage site.  Mount Grace itself can be seen across the fields on some of Big Nose Dog’s walks; the names of two houses in our village boast of a priory view, now obliterated by mature trees.  

Places like Mount Grace call on us to create magic, I think.  If you’re not sure what I mean, could you walk through these grounds and not imagine what went on there?  That’s our innate ability to be in our minds where our bodies are not.  That has to be magic, does it not?

Butler & Sis in front of chapel

The site’s history that I know, starts with a fourteenth century Carthusian charterhouse that survived only a little over 140 years of religious contemplation.  Then Henry VIII sent Mount Grace on its travels through various owners to the Lowthian-Bell family who gave us Gertrude Bell. 

There’s a woman whose life makes the jaw drop.  Up in the manor's attic, you can see where someone recorded the children’s heights, look at old family photos and listen to staff talk about Gertrude; you won’t be thinking about monks and a fat old profligate wanting a son, although all those things happened here.

Magic.  Imagine putting on open air theatre in such a place.

The Hamper

The Butler packed a picnic for the masses, although there were only we two.  We stowed canvas chairs and hamper and rug into Little Car, had to park in the overflow area, so many people had come, and a few of those on foot.  We claimed a space on a little rise at the back, across from the old Carthusian guest house.

The audience included people from the Point to Point set who brought fold-away tables covered with fabric cloths, dressed in their Dubarry boots and wool jackets and stockman riding coats, although the group to our right put an eighteenth century spin on the dress code.  Here were the considered-successful of the community, some, like the Butler, with serious day jobs, yet the desire for fun, for magic, it sizzled through the audience with childhood intensity. 

The group next to us

Neil Gaiman writes in his latest book that none of us are adults, rather children inside adult bodies.  Those of us who openly admit our need to create, to imagine and pretend well into adulthood, we’re the ones who put on the period dress, pack two desserts inside the hamper (well, four, if you count the Betty's cakes and how could you not), drink champagne from children's cups.

Humans ache for opportunities to create, whether it’s decorating the house, writing a play, sitting at a National Heritage site to watch an open air performance that helps us imagine another life in another time.  It’s a fine line, though, for those of us who are driven to create.  More is asked of us, perhaps unfairly so.

Because we have the temerity to put our creations on show, we cannot purely create with the abandon of children, nor even stop at thinking about grammar and structure, the indelible dramatic arc.  More important than bringing forth the myths inside us, we’re told the world now wants us to count Twitter followers, blog hits, Likes and RTs.  It’s the high school game of popularity taken to a fiscal level.  Be in, rather than be creative.

For some of you, the two are the same.  For me, it’s hard work.  There’s many a good intentioned person who’s crossed my path to utter several Don’ts about what I write or how I write or even that I write.  

I thank whatever deity who hangs around me, that none of those naysayers actually live in my house, because it becomes harder and harder as I read a blog about self publishing or how to utilise social media, for me to keep the fun in what I’m doing.  If those horrid little voices lived inside the Writing Closet, I’d probably set fire to the  thing and start taking copious doses of Valium.

I don’t want my myths or voice to be critiqued into someone else’s idea of what I  should say. 

The open air performance itself could be hailed as good-enough theatre, an assessment that might disappoint some to hear.  But for me, it was a great success because it was great fun.  Nature graced us with a soft rain during the second half, as well as a serious owl fight somewhere on the hillside; bats kept flitting close to the stage and nary an eighteenth century lady flinched. 

When the play ended, we gathered up our things by torchlight, I stopped between the manor and the chapel just to look, and it impacted me viscerally, what it would've been like to step out the back door at night as a child and see the Priory’s ruins. 

‘How magical it must’ve been,’ I told the Butler.

And it’s that magic that I struggle to hold onto.

A Dearth of Magic

When the yellow knobs of aconite show themselves in February, they usually bring that feeling of, I’ve made it!  Well, my aconite are sunny of face, the snowdrops are huddled in gossipy clumps around the garden and Sir Lawrence Olivier keeps muttering about my winter of discontent not being over yet, toots.  It feels like a reality overload, to be honest.  Never a good thing for a writer.

I’m quite happy that civilisation evolves but we as a race do seem to be detoxing ourselves of magic.  Did you see Channel 4’s special on Richard III?  Whatever the truth is, the story as presented by Channel 4 is that a woman named Philippa Langley runs an international organisation to study and promote the history of Richard III as a benevolent king.  In this country, that seems a bit looney, which unfortunately is how Langley is presented.  The show is moderated by a comedian and has several clips of Philippa becoming emotional when scientific information is given to her.  By the end of the program, the scientists themselves aren’t making eye contact with Philippa and deliver their findings to the comedian instead.

What is said early in the program, but glossed over is that the Ricardian organisation did legitimate research to locate Richard’s grave, raised substantial money to fund the dig.  Philippa stands in the parking lot and points out where she thinks the grave is, which causes titters, not least because the spot coincidentally has a large R over it.  When the skeleton is subsequently uncovered there, Philippa says, without evidence, That’s him.  And she’s right.

I don’t know Philippa Langley, but the therapist in me has seen too much magic in the most unexpected places, when it comes to anything human.  What I am somewhat versed in is Carl Jung’s theory of personality.  Most theories in the behavioural sciences get their share of the poo-poo, but Jung’s theory has an interdisciplinary acceptance in business and education as well as in psychology.  A personality test based on Jung’s theories, the Myers-Briggs, is used by HR departments for screening perspective employees and team building.  There’s even a TED talk on Jung’s concept of introvert/extravert in terms of learning styles.

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

What we don’t hear about much is Jung’s idea of the intuitive.  This is someone who knows, let’s say, that an English king is buried under the parking lot over at Social Services without geophys or DNA results.  A bit mad, you say?  Not so, says the Myers-Briggs, but a measurable human function for processing information.  Philippa Langley didn’t walk out her door and get a message from God.  She did years of well grounded research and reached a conclusion using a roadmap the archaeologists don’t believe in.

Einstein said that, ‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.  We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.’  In my interpretation of Einstein, science is here to prove that intuition is right.  The two need work together to find a king’s burial spot, to write, to make magic, to live.

As writers (or artists, actors, musicians) in a time when money is tight, culture of low status, we are asked more and more to count beans, to promote and market, to enter the world of commerce and sell our magic to the unbelieving.  We are given less and less time to play, to ponder, to dance in fire pits and listen to owls.  No one in the vast wasteland outside our offices, studios, attic garrets is going to give our magic a priority.  We have to stake our claim, hold onto it as the life’s blood that it is.

In the frenzy which is the writer’s life, give yourself some calm.  Resist interrupting your staring-in-space work with the pressures of housework.  Give yourself suggestions before you go to bed to hash out that difficult scene or put some order to your blog on magic.  Write a journal to the right side of your brain about what you’d like it to communicate to the left side of the brain.  Face your demons and let them scare you.  Remember to laugh.  Congregate with other writers.

Our society needs magic.  Don’t let anyone wrest it from your hands.  Do your research.  Hug a scientist.  Balance your bank statement.  Cite Carl Jung and TED talks to support your position.  Then make your magic.  No one else’s.  Your magic.  The rest of us need you.