Creation

After Forrest died, a few of us got together to buy a piano for St Gregory’s Church in Woodstock, New York. The church hosted excellent concerts and a good instrument would make those concerts even better. We wanted to offer something lasting and meaningful in Forrest’s memory. I could play it every now and then, too, which was comforting. Coming up with words of dedication for a small brass plaque above Middle C was hard. What was it that I wanted to say?

I imagined pianists sitting there into the future – children and adults – hoping they would pause a moment to wonder who this Forrest person was, and what the words on the plaque could mean. In the end, I wrote:

In Joyful Memory of Forrest
create and be created

I’ve always thought that creating something changed me; made me more of myself. Better in many ways. More content, human, and connected. There’s no better place for me to feel these things than at the piano. I wished that for others. Still do. Whether it’s with paint, words, dance, or more broadly, with whatever work a person chooses to do. For me, all of living is creation.

Last week, I discovered a book called Mr g written by Alan Lightman who is a physicist and teacher of humanities at MIT. A brainiac, in other words. The premise of the novel is that God, (Mr g) wakes up one day (the concept of a “day” not yet being a thing) with an urge to create the universe. Using all the known science at the time (2012), Lightman writes about the very beginning of everything: the choices Mr g made as the creator, how he made those choices, why, and what happened as a result. There’s a bad guy too. It’s a powerful (and funny) read. I’m sharing it here because on page 84 Mr g thinks to himself How was it possible that something I’d created from my own being was now larger than my being? Is it possible that the created can create its creator? Bingo! That’s what I’d been thinking twenty+ years ago when I put create and be created on our piano’s plaque.

Sometimes I get so down about my decreasing level of energy or desire to create anything that I become paralyzed. Today is one of those days. It’s been raining on and off and icy for the last couple of weeks and I feel uninspired and apathetic. But Lightman’s book offered relevant encouragement this morning. I recommend it if you like this sort of thing. I’ll leave you with the text from the first page. Like Mr g, I went back to bed this afternoon. The thought of coming up with something for this blog or working on a certain stubborn song of mine, was just too much. Just writing you now has proven the point. Thank you.

As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.

            Not much was happening at that time. As a matter of fact, time didn’t exist. Nor space. When you looked out into the Void, you were really looking at nothing more than your own thought. And if you tried to picture wind or stars or water, you could not give form or texture to your notions.

            Those things did not exist. Smooth, rough, waxy, sharp, prickly, brittle—even qualities such as these lacked meaning. Practically everything slept in an infinite torpor of potentiality. I knew that I could make whatever I wanted. But that was the problem. Unlimited possibilities bring unlimited indecision. When I thought about this particular creation or that, uncertain about how each thing would turn out, I grew anxious and went back to sleep. But at a particular moment, I managed…if not exactly to sweep aside my doubts, at least to take a chance.

Taken from Mr g, ©2012 Alan Lightman, Vintage Books.