Awenydd at the Crossroads
by
Charlotte Hussey
To borrow a definition from Eric Maisel, “creators are hushed wild people” (13). A poet, for example, needs a quiet mind, quiet as a pool to dive into, searching for that hidden cave filled with a treasure hoard of her own authentic questions and meanings. But she also needs to be as wild as the Awenydd of old. Unfortunately, we live in an age driven by that cliché: “strive for excellence,” the excellence, say, of anyone graduating from a creative writing program. Look, Ma, I can write 100 pages in perfectly rhymed couplets. Don’t get me wrong. I am not against technique, but technical perfectionism and stylistic correctness are often the very things that dampen creative audacity.
How to become that naked, as naked as Myrddin Wyllt and his little pig running through the forest? Some have managed it. Georgia O’Keeffe retreated into a little shanty where she painted naked. Mark Chagall took off his pants to paint in his Paris studio, and Victor Hugo, when blocked, called upon his servant to disrobe him. Hugo wrote naked and free.
Another quote from Maisel that I love is “Wildness is the heat, tameness the thermostat” (22). We need to care for our wildness, ground it, and channel it. Wildness run rampant leads to toxic dramas, substance abuse, overdoses and, for example, in Kurt Cobain’s case: suicide.
Inspired by R.J. Stewart’s writings, I am initiating myself into faery by writing a poetry manuscript whose spine is “The Ballad of Tam Lyn.” By this I mean, I am weaving my own autobiography along with materials from the deep and recent past into a poetic collage of sorts. So I’ll end with a bit of the “Tam Lyn” tale as a metaphoric investigating into how a contemporary Awenydd might become “a hushed wild person” (Maisel 13). Sassy, impulsive Janet disobeys her father and rushes off to the woods of Carterhaugh to meet with the reportedly thieving rapist Tam Lyn. Once pregnant, Janet tries to abort their child. Here she swings between rebellious impulsiveness and an aftermath of self-punishment as its corrective.
Tam Lyn persuades Janet not to go through with the abortion, but to rescue him from the Faery Queen. To do so, Janet must exhibit great courage and self-discipline. She is told to go alone to a crossroads, made more perilous by the fact it is Halloween, the Night of the Dead. She is to pull Tam Lyn from a white horse. Pulling him away from the faery rade, she must hold him in her arms, as he transforms into various frightening shapes:
First they’ll change me in your arms
into some snake or adder.
Hold me close and fear me not,
I’m your child’s father.
Then they’ll turn me in your arms
into a lion wild.
Hold me close and fear me not,
just as you’d hold your child.
Then they’ll turn me in your arms
into a red-hot bar of iron.
Hold me close and fear me not
for I will do no harm.
Then they’ll turn me in your arms
into some burning lead.
Throw me into the well water.
Throw me in with speed.
(Stewart 176)
Aren’t the wild beasts and fiery metals all the chaotic possibilities the Awen brings with it? Which does one choose to hold onto before they all burn away? Won’t you singe your palms, if you throw the burning lead into well water? Still, isn’t this a way to temper the fire in your head for your art?
*
Eric Maisel. Fearless Creating. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1995.
R. J. Stewart, “Young Tam Lyn,” The Underworld Initiation, Lake Toxaway, NC: Mercury Publishing, 1998.