The world is a waiting lover.

From: Writing Into the Silence

First class, First exercise

A.

Listening exercise. Eyes open. Just listen.

Then follow a single sound as it disappears back into silence.

Again.

Now listen to the sounds within the room.

Now listen to the sounds beyond the room.

As they mingle– near/far, human/animal/machine... sounds of nature, wind... Feel how sounds extend the sensation of space. Not only opening distance, but shape and layers.

Hold it all in your attention on listening.

Can you hear/sense the silence around and behind the sounds? The silence that holds sound, and allows sound to arise and fall away.?

Synesthesia: with your eyes open you may find that motion and sound begin to combine within your imagination. What about other senses? Smell, taste... Can you hold it all in your listening attention, and listen to motion, color, etc?

Where are you? Listening from an inner silence?

B

Go and find a space from which to listen. Take some time just listening, and let listening empty you. Empty yourself into the silence that holds these sounds.

Sounds occur. They arise and fall away--inside the great empty space of silence.

This silence is not the absence of sound. Silence is not inside of anything

A sound is not a thing because it happens and it ends. Perhaps it is an event. The silence does not happen or end.

Listen. These sounds have nothing to do with you, the small you, the you that is planning and thinking, hoping, worrying, remembering.

Try to listen until the sounds are not out there (and not in you either, not now)

Listen as if you are among them. When you are ready, from this attentive silence, write the first image that comes to mind. No matter what comes. And follow it, as if you were listening to your own mind uncurl--wherever it goes. Twenty minutes.

C.

Return. Discuss.

Now, opening what you have written, using white space as a visual cue for "silence"

copy what you wrote, taking up much more space on the paper. Write on every other line. Big margins. One side of page. No punctuation. Separate into phrases– we aren't looking for line breaks here, just smaller units of sense. Don't worry about it too much – there are infinite ways to break it, and each one will yield a different result.

Read this slowly to yourself– with pauses. "Hear" the words against the silence. Read again.

To disclose what is present.

What is this about? Can you surprise yourself with an answer that rises before thinking/spontaneously, even irrationally.

Stay with that. Write a few words about that.

Then: "What about x?"

And" "What about y?"

Ask it questions, good, open neutral questions.

D.

Break.

Return and ask again- what is this about? Receive a very different answer. There are so many ways into a new piece of writing. When we close down too quickly we miss the various directions that open.

E.

Voluntary reading aloud. We listen once, then have it read again, making notes the second time. To say: "what does this seem to be about?"

Different sensibilities. Hearing differently, each of us taking in different aspects.
There is a silence of possibility, an emptiness of potential behind, around, and within everything we create.

To disclose what is present:

Read very slowly, giving time to the spaces.

Repeat lines. Move your lips. Let it become strange, turning over and over. A chant, a magic summons, a grocery list...

Words become clear/ they become nonsense. All of that is present.

Images separate, they meld. They shapeshift. Tone changes. Lift your eyes. Return. Echoes of other voices below and woven through this voice. What is present here? Unfathomable, even this fragment, quickly produced from a prompt exercise, holds more than you can realize (make real.)

Now give up looking for the meaning. Let the crazy richness of it come forward.

Realize how limited, and limiting, your meanings were. Again and still, disclose what is present. The present. It changes when you look at it.

What was present when you wrote this is now scattered and absorbed in this. Something else becomes present. It changes when you read it. What are these images?

So clear, so strange.

The Sunday Writing Retreats have filled. Thank you all so much!

"Find a place in yourself that you trust and try trusting it for awhile."

                                                                                 John Cage

Sample workshop descriptions:


TRANCE WORK FOR WRITERS
  

Reverie, trance, alpha, open focus, flow, contemplation, daydream... our brains move naturally in and out of various states in any given day, though we're often not even aware of these shifts in consciousness. Yet how we focus our attention is one of the most important elements in realizing any creative work. In this course we will learn to produce and to recognize our own trance states in order to use our brains more deliberately. Focusing exercises will lead directly into guided writing in poetry or prose forms. We will write daily and prolifically, and share what we've written with generous curiosity.

Open to all, from beginners to advanced. Visual artists are warmly invited to join this course with the understanding that actual class work will focus on writing exercises. We will write daily and prolifically, and share what we have written with generous attention. (You don't need to bring anything to this workshop, but if you have some nice unfinished writing you're willing to mess with this might add an extra pound of fun to your word play.)

Sample workshop descriptions. This is for a one-hour workshop, unlike the others which are designed for five, ten, or more meetings.

IT MUST CHANGE

Wallace Stevens' second dictum for poetry in "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" is "It Must Change." Often in our writing the desire to complete a statement, stick with a central image or stay inside a narrative leads us to close off other avenues that would enrich our writing. We will explore the idea of change, divergence, interruption, non sequitor and parallel themes in a brief discussion with two examples from well-known poems. Then I will lead the group through an exercise that demonstrates the power of these options. A brief free-write, followed by a second that returns to the same piece from a different starting point will help writers get first hand experience of allowing this type of change in a poem.

            "Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration... [shining] down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces consistently good, mediocre, and bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects... All great artists and thinkers [are] great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering."

                                    Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

Sample Workshop Descriptions

WRITING INTO THE SILENCE

Cynthia Huntington

Writing Into the Silence

9-12

Silence precedes, surrounds, and follows speech. In the space between objects, thoughts and breaths is the silence from which everything arises. No matter how much we are filled with noise, silence is always present. Empty of sound, it is at the same time filled with presence and possibility. When we go toward this silence our thoughts widen and relax and our efforts can open into exploration.

Exercises, readings and optional take-home assignments will offer ways to find new passageways into deeper places in the mind where inspiration begins, before the noise in the world and inside the mind makes it hard to hear.

This is a generative workshop; exercises suited to both poetry and prose forms will help us learn to move deeper into the work we are already doing and stretch beyond self-imposed limits. We will write daily and prolifically, and share what we’ve written with generous curiosity. Open to all, from beginners to advanced writers looking for new directions; you will need to bring a notebook and an open mind.