At the dentist's office this week, I enjoyed a half hour of nitrous oxide which set my mind loose a bit more than usual.
This loosey-goosey-ness is a state I want to be able to produce and enhance, without aid of a mask and a tank and a dentist. It's at the heart of creativity. I think it's the reason that so many people who are good at one art form are also pretty decent in another. I have a book called "Doubly Gifted," a collection of the paintings of well-known writers. John Updike paints well and so do a lot of others.
My theory: once the mind is freed of the usual rigid connections--how a nose is supposed to look--then it's possible to see how a particular nose looks. And once frozen mental images and standard connections are dismantled, new combinations can occur.
It's a bit like doing the puzzle "Word Jumbles," the one where you unscramble letters to make a word. I visualize the letters greased so that they can slide in every direction, take new positions. Some days I can do all the word jumbles in the paper at a glance; other days the letters stay rigidly in their place. I've never checked to see how my writing correlates with my word jumble facility at a particular moment, but I wouldn't be surprised to find a connection.
Some famous baseball player--can't remember his name--said that the right way to be when you step up to bat is "loose as ashes."
How do you get that way? I find that exercise helps.
By the way, my brand-new, week-old research on my first-ever biography is sailing. This woman was a living mystery.
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"Loose as ashes." I love that line. And there is so much truth in its description of something quite mysterious and intangible.
Baseball has been and still is a very big part of my life. The story I like to tell is that up until I was about 14 I used to play some form of baseball, even if it meant tirelessly throwing a spongeball against a brick wall and fielding it, every spare minute I had. When I wasn't playing baseball, I was reading about it. Then one day I overheard a girl say I was cute. For reasons beyond my comprehension, baseball was no longer the primary driving force in my life. It's been pretty much downhill since.
To get back to the point: This year I started playing baseball again. That "loose as ashes" feeling I call "the zone." Being in the zone means, to me, total concentration to the point where the world is all background and the only thing that matters is that ball, whether it is hitting it or catching it.
In one game, I made a very good play in the outfield. I was in the zone. The batter hit the ball well over my head toward the outfield fence. I remember the crack of the bat, seeing the ball rocket upward and toward me. I took one step forward, and heard my teammate say "Back!" I turned and began running toward the fence, swiveled my head to locate the ball, reached my glove and caught the ball while running. The thing is, all sound melted into a dreamy kind of background, like "...voices dying with a dying fall, Beneath the music from a farther room." I could hear players from the opposing team saying "Get out! Go on get out!" (They were talking to the ball-- they wanted it to go over the fence.) I heard the distinct tapping of leather against leather as the ball caromed into the webbing of my mitt. Again, kind of surreal, dream-like.
How did I get there? Well... I do not know exactly. I can tell you I do deep breathing and sometimes meditation before and during the game. I can tell you that when in the field or at bat I recite certain mantras to myself ("Loosen your grip. Tilt your shoulder down. Track the ball. Track the ball. Track the ball").
Ultimately, I cannot flip a switch that gets me into the zone or "loose as ashes." I do, however, believe that the more I work at it, the more it happens.
BTW: The world of baseball has some wonderful jargon, and literature. For example, when a batter hits the ball very hard on the ground it's called a "worm-burner" or a "turf-scorcher" (just two among many). A pitch in the batter's "wheelhouse" is called "room service." And thousands more. "Alibi Ike" by Damon Runyan is a very funny tale worthy of John Gardner. "Bang the Drum Slowly" captures that mysterious baseball world, while telling a very poignant story of friendship. I still find the game has a certain mysterious subtext--something I cannot quite identify, but still recognize and respect.
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