Sharing Ideas

Call it what you want. It is a great way to stimulate ideas. Lyricists want to drink from the source, but for everyone that source is different. Lyrics are supposed to be about life so the more variety there is – butchers, bakers, businessmen, diamond cutters, refugees - the more access to that source you have. When the air is thick with ideas connections are made and more ideas are born. And everybody steals from everybody else on a Saturday afternoon over coffee. This is about a writing group. This is all about writing, and whether you write music or books you want such a group. It may be fictional. It may be real. I’m not telling.

I always arrived on time, sometimes early, and then I would make the coffee for the group. I took my coffee in a Styrofoam cup. Some of the others brought their own mugs. The source, the spring of inspiration, is black. I add cream and sugar and sit and wait for the rest to arrive.

People would wander in gradually. Bev, the group facilitator, came in next. She taught creative writing at a community college, a beautiful woman with a stopwatch, dark curly hair flowing down to her shoulders. She glances at me as she pours herself coffee, amused at my eagerness, concerned at the pile of papers I have in front of me. We are all supposed to have no more than fifteen minutes to read and for comments to circle the table. All dependent upon who shows up, but we were always wanting new people, fresh meat, new ideas to feast from.

There was Max. He was a diamond cutter by trade and he had escaped the Nazis during the Second World War and come to Toronto. Max was a published author. The things he wrote about were clear and true to life. Doris was another holocaust survivor writing her memoirs. Martino was a professional sports writer who worked on short stories in the group. Charles was a scruffy unemployed writer who brought in science fiction. Dianne was a former war correspondent. Marcus was a “managed schizophrenic” who had been taking heavy and often experimental medication from the age of fifteen because some physician had written down that all his wonderful writing and artwork had been a “symptom of psychosis.” He had finally found a doctor who had reduced his medication and encouraged his creativity. Now Marcus no longer drooled or twitched and he attended the group once a week and put out a monthly newsletter of patients’ stories and poetry.

Barry was a businessman with really good connections. He was a photographer, too. His wife was a well known jazz singer and he was able to wrangle press passes to all the biggest concerts in town. Barry was working on an adventure novel.

Peter was tall thin balding man with round thick spectacles. He spent six months of the year teaching in Asia and translating Chinese poetry. He would work on his own poetry in the group. Peter had a following. When Peter was in town the group would grow because he gave such great commentary.

Vee was one of those people. Vee had written poetry for some of the biggest journals in the world and had won awards and published chapbooks. She was extremely sensitive and picky about who should comment on her poetry and whenever Peter was in town Vee would come.

This story is about three weekends in succession when Peter was in town, and this is about the great guilt I feel because of my actions towards Vee.

******************

“Eye in the teacup.”

It was a beautiful phrase. A woman sits in a coffee shop and stares introspectively down into a cup of tea, her eye stares back up at her, like looking in a deep pool, the universe reflected back and forth between those eyes staring into each other. The poem was perfect, a haiku saying little and everything all at once. Vee sat nervously, holding her tongue and staring at her papers before her as the commentary went around. When it came to Barry he was overwhelmed with emotion. He was always a wonderful speaker and went on and on about how he loved the poem. Vee smiled, tight lipped.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

The next week Barry brought in pages and pages of prose and verse, all variations on “Eye in the teacup,” all taking the idea, extending it and turning it around in wonderful ways. I was enraptured. To my mind this was what a writing group was all about, to take ideas and let them go and watch them grow, and see the meaning change, and the idea gather richness. When you write a song it’s like that. Sometimes more than one person works on the lyrics, and then the music comes in, and the meaning grows and the lyrics change and then the singer gives his inflection upon it. And when you make a film, the writer creates the script; the director interprets that and develops it; the director of photography turns it into images; the actors bring in their meaning to it; the musician adds to it. At each stage the thing grows and becomes more than just one thin line of text. It becomes a living, growing thing infused with the lives of many. I thought “Eye in the teacup” had become that. And I thought it was beautiful.

“How dare you steal from me!” Vee shouted standing up at the table. “This is mine. I have copyright.”

Now Vee was my friend. She had given me an old mattress of hers when I had changed apartments. We were all friends. I came to the group to hear Vee. Vee came to hear Peter. Barry and I went to the sports club afterwards and we discussed the writing group. Ideas cannot be static. If they are they die. I felt that if Vee’s ideas had only gone as far as Vee – if they were to stop there like something carved in stone – then a great injustice was being done to Vee, Vee’s work, to all the people at the table, and to the very fundamental principles of thought and creativity.

But it wasn’t just a matter of principle. I liked Vee’s ideas. I wanted to work with them. So that week I wrote my own verses to “Eye in the Teacup.” That third weekend everyone listened attentively. Vee was tight lipped and silent.

Vee never returned to the writing group.