Pinball Wizard

I’ve only played pinball a few times but found it intriguing to watch the ball bounce randomly down the playing field bouncing off the bumpers and lighting up helter-skelter the various targets in the field. It struck me that this is a pretty good metaphor for the creative process. 

 

Think about it. You drop in the coin, paying with your time and attention to get the game started. You pull back the spring-loaded plunger and send the first impulse— a sentence, a musical phrase, a dance gesture— out into the field, hoping —but never knowing exactly when or where or what— it will light something up. As the ball plummets down, either hitting or missing the targets, you are ready with the flippers to send it back up and give it another chance. Sometimes you miss, the ball drops out of sight and it’s time to send another one up the shooter-alley with the plunger. 

 

Perfect description of the writing process or jazz improvisation or really, any creative act. Your job is to stay poised at the machine, watching the action and hands ready at the flipper. And to notice when it lights something up.

 

So in my writing, be it this post, a journal, an article or a book, I have a sense of the territory I want to wander through and set off, alert to those moments when the targets sparkle and the music starts playing. I can’t predict when or if, there’s no methodical way to ensure they’ll appear, no way to control how that ball careens down the field. My work is to keep putting the coins in and sending the ball out and being wholly alert to those inspired moments. Same process with heading off into the unknown (but somewhat known) terrain of jazz improvisation, the ball bouncing off one chord to the next. 

 

And I believe the same is true as a reader, a listener, a viewer. Staying awake to the moments that strum the strings of the heart or light the fire of the mind. I’m feeling this—and delightfully so—with my new friend in Korea as we write e-mails back and forth about the vision of our mutual Orff Schulwerk playing field and finding at least one or ten sentences in her writing that jump off the page (well, screen) at me. Stimulating thoughts that stimulate more thought. And affirm what we both already know but are always searching for new ways to think about it and talk about it. 

 

I think most authors would agree that on some level, not a single one is saying something that hasn’t been said a thousand or several million times before. The accent, syntax, rhythm of it all is different but it’s simply searching for one’s own unique way to say in your voice what someone else (or again, 10 million) have said in theirs. So why bother to keep writing or reading?

 

Reading a commencement speech— profound and hilarious— by Anne Lamott, she had a sentence that leaped off the page and inspired this post: 

 

The soul rejoices in hearing what it already knows. 

 

That explains it all. Every time the ball hits the target that lights up the board, the soul is doing a little touchdown victory dance. (Yes, it’s a mixed metaphor, but the soul doesn’t care.) And yes, part of the motivation to keep writing, improvising jazz, painting, what have you, is to see how many points you can score. To try to beat your previous score. Which is more to the point than comparing yourself to the high score of previous players, but let’s face it, that’s part of human nature as well. But in the end, no one really cares that you hold the record for pinball machine number 3 in some obscure little video arcade. 

The real deal is in the pleasure of playing and the inner satisfaction of lighting up the board. 

 

And lest we forget, we all have an inborn sense of what we know that needs constant reminders. So whether as a creator or recipient of creation, our job is to stay alert and notice and give thanks. It’s as simple as that.