This blog was born when my recent life-decision to up the ante on my kung fu collided with my inability to resist a blank page.  Yes, fair cop.  I’m a writer – but that doesn’t mean I’m a blogger.  Though my preferred mode of expression is through my fingers and onto a virtual sheet of paper, the only work I’m really interested in offering to the public are my fantasy novels, my journalism and my cause-inspired, scathingly articulate angry letters.  At its inception, I didn’t intend Stringing Pearls as a podium to broadcast my reflections on Qi, but as a private journal and personal record of my evolving practice.

My error was in thinking OS was like other blog sites.  I’d assumed that if I didn’t spam my friends and tell them I was posting, no one would ever know.  In my curmudgeonly, solitary writer mind-set, I’d pre-determined that my random, rambling efforts to wrap words around the physical-spiritual aspects of my kung fu process must be an intimate exercise.  I didn’t hope and never imagined my dinky poem and memoir-esque prose would have any resonance in the OS blogosphere.  I expected to be talking to myself.  Happily disappointed in my expectations, I find myself in company, community and conversation with artists whose passions are cousin to my own.

So.  When a light of this community – a published author in the field and certified Tai Chi Ch’uan instructor – expresses uncertainty about joining the conversation, wonders if she can or should write about her sense of chi, and cites as the source of her hesitation a reluctance to influence the way others experience it... I give her caveats due consideration.

My thoughts on the matter are these.

Suppose we weren’t talking about the art of Qi.  Suppose we were talking about another art, any art, say… the art of writing.

My, my… that got your attention.  There’s nothing a writer enjoys more than talking about his/her writing process – except, of course, writing.  But consider.  When you discuss your process with a non-writer, how quickly does s/he become bored?  How much of what you say does s/he really get?  How one-sided is the conversation, and how long does it last?

Right.  Now consider again.  When you’re hanging with another writer, do you ever discuss anything but the creative process?  Does the conversation ever lag or sag; does the subject ever grow stale?  Or do you talk till all hours, does the pleasure last for days, and do you return to your work inspired?
 
Damn straight.  And the beauty of it is, whether our sense of the writing experience is remarkably similar or radically different, we’ll have the same scintillating discourse, either way.  Writing is writing.  There’s no right way to do it, no wrong approach.  Our conversation doesn’t hinge on the particulars; they’re just grist for the compare-contrast mill.  We’re not talking specifics, we’re talking process – with someone who speaks our language.  

Ok, but suppose I’m a tyro, never in print, and you’re a best-selling author.  Doesn’t that change the tenor of our conversation?  If you speak uncensored and tell me all, won’t the weight and scope of your professional experience overwhelm my nascent creative efforts and mold my aspirations?

No chance.  If I set out on the Writer’s Road and promptly bump into a veteran traveller, I count myself lucky and thank the gods.  What a blessing, what a gift!  You know the lie of the land, you speak the lingo, you’ve been around.  How much I’ll learn from your traveller’s tales!

But not if you hold out on me.  Not if you seal your lips and cover your trail for fear I’ll try to follow your path instead of blazing my own.  And what if I do?  How far do you think I’ll get before I figure out that I made a mistake, before I learn for myself that we all have to find our own way in life?  No need to guard your tongue or school your speech.  Whether you speak true or false, whether your intentions are sterling or you mean me harm, your experiences can only inform my process.  You’re the lesson; my Art is my teacher.  So, go ahead.  Give me your biased opinion.  Tell me all successful writers get their best work done between dawn and noon, and  it's a safe bet, I’ll give it a try.  But if my muse is mute when the daystar shines and I hear her singing at midnight, I’ll soon be sleeping in again, your sage advice scorned and forgotten.

I’m not claiming knowledge isn’t powerful or that power isn’t dangerous.  Ask a master African drummer how he feels about enthusiastic amateurs retreating to the woods for a weekend of pounding out their feelings on cowhide congas.  He’ll tell you he fears for their safety.  Drumming is potent magic and serious medicine.  The physical act, sensory experience and complex rhythms have profound effects on our neurology, chemistry and biological systems; it’s not a practice to be taken lightly.  Knowing this and respecting the energetic power of his art, does a Baba dole out his lessons in measured increments to protect his students?  Not a bit of it.  Traditionally, an aspiring drummer’s lessons begin when he joins the circle and starts beating on an available instrument.  From his very first day, the novice is exposed to it all.

It’s the same in my martial arts tradition.  Everyone attends morning practice together, from teachers to first-time students.  We may not all be doing the same practices, mind.  Shirmu could be leading a Shaolin sword set, others playing Tai Chi Ch’uan.  The first-timers will be learning the warm-ups – surrounded by forms and energies far beyond their abilities and comprehension.  Like the percussive arts, the martial arts are dangerous, but if we are to believe our Babas and Sifus, the greater peril lies not in giving beginners too much instruction, but in denying them access to the source of learning and/or letting them go it alone.  After all, if we’re truly not ready to learn a lesson, someone could place it in our hands, and we’d let it slip right through our fingers.

Yes, there are certain very powerful practices that if performed without proper awareness and mastery of the energetics involved can do more harm than good.  I’m not advocating sharing secrets.  I’m not advocating sharing at all, really.  I’m an intensely private person myself; perhaps you've noticed this blog’s lack of photo or bio.  If you’re opting out of the conversation because you’d like to keep your personal experiences personal, I understand completely and support you entirely.  What I’m on about, what I’m railing against, is reticence rooted in fear.

I think I get it, though.  Fear of doing others ill by speaking out of turn, or giving too much away, or laying our trips on them stems from a sane and healthy fear of grandiosity.  Who am I to tell somebody else how it feels, how it looks, how it works, what it means?  What gives me the right to foist my reality on others?  Are my senses so keen, my thoughts so insightful, are the events of my life so exceptionally cool I’m entitled to ask you to paint your world in colors of my choosing, or follow my line of thinking, or pattern your practice after mine?

But these questions have no meaning.  We’re already teachers.  All of us, always.  We’re living lessons, whether we will it or no.  Everything we are, everything we’ve done has the power to instruct, inform and illuminate someone else’s process, just as the patterns of a lover’s or stranger’s life have the power to illuminate our own.  So.  Is it kindness to hoard our experiences?  Or is it cruelty to deny others the opportunity to learn from them?  Is it humility that restrains us and altruism that impels us to refrain from discussing our subjective connection to our art?  Or is it arrogance to assume our words have the power to taint or define someone else’s process?

This blog was conceived as a private notebook, but I’ve no qualms about it going public.  Writing down my adventures with Qi is exactly like writing down my dreams.  Language is mighty, I’m the first to attest, but it can’t describe the indescribable.  No matter how eloquently I express the essence of my dream experience, how brilliantly I illustrate it, how shrewdly I plumb the depths of its meaning – no matter how compelling a tale I tell or how compelling you find it, when you sleep, your dreams will be unequivocally your own, and my words powerless to affect them.