Learn To Be Lightning: An Invitation to Awe from Andrea Gibson
“”I think almost all art is made by the dead—and we don’t know it.” ~Andrea Gibson
I listened to an extraordinary conversation yesterday (the link is below) with all of my emotion caught in my throat because I know how true everything is. Something equating to magic happens when you hear someone phrase your own intimations in words just beyond your reach. I do not know Andrea Gibson personally, but I swear, they know me. And yes, for this person, “they” is most certainly the correct pronoun, for I‘ve never known a more expansive soul. The journey to that breadth, as they discuss, has been so hard-filled with life in all its shades that sometimes darkness seemed to be the default mode. You’d think now, as they face incurable cancer, the dark is all-consuming. But it isn’t. As the title of their last book of poetry advises, “you better be lightning, ” and Andrea is: the kind that illuminates the night sky not in a single bolt, but in warm, pulsing flashes of soft color spread wide across the distance. Heat lightning, we call it, silent lightning. Please don’t misunderstand, Andrea has a voice, after all they changed the landscape of spoken word poetry, but Andrea’s voice, especially of late, doesn’t thunder in demanding your attention. It is an invitation to notice life and love. It invites you into awe.
I had quite a moment as I listened to the podcast yesterday—a few actually—but one left me silently saying, Yes! This, Andrea, this is what I believe, too! Thank you! As they explained creative energy, urgency or lack thereof, and ultimately leaving this world without having completed all that could be, they uttered the words with which I began this writing. I know the truth of it. I felt it as I wrote my book. I feel it still. Andrea gave me the words, simple and direct. Whether I think of creative endeavors as channeled energy from otherworldly spaces or as memory lodged within us—sometimes so obscure we must compose or move our bodies or take to canvas to recover and express it—I know creation is a form of prayer, an act of communication with the sacred.
Death reminds us, instructs us. It has—they, the dead themselves, have—instructed me throughout my life more than anything else. My grief has always been heavy, crushing. To carry it, I must transform it, restore it. So I write, sometimes draw or paint or even run to exhaustion to get to the core of it, to feel its original form. And that is love. Love, I can hold. And more than hold. What I feel emboldens me, quiet me, to share this, to say to others who may think I am, indeed, batshit crazy that they, too, should find their sorrows and losses and celebrate them in prayers of paper and ink; canvas and paint; barbaric yawps of song; elevated pulses and sweat; dances alone under a night sky. Communion with the sacred looks different for everyone, but listen closely. All those you think you’ve lost are with you, ready to create something new.
Andrea Gibson says it so much more eloquently than I am able to. Their journey will leave you awed, so please listen, read, and allow yourself to feel and learn. Learn to be lightning.
Listen to Andrea’s conversation with Glennon Doyle on We Can Do Hard Things here:
