On mutuality and momentum, creative writing as self-hypnosis

Looking up, the interior ceiling of an ancient hammam in Stone Town, Zanzibar.

MUTUALITY AND MOMENTUM: the double helix of creativity. This pairing came to me in a flash—I was asked to describe the characteristics I look for in a good editing relationship. Mutuality—a stepping inside the same ring of intention and staying within that circle for the duration. Momentum—the energetic forces propelling the two toward a third thing, the horizon-line a shared vision.

f you have one without the other—mutuality, but no momentum, or momentum, but not mutuality, conflict arises, the center cannot hold, so the saying goes. You find yourself on a fast-moving train through a tunnel with no sense of the tracks or guardrails, steep cliffs on either side. Or you find yourself clinging to the tracks, the two of you, with no train or destination.

With mutuality and momentum, a great field opens up to you and the world you’re attempting to inhabit—or make. It gets tricky with God in the mix as a collaborator. Faith is the ultimate paradox. How do we find words to talk about spirituality when the concepts defy language—exist beyond it? I notice a lot of us glitching to find the right syntax—the reaching and then overuse of words like cathedral, sanctuary, and altar to describe everyday longing for meaning.

Are we running out of words or just our capacity to access the imagination? The power to find connection between two disparate entities and put them into conversation with the other. The willingness to dig beneath the surface for new words sprouting in the wild undergrowth of these times. Mutuality—yes, let’s. Momentum, yes, let’s go.

And let’s let go.

I’ve been reading a lot about hypnosis as a way to heal from inexplicable ailments. What I’m realizing is that hypnotherapy is a lot like writing, or rather, creative writing is a lot like self-hypnosis. The power we give ourselves to time travel, reverse and unravel narratives, go back to the restaurant where we ordered the fish that caused violent vomiting and order something different off the menu! Under hypnosis, the power of suggestion alone can erase lifetimes of anxiety and disease, if you believe.

Under a writing spell, we can say the same is true. If I close my eyes right now, I can take myself back to the tropics—to a palm-tree state of consciousness—and spend two whole days in a dark room under a whirring fan covered in thin sheets, sleeping off the jet lag and letting my brain relearn the call of certain birds that only exist here. 

When I lead creative writing exercises, I use very similar techniques as a hypnotherapist—to mine stories and images from the theta state. It’s not that we’re getting very sleepy, it’s that we’re getting very alert to other rooms in the mind’s mansion. When the body’s deeply relaxed and the mind’s lucid and awake, mutuality and momentum.

If you’re not there, it’s easy to giggle through a hypnotherapy session. The one I listen to at night on YouTube reminds me of a melodramatic auctioneer, playing with cadence and flair. But strangely enough, she takes me there, to the deep down places where language doesn’t travel. And in these states, I relate to various realities unavailable to me when I'm awake. There's something about the depth, for lack of a better term. 

I went a few years ago to a therapist who specializes in past life regressions, and she also led me down an escalator in an airport to a deep down place where I then looked at my feet and discovered burlap sandals instead of the black boots I’d worn when I walked into her office that freezing cold spring day. I watched at least one version of myself die—according to this session—mutuality and momentum at work—I was a holy scribe!

In other lives (inside of this one) I’ve been a gardener, a narrative audio producer, a sound collector, a bread baker. In future lives, perhaps a bespoke perfumer; a tarot card reader, a hypnotherapist.