9 April 2022
Serendipity, giggling with happiness at seeing me stumble over her needlework, danced on.
Serendipity is of gentle nature. It is a faint scent that wafts in under your nose as you walk a busy road. The gentlest hint of sweet rose or riven earth, barely noticed between the brash and aggressive smells of fuel, hot asphalt, or that neighbour’s bolognese sauce. Serendipity is so slight that she will be missed unless you’re paying attention. Your subconscious mind will watch her stitch moments together as she flutters past. You’ll see them only when you reflect consciously, on paper.
At some point between the 1970s and the 2020s, it became less fashionable to talk about serendipity and more fashionable to talk about synchronicity. And yet serendipity is usually what many people actually mean.
It is said that the word serendipity originates with Three Princes of Serendip. According to one source, the word itself was first coined by Horace Walpole in the 1700s. He wrote that the heroes of the story:
were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.1
Compare this with the current trend of spotting synchronicity. This term is originally from Carl Jung. Jung wrote Synchronicity: An Acausal connecting principal. Jung allegedly considered synchronicity to be:
a meaningful coincidence in time, a psychic factor which is independent of space and time.2
The spirited playfulness of serendipity cannot be compared to the clunking linearity of coincidence.
This came to me in force over the course of the past week, as I read several things by a variety of authors.
In one author I spotted the characteristic sentence-construction style of another author. It was applied in a slightly different way. I know which one came first in that sequence, by happenstance.
Subsequently, I read a preface written by Nan Shepherd who reflected on her novel The Living Mountain. I also read an introduction to that work by someone else, also reflective in nature. I saw that Nan’s early publication of the work became blocked by a single rejection. I saw that she, too, felt powerless to write the language of Earth and nature. That she, too, had an author whose captures were (to her) immense, Godlike, a rare gift.
Following these unconnected items, I happened across a short segment on ABC Classic FM as I station-hopped in the car. I heard an indigenous composer (whose name I sadly never heard while listening to the program) talking about the roles of music and song. She identified that one role is performative: That you play or sing it to perform it. She identified that one role is connective: That you play or sing it to connect with each other, with plant, and rock, and water, and animal. She identified that a third role is creative: That you play or sing it to hold the space, hold the connection, to heal self and place. This recognition hit her a long way into her career, and she was astonished at never having seen it prior.
When this composer said ‘song’, I heard ‘poetry’.
When this composer explained her experience of understanding these roles of music which, for her, occurred in her community and singing in Language, I experienced a powerful puzzle-solving about my own creative work.
Suddenly, I was just another person in a long line of others who have experienced the same feelings of ignorance. Whatever I write will always be wanting. There will always be others who seem more gifted, more talented. It’s not for me to best anyone. The gift is the creation.
Suddenly, I became capable of engaging in the process instead of obsessing about the outcome.
For months I’ve been harbouring a crazy doubt about my capacity to achieve the style, language and experience of place that I would like to bring to life in writing. Place is absent from much of my work; overly florid when it’s present. I’ve excused this by believing that I write people, not place.
But it’s bullshit.
People are place. Place is people. They become each other.
All I have to do is hold the space.
My role is not to emulate the perfection of nature. It is simply to hold the space open for others. It is to enable others to experience the magic of connecting with themselves, with others, with plant, animal, rock, and water. It is simply to allow bonds to form as they will form because the work will vibrate in a way that allows it, creates it, becomes it.
Serendipity, giggling with happiness at seeing me stumble over her needlework, danced on.
She reappeared in my dreams, sewing more pieces of knowledge together with her sparkling silver threads.
A dream-woman, me and not-me, whispered to me in desperation,
‘Never lose yourself in other people’s dreams.’
A dream-phone, mine and not-mine, sent a message to a long-missing other describing his absence as the cold blue ice of an isolated, wintery land. A cold that bit deeply and caused intense, burning pain.
Awakening, I knew that recognition is enough. That research is unnecessary. To mistrust what others write. To learn from self. To learn from place. To feel it and write it and move on.
xx Leticia ‘clearing her throat to sing’ Mooney.
PS. I am knees deep in the development of a new work. A collection of poems, it is provisionally titled Woman as Artist. I’m posting snippets over on Instagram and on Telegram, if you’d like to read or follow along in either place.
Etymology Online. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=serendipity