The subtle genius of wonder

I'd like you to close your eyes and imagine what a genius looks like. How does a genius become a genius and what do people say about them? How do they do the genius-things they do? Describe the genius floating before your minds' eye: age, hair colour, shape, race, gender. 

You can open your eyes now. I think you get my point. For most people, think ‘genius’ and up pops the face of Albert Einstein. But there is no precise scientific definition of genius. Try and pin it down to a few defining characteristics and cultural biases are bound to enter into the picture. 

If you go back the original term used in ancient Rome, ‘genius’ refers to the guiding spirit or teacher-god of a person or a place. The word is related to the Latin verb 'genitus' which means to ‘bring into being, to create produce.” Which led lesser used definition of genius described as: "a gift, talent, aptitude,faculty, endowment, predilection, penchant, knack, bent, flair wizardry." By this definition we are all latent geniuses. And the big question becomes: not am I a genius, but what is my genius? Am I living up to my genius potential? Are we, as a culture, recognizing and valuing everybody’s inherent genius.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.   

Aurore Agnes Laprise Hamel, my mother fit the above definition of genius. Another definition of genius, and one of the most poetic, comes from Schopenhauer. He says: “Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” To my mind, her genius lay her capacity for both wonder and compassion for a world many never, ever experienced, let alone witnessed. And that capacity for wonder and compassion enabled her to bulls-eye musical and mothering targets few could ever come close to hitting. It enabled her to pour herself into each enterprise with courage and boldness. One of her favourite authors was Goethe. His most-often quoted words of inspiration went: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!" (full quote)

Come to it late, but come to it full.

It takes years to master a craft and tune in to one’s subtle, intuitive sense that a genius lurks nearby. If, as according to Schopenhauer, genius is more about being aware of the existence of something that others haven’t even considered, a genius needs a strong sense of self-confidence. And self-confidence comes with time and patience and a turning inward to the discovery of ones’ deepest identity. A genius faces this something head-on, full of the certainty that it actually exists and is potent. And so, it often not only takes boldness to come into one's genius; it takes 'oldness'. Which is why many of us come to our art 'late': we must come to it full.

In her late 40s, and early fifties, after having raised six children and keeping house, my mother revived her music career. My father, in his wisdom, supported her both financially and emotionally. She quit the bridge club. She got herself a voice teacher at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Victoria, BC, and once a month she traveled over four hundred miles to study among singers half her age with their eyes on La Scala. My mother's eye was on song. Her heart was set on expressing her divine gift from the rawest, purest, most poetic place deep inside her. Once a month she abandoned herself to a full day of singing to her heart’s content, to living in her genius.

Life on the verge of tears.

I was living in Victoria and studying at the University of Victoria at the time, so mom would stay at my place. Those were the days when her genius and magic began having power over me. Her musical genius lay in her ability to let her feelings inform her singing. She made people cry- partly because her voice was at the same time light and lyrical, and deep and dark. It was rich with life's inevitable suffering. But she also made us cry because the songs she sang- so full of loss, grief, love, heartbreak- were songs of experience. She'd lived them. She was a grown woman with a life behind her. She lived bravely, as Camus suggested we try to do, on the verge of tears.

It was not something she was always happy about- feeling so helpless in the face of life - because she really didn't know how to handle it. But if she could sing her life, she could nail the target. And in so doing she was showing us, her children, a way through any calamity- make art. And so, since she died, the calamity of losing her has made making art, for me, a daily necessity. 

They're Just Insecure, dear.

My mother’s genius for wonder was what kept her so young looking. She would marvel every Spring at the heart-shaped leaves of the lilac bush and one May she recited most of Walt Whitman's poem "When Lilacs Bloomed in Barnyard Doors"  while we finished pulling the season's first weeds. In the Summer we would lay on the deck chairs at night and 'star bathe'. In the winter she hung Christmas decorations in every room of the house and as the years wore on she didn't see any point in taking down the stars and the wreaths. In the autumn her marigolds were the size of small trees, and she let their seeds fall where they may. Generations of  of naughty mariettas have planted themselves in our back yard, extending as far back as 1972.

Her genius for compassion enabled her to see inside the sad, limited workings of the minds of bullies and fools. When teased for my own boldness or burgeoning eccentricities by boys from the neighbouring school, she managed to reverse my blossoming self-pity into sympathy for their sad sense of worth. They knew not what they were doing, she’d point out, like Jesus on the cross, because they were “just insecure, dear”. And if our sibling quarreling got out of hand she’d stop us dead in our noisy tracks with: That’s how wars start!

A Wild Surmise.

As documentary producer for CBC's Sunday Afternoon In Concert I got to interview mom about her role as a music teacher. I asked her what gift, as a teacher, she hoped to pass on to her students. She said her biggest thrill was to see the look of surprise in their eyes when hey began to hear the wondrous sounds they could make and they would exclaim: "That's coming from me?!" And then she began to recite the poem by Keats- On Looking Into Chapman's Homer. (full poem) And when she got to the part about looking at new territory with 'a wild surmise' her voice cracked and there were those tears again. The most important thing she hoped to inspire in students was a sense of awe and wonder, something she never lost and her greatest genius of all.