Process journal: television

In Catholicism there is endless creativity in the naming of patron saints. Some of the more obscure ones include St. Julian the patron saint of murderers, and St. Lidwina, the patron saint of ice skaters.

Claire Cronin wrote about Catholicism, horror films, demons, ghosts, and the power of television in the pre-Internet era in her memoir Blue Light of the Screen. She explains that her namesake saint is the patron saint of television. This honour was bestowed on St. Clare because she reported being able to watch and listen to a mass being held at a nearby church, unfolding on her wall as though from a projector, when she was too unwell to attend.

Perhaps this could be explained as a fever dream, a side effect of her illness. Or a fantasy that allowed her to practice her faith even when she was too infirm to attend mass in person. Or it could be something that belongs to the realm of the inexplicable – a vision so powerful that it seems real, no matter what its material origin.

I no longer practice Catholicism, but I do pray to unlikely saints in my own mystical practice. For me, Clare represents inspiration and creative visions.

Last Friday, I wrote about the feeling of being creatively blocked as like being locked out of a particular frequency. This weekend, I felt the channel clear, and the image sharpen. In the bath, without a pen to hand, I saw a whole story unfold, like Clare watching mass from her room.

I was struck first by an image, then an atmosphere. Apples dropping from a neighbour’s tree. The unseasonal heatwave.

I saw, as in a vision, apples in symmetrical piles like tiny sacrifices, bruises on the inside of a wrist, a dangerous well that had not yet been fenced off.

It was that first lightning strike that made the difference: apples rotting on the ground.

It was enough for the beginnings of a story to unfurl.

I was reminded of the paradox of writing — that the frequency can only be accessed when you don’t demand anything from it.

But like Clare, I was thankful to receive something sustaining when I least expected it.