It Begins with a Feather

Madir Eugster creating a delicate kinetic sculpture out of palm branches and a feather. Photo: Tobias Hutzler

Artist Mädir Eugster performs for the Rigolo Swiss Nouveau Cirque by creating temporary sculptures. These ephemeral and incredibly delicate kinetic sculptures are held together by the weight of a single balanced feather. If the smallest puff of wind blows the feather off the end of the sculpture, the entire thing collapses. Eugster’s performance was captured beautifully by photographer Tobias Hutzler in his film "Balance". You can watch it below. (If it doesn't appear below you can use the following links to watch it at his website or on youtube.) Watch it to the very end or you’ll miss the best part.

I feel like every chapter in my new novel is like another branch in Eugster’s sculpture. At first, I thought, Hey, this isn’t so bad, I can do this. Then I carefully added another chapter and another and another. Around chapter thirteen, I started to think, Holy cow, this is getting hard! 

What you don’t realize until you’re neck deep in a novel is that you don’t just write a chapter and then forget it. You bear the weight of that chapter as you write the next. Then you add the weight of that chapter to your mental load and start the next. This goes on and on with each additional chapter adding to the combined weight. It gets mentally heavy!

But I’m not just stacking sticks in my arms as if I were merely gathering firewood. No! Just like Eugster, I have to keep everything perfectly balanced. This is a delicate and tenuous performance! With each additional chapter it gets harder and harder to keep it balanced even as it gets heavier. The whole book has started to feel wobbly and loose in my head. I’m struggling to keep it under control as it threatens to collapse at any moment. It’s scary!

I have piles of sticky notes and scraps of paper with hastily scribbled thoughts strewn all over my desk, pages and pages of journal entries scattered through three different journals, document after document of research for my novel on things like Leukemia, the Maasai people of Kenya, name meanings, flower symbolism, and climbing competitions clutter the files of my computer. I sit in my office everyday trying to bear all this weight and keep it perfectly balanced in my mind as I write and write and write!

I suspect I’m not alone in this. I’d be surprised if all artists and writers (probably all human beings) didn’t resonate with Eugster’s performance. Don’t we all feel like our creative projects, our lives even, are a balancing act? That we’re constructing this work piece by precarious piece, this life day by precarious day, and the slightest breeze might cause the whole thing to collapse?

So how do we do it? How do we keep it all balanced? Well, it begins with a feather. A feather so small and light that as the sculpture grows, it’s easy to forget it’s even there, that it’s serving any real purpose at all, until it’s gone and the whole thing comes down. The part this feather plays is very real and absolutely vital. This feather is inspiration.

Detail of a feather from an instalation art piece by French artist Isa Barbier 

Consider the qualities of a feather: light, soft, beautiful, and designed to clutch at the invisible air so that a bird can fly. Inspiration is the same. When it comes to us, it is often so light and soft that we hardly know it’s there. There’s a real danger of missing it entirely.

In a talk on personal revelation, President Boyd K. Packer of The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, quoted Spencer W. Kimball, former president of the L.D.S. church, as saying that many people “have no ear for spiritual messages … when they come in common dress. … Expecting the spectacular, one may not be fully alerted to the constant flow of revealed communication.”

What is inspiration if not a kind of “spiritual message”?

The inspiration for my current novel came to me as light and soft as a single down feather drifting on invisible currents of air to land almost imperceptibly in my mind. I hardly knew it had happened until much later. It started with seeing two teenagers hanging out together. Though they were both the same age, the girl was exceptionally tall and the boy was quite short. I thought, Wouldn’t that be funny if they fell in love? And suddenly I had my feather. That was it. No lightning flash or thundering voice from the heavens, just a seemingly ordinary thought in common dress.

Just like the feather in Eugster’s sculpture, this inspiration, as subtle as it is, has to remain constant. David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said spiritual messages, “most frequently… come in small increments over time and are granted according to our desire, worthiness, and preparation. Such communications from Heavenly Father gradually and gently ‘distil upon [our souls] as the dews from heaven’ (D&C 121:45).” I’ve found creative inspiration to be exactly the same.

Installation art piece by Isa Barbier made up of feathers suspended from filament 

After I was initially inspired by the two teenagers of differing heights, I was filled with a desire to get to work. I struggle every day to be worthy and prepared and, thankfully, inspiration has continued to come “gradually and gently” and most always in very common dress. For instance, the opening scene of my novel came from seeing a little kid at an art museum burp in the face of another kid when he tried to get a drink from the drinking fountain. I noted this funny observation in my journal and later wrote this for the beginning lines of my novel:

When I first met Lily, she burped in my face. We were only seven at the time, but it was still disgusting. I remember closing my eyes as if that might somehow protect me from the warm, moist air that erupted from her stomach spilling the smell of peanut butter and Fritos over me. 

Inspiration is only the beginning, of course. Imagine if Eugster just walked around on stage balancing a feather on the end of his finger. We might think, That’s a real pretty feather and all but so what? Inspiration is almost meaningless unless followed by a whole lot of hard work. Hours and days and weeks and months and years of hard work. When David A. Bednar spoke of the worthiness and preparation that allows inspiration to continue to come, I believe it is in large part made up of hard work. By the end of the video of Eugster, we can see him dripping with sweat and trembling beneath the weight of his sculpture. Despite how smooth and controlled he appears, this is clearly hard work. Not only that, but consider how many times Eugster’s sculpture must have collapsed while he was still learning to create it. Yes, it all started with a tiny moment of inspiration, that little feather. But it took years of hard work, grit, and determination combined with countless failures and frustrations to make this performance possible. And so it is with us.

My novel hangs in the air above my head, precariously balanced line upon line, paragraph upon paragraph, chapter upon chapter, growing ever larger, more tenuous, and terrifying. At any moment it might collapse, but that's okay. I'll just pick up the pieces and start again. Like Eugster, I'll begin with a tiny feather of inspiration: beautiful, light, soft, and designed to clutch at the invisible.