"Once the skin is broken": Fermentation in art and love and wine

A creative meditation

Several years ago, I got the idea to write what I called “creative meditations”—short, lyrical reflections on different aspects of the creative act. I aimed to write one for each day of the year on topics such as ambiguity, envy, and humility, and compile them into a book. My idea was that the meditations could establish a creative mood in a person’s writing session each day through a little prayer that invites in the muse, in effect.

I wrote a few dozen of them, and I wrote a book proposal as well, but I only got nibbles for the book. So I gave up on the project, except every once in a while I remember it and take a look at my series of essayettes.

Here’s one short essay on fermentation—which I now see as not only a metaphor for the creative process, but for love. Both occur once “the skin of a grape is broken …”

---

Fermentation

As soon as the skin of a grape is broken, a drama begins. A grape isn’t just a grape—it’s full of sugars, teeming with rollicking, rambunctious yeasts that live on its skin. When the skin splits, the yeasts mix with the sugars, setting off thousands of reactions.

All of the essences of the grape—the soil of the region it was grown in, the climate that nurtured it—are drawn forth from the fungi and transformed into the nuanced and mysterious character of a fine wine.

All of life is a never-ending process of fermentation, one element mixing with another in a cauldron of juxtapositions. The addition of just one new ingredient can catalyze unknown qualities.

“A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world,” said the author George Santayana.

The same can be said of a story. The beginning of a story occurs when the skin of a grape is broken, when the sugars of your ideas mix with the yeasty drama of your words on the page.

The word “ferment” is derived from the Latin verb fervere, which means to boil, since the bubbling and foaming of fermenting beverages is akin to boiling.

Ask yourself how to let your story bubble and foam, what catalysts will ignite your characters, how to find just the right balance of tannins, the proper level of acidity, to draw the reader in to the swirls of your story.

---

Creativity relies on disruptions (another word for “openings”), because disruptions open up the possibilities of different mixtures, different concoctions, different possibilities.

The same with love. Each of these quotes essentially breaks open the skin of a story, the skin of an emotion.

“To love someone is firstly to confess: I'm prepared to be devastated by you.”

~ Billy-Ray Belcourt

“I desire violently—and I wait.”

~ Anais Nion

“What is a blossom anyway but a fist saying I can't do this anymore?”

~ Joseph Fasano.

There is a different kind of vulnerability in each quote, the potential for great love, but also the potential for tragedy.

To start any act of creativity is an act of love where you open, you show up, you live on the edge of various kinds of despairs and doubts, you hope, you endure, you taste, you observe how things are mixing, how things keep changing, and you keep hoping and waiting and opening and hoping and waiting and opening and touching and opening (and maybe closing sometimes) and listening and showing up and hoping and hoping and hoping …

The end goal?

The world comes into the poem.
The poem comes into the world.
Reciprocity—it all comes down
To that.
        As with lovers:
When it's right you can't say
Who is kissing whom.

~ Gregory Orr

Kiss your story and it will kiss you back. Trust that breaking the skin of your grape will lead you to a good glass of wine.

Would you want to read more creative meditations?

Please let me know what you think of my creative meditation idea—and if you’d read them, either here or as a book. I’m wondering if I should return to them.

Spare a dime to help me publish this newsletter?

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Because a quote

A Poppy Blooms

I write, erase, rewrite 
Erase again, and then 
A poppy blooms. 

~ Katsushika Hokusai

I’m available for book coaching and editing!

I love working with writers, and I have some space on my Writing Consult calendar if you’re looking for help.

I help people develop books and projects from scratch and sometimes do larger edits on finished manuscripts.

Lately, I've worked on novels, memoirs, and some short story projects. I’ve also worked on helping people figure out what kind of writer they are or want to be, and which projects can help get them there.

Contact me to find out more about my one-on-one work with writers.

Because a photo