The Importance of Being Nowhere

Norse Mythology: Ginnungagap

‘Between Muspell and Niflheim was a void, an empty place of nothingness, without form.  The rivers of the mist world flowed into the void, which was called Ginnungagap, the “yawning gap”.’

As a child, before very long journeys, I would get into the car a good hour before we set off.  Partly the excitement of going on holiday, but also partly because I was a strange child who loved very long car journeys.  I would set up all my little trinkets, books and supplies ready for the road.  And on the way, I would pretend to be the host of my own radio show, which essentially involved talking to myself for several hours.  And it was on one of these very long journeys that Stanley Higgins was born; my thirty-two-and three-quarter-year-old washer-women alter-ego!  He had a very high-pitched voice and was an other-worldly, uninhibited and emotionally vulnerable character.  He would scream, shout and even swear at those I loved and trusted.  And although he was a seven-year-old’s invention, he stayed with me (and a few significant others) until I was about eighteen years old! 

Now, this post isn’t about exploring the psychological causes that me led to inventing a very openly anxious, angry and vulnerable washer-women (but if you read my post on The light of Darkness and Gollum, you’ll figure it out).  Nope, this week’s musing is about the creative potential of the ‘between’.  The void.  The nothingness.  The ‘yawning gap.’ 

And it wasn’t just Stanley who was created in a ‘yawning gap’; a boring, long journey between two destinations.  No indeed.  According to Norse Mythology, it is in the void between the dark, cold and misty Niflheim in the North and the burning, fiery and molten Muspell in the South that creation itself took place:

‘Odin and Vili and Ve […] were trapped forever in Ginnungagap, the vast gap between fire and the mist.  They might as well have been nowhere.  There was no sea and no sand, no grass nor rocks, no soil, no trees, no sky, no stars.  There was no world, no heaven and no earth, at that time.  The gap was nowhere:  only an empty place waiting to be filled with life and with existence.  It was time for the creation of everything.’

Sadly, I’m not as good at being ‘nowhere’ these days.  And it’s not as easy either.  Our consumer culture has evolved to a whole new level of void-filling-potential.  We are, in T. S. Eliot’s words, ‘Distracted from distraction by distraction’ (amazing to think that these words were published in the 1940s before Wi-Fi, smartphones and such.  I thoroughly recommend finding a recording of Alec Guinness, aka Obi-Wan-Kenobi, reading T. S. Elitot’s Four Quartets – just use that Wi-Fi and smartphone to find it!  So useful…).

But the Norse folk remind us that creation takes place in the ‘yawning gap’.  I love this phrase.  It speaks of the boredom, impatience and frustration of the void.  It’s uncomfortable.  No wonder we want to avoid it.  Our egos, who long for control and certainty, hate it.  But this existential plane of betwixt and between, sometimes known as ‘liminal space’, is the birthplace of creativity. 

The vulnerability of being in a place of unknowing opens us up to new things.  We are empty yet receptive.  Bored but imaginative.  Doubtful and therefore questioning.   The temptation of course is to rush out of this nowhere land, and avoid the void, via rushing into new relationships, new plans and new projects.  I tend to numb the pain of the ‘yawning gap’ by fantasising about the future and dreaming up all manner of endeavours. 

Strangely enough, as I was dictating to myself the quote above - ‘They might as well have been nowhere’ - I mistakenly read it out-loud as ‘now-here’ (as opposed to ‘no-where’).  I like to think that this slip was some kind of mystical glitch in my matrix, reminding me to be present.  To be here now – or rather to be ‘now-here’.  To not rush from the reality of life in pursuit of some fantasy paradise.  A reminder that the life I want – the creativity, growth and character – can only be born out of the ‘yawning gap’.   And its ‘nowhereness’, characterized by a feeling of boredom, failure and disappointment, can be cultivated into authenticity, creativity and freedom.

So I must dare to be nowhere.  That is to say, to be now-here.