[WILF] Flickering Candles & Synchronicity
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Welcome to What I Learned From… “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” ― Anne Frank What I Learned From …It’s the time of year when the glowing flickering candles are everywhere. On our mantles….in our windows…clustered on tables because winter requires more mood lighting than any of us care to admit. But if you put two of those candles close together and watch for a minute, something unexpected happens. Their flames don’t just flicker beside each other, they start moving in rhythm. It looks almost intentional, like the flames are passing notes back and forth. This isn’t magic or some holiday sentiment, it’s “simple” physics. Well, as simple as physics ever is. And it has a name: Entrainment. Scientists describe this in the way scientists do, with phrases like “entrainment happens when oscillating systems influence one another until they fall into a shared rhythm.” Now, I know what those words mean separately, and I might infer what they mean when they are placed together, but here’s the plain English version: When two things are close enough, they can’t help but respond. One wiggles, the other wiggles back. Little nudges travel between them, until suddenly they’re moving in a rhythm neither one invented alone. They’re not matching on purpose, they just can’t help noticing each other. #Relatable. Once you know that, you start seeing it everywhere. Pendulum clocks mounted on the same board will begin ticking together. Fireflies sync their flashes in the twilight of the summer sky. Even heart cells, when placed together, line up their beats (we have a heartbeat, not a heart-machine-gun-fire rat-a-tat-tat.) There are at least a dozen kinds of entrainment in the natural world, but we are not discussing the one about air bubbles in concrete today. You’re welcome. In physics, particularly the physics of fire, when two or more candle flames get close, the rising plumes of hot air tug at each other. Their plumes dip, lean, and lift in response. Sometimes the flames move together like dancers in step, and other times they take turns, spinning in an alternating rhythm. Either way, the flames aren’t acting alone. They are responding to the conditions they share with the other flickers around them. And the distance between them shapes that response. Too close and the flames can merge into one turbulent, slightly unhinged frenzy. This single flame, when left alone, is steady…but vulnerable. A draft can throw it off or a wax pool can squelch it. Sure, it behaves; but at the mercy of whatever moves around it. A lone flame looks still and stable, but it stays delicate. The thing with these flames is that they don’t ignore physics, they express themselves within physics. The fire finds its rhythm inside the constraints of heat and air and distance. Rhythm doesn’t come from forcing yourself into someone else’s system, it emerges when your environment supports the way you naturally burn. The best writing finds its rhythm this way–not in isolation, but in the spacing, the conditions, the situations that let it move with steadiness and spark. Because you can’t practice entrainment alone. Not really. You can write isolated and alone, of course. But the rhythms emerge in relationships: With other writers. I’ve been thinking about this more than usual because this autumn I felt it. My own flame was flickering wildly in a draft I tried to ignore, instead pretending I was burning steadily. My default mode is to burn hot and fast, then nearly out, then remember (usually at the last moment) that breathing and looking around is the only thing that brings me back into rhythm. It’s a little unfair in the cosmic sense, because this is what I help other writers do. I know it works! I just forget to do it for myself, at least once or twice a year. I assume the universe finds this hilarious. Oddly enough, this is where the logic of my Annual Review begins. Or where it should begin, if folks aren’t trying to slam your creativity and life into their hustle template of smooshing your past 12 months existence and your next 12 months hopes & dreams into a tidy 60-minute Zoom room. The resolutions and reinventions and “New Year, New You” grind. (I have feelings about that last one.) The Annual Review should fan its flames with observation; with noticing whether you’re burning with enough support for the flame you want to tend. December is for seeing the rhythm, the holidays give you oxygen, then January is for shaping your plans. Review now. Celebrate soon. Rest for real. Then shape whatever comes next. So maybe the goal right now isn't to blaze brighter? Maybe you don’t force yourself into a frenzy that leaves you, come January, like a cold wick left in a pool of wax. Maybe it's time to find the conditions where your flame steadies and thrives. Where it can dance without consuming itself, burning clear and long, fed by the rhythm. Freshly Forged …Inside Patreon: what's new, what's coming, and how to be part of it. Two workshops are coming up that will shape how we close 2025 and open 2026. Mark your calendars:
The Forge at CYC is cooling for a few weeks while I bring together everything that’s been taking shape in my solo-flame time. I’ll share updates as soon as things are ready to strike. Thanks for holding the space while I make sure ours is set to glow. Worth Reading …The pieces that made me pause.
Notes from the Masters …Craft advice that holds up, straight from the ones who lived it. “I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling – their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without any electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights – then I start thinking about projects, deadlines, demands, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to done, not a background to thought.” — Jeanette Winterson Prompted: Your Move …A spark from this week’s essay. Use it to write your own. Make a list of the “flickers” in your life right now. Those small, persistent sources of light, warmth, or rhythm that aren’t your main blaze, but add the entrainment to your flame. (The quiet colleague whose calm steadies you, the weekly podcast that structures your walk, the recipe you always cook when you need comfort.) Glossary of The Forgotten …Because life’s too chaotic for bland words. Lambent [LAM-bent] (adj.) Light that flickers or skims across a surface. From Latin lambere (“to lick”) it names the specific phenomenon of a soft, living light. Think illuminating without overwhelming, tickling the surface it flits across. Over time it came to describe anything that shines with quiet brilliance, including wit that lands like a spark instead of a slap. Sorta synonyms: glimmering, shimmering, radiant (but, you know, gently.) Use it for: the soft glow of a new idea, a joke that grazes you just before it lands, the moment when a thought warms from nothing into something Want to read more in-depth Glossary entries? Catch up on the archives and find this week’s newest one. Try This Thing …No promises. Just a potentially brilliant shortcut or two. Pexels — Where do I get the images we use in WILF and GOTF and other spots online? The answer is Pexels, and the credit is given freely cause photography is a gorgeous art (Pexels does not allow Generative AI images.) The Final Chuckle …Serious writing deserves unserious endings. My eyes are permanently in this “very open to stare at the screen for 724 hours straight” gaze, plus a festive hat. ‘Til next time ~ Elisa PS — Did you know there are great ways to support CYC that don't cost a thing? You could share this newsletter with someone who'd enjoy it, reply with your thoughts (it tells my email provider that people really dig us), or like the silly jokes I'll make about it on socials. Thanks for being here. |