INSPIRATION AS EDUCATION

In what seems like another lifetime, I was a high school teacher, and among other things I taught English and theatre.  Part of that job was to direct school plays, which I realy enjoyed.  One year I was deaparate to find a musical to produce but was fresh out of ideas.  A friend suggested a musical that he had done when he was in High School, Pippen, which has a groovy 60s vibe, which felt a little nostalgic for me, but roughly followed a made-up story about a historical figure looking for significance as a young man.  It has some explicitly profound thoughts like "If I"m never tied to anything, I'll never be free"  Which seemed worthwhile.  I worked in a fairly conservative comunity and the previous year, a few parents had written letters of compaint about our musical "South Pacific, in which they mostly objected to one character who runs a prostitution ring and calls everyone a "Stigy Bastard."  So my first task was to congince the principle that this new musical would  cause few problems, so I gave her an anotated version of the original script with notes on the few things I did cut and the occasionally mild sexual content in it with arguements for keepong those.  this principle was kind of a hard-boiled former PE coach who would rarely sit through a musical anytime in her life, but I pointed out the strrong morl lessons and questions in the play, and afer whe read my anotated and adapted version she declared to me "If anyone complains about this play, you send them to me and I'll explain it to them."  At that moment I was completely convinced by the power of ideas and inspriation.  And that is probably the moment I decide to become an author.  So shortly after that I decided to expand this growth method further when I realized I was directing a bunch of prima donnas who had little moral or spiritual connection to the important themes of the play or the significance of what they were doing.  So after one rehearsal I took the floor and explained my take on the theme of the play that Things in life don't always work out as we expect, but with a good foundation of connection to others, things can be fine.  I didn't see anyone cry, but this entire group of students was some what shoked and shaken out of a 1980s mindless optimism they had grow up with and over the next few days really began to wrestle with their perceptions of life and their efforrs of lack of effort to make good lives for themselves.  A lot of growing up happened that week and I was students grow and stretch in mature in ways I never expected.  These two experiences with Pippen as well as my own changes in attitude about my own life at the time set the tone for what I am trying to accomplish in GrowthWater Press  New ideas and perspectives can really be powerful, So my goal is to get them out and pass them around and rework your mind.  I get high on ideas and I hope I ccan share that joy.  How about this for a slogan:  grammar and spelling are better than drugs--Ok  I'll keep revisit that one.  but there's a bit more about me and the core Idea of Growth Water.  I'm sure I'll keep coming back to that idea, so it's worth telling up front.    --Peter Covington, Editor