Demanding Art

Pick up the pen. Do it. I swear to God...good. Now stop thinking about the neighbors, stop thinking about traffic or weather or bills. Stop. I didn’t say do it, I said stop. Those kids running around upstairs are not that loud. Artillery is loud, little feet are not loud. Would you call yourself ‘focused’? No? Well, no, this is not the time to put yourself down, acting like life isn’t temporary. Stop. Stop, damnit. God, y’now, once you get started, there really is just no stopping you. Fine, go ahead, think whatever you want.

***

I was gnawing at my pen cap, prepared to write. The voice in my head was telling me not to be so hard on myself, just like my mother. I see myself as necessarily rough with my addictive ways. Others see it as self mutilation. I hadn’t written in a long time and was giving myself a hard time. Stop, I told myself, trying to just observe my thoughts, to just watch, not judge, not punish. I know, I know, you think you are too old to be trying to express your true self and you are probably right, I told myself. It is true, I was too busy for a long while to listen to my heart, to finish a book or learn how to breathe properly, to relax. But now is not the time to worry about anything, I told myself again, now, you write.

It is not like I am some writer of great acclaim, someone the universe winks at and says, ’Oh, yes, you are a special one.’ Rilke said ‘Don’t write if you could not.’ but who wants to admit they could not? Rather, convince yourself that you couldn’t make it if you couldn’t write. Then write, that is the key. Keep writing, perhaps keep the pen moving, not stopping to think about what to say but saying whatever comes out, accepting it all, but maybe not. Maybe careful consideration of each word, a letting loose inside an ideal, expressing exactly what it’s like. Don’t stop. That is the way of the writer.

I wrote for about a half hour, my word count steadily rising, my skill growing in acuity and honesty. It was getting easier to say what I was a little scared to say. I could calmly enter a fictional world and stay there until I found out what was really going on. I have sat and written and when I stopped, I thought I should write once an hour, forever. Other times, like now, I don’t know what to say but The Muse shows up, eventually, and until then, I express. I am breathing, so I am behind this keyboard, being. There is no need for a purpose. It is enough just to be nominated. I honor the God in me, bypassing the petty and seeking great art.

No longer do I try to live twice, once in real time, once on the page. Life is more important than art but art is also more important than life. It is about balancing the need to create versus bearing witness to original artist, to the only artist, God. I don’t love a poem more than I love myself so I no longer love the art of God more than God. His world is perfectly harmonized. God doesn’t need a short story from me. In praise and gratitude, that is how I come to writing now. Like a prayer, like sleep, I revere writing as something holy, life giving and stabilizing.

I see beauty everywhere my pen lets me go, freedom each time my fingers open new worlds to me. ‘There is no such thing as fiction.’ (Neville Goddard) It is reality which is shocking in it’s simplicity, obvious as a snake. What pains me is my salvation, my darkness is what keeps me safe. For a long time, writing was something which swept me away by the process, unable to fit such a large title as ‘writer’ into my narrow world view. I stopped trying to quiet my mind so a poem could seep out. I gave up hoping that the words that came out of me were worthy and of value. I saw only derision. I saw a life of alcoholism and a sour outlook. I saw myself seeking the notebook as ‘the only real thing’. It was real but so was everything else.

I was chasing something I thought was outside of me and it was exhausting. It was a desire to get that word, to capture that idea, to never put down the identity of ‘writer’ until I finally realized, I had to stop. I let all my work go, unwillingly but still. I quit completely and didn’t return until I saw a reason to, a way I could write and not become a crazy person. Eckhart Tolle presented that opportunity when he suggested that perhaps, I could just let the thought that I used to chase, go. He proposed that there would be another thought along soon after the one I just knew was ‘The Idea’ or ‘The Word’, probably a better idea, but always, another thought. I began to see that the only way to survive the urge to create in the world is to understand the nature of creativity, or God.

I no longer chase phantoms in my mind and call them spiritual. I see my thoughts for what they are, energy patterns. I now observe my thoughts so that distractions don’t do what they are intended to but instead, melt back into the ethers from whence they come. I do not obsess that some thought is The Thought, telling myself a great writer would hunt that thought down and capture it. Instead, I bear witness to my mind and write the same way, allowing. I must do this. Otherwise, I become a victim to the written word, assailed by thoughts, bullied by ideas and that is no way to live for art. Art wants a patron, a kindred, a voyeur. Art wants to be seen and felt, heard and noticed, not vilified because some writer flailed in the current of creation. Art needs observers and I watch the world now, writing down what demands form.