Paris Letters #75
We are moving forwards in in the heavens, faster than the speed of light. We have to learn to give up our rags, to throw them in the fire. Peak moments are gone forever, there is no point in trying to reconstruct them. If we do try, we end up making some kind of monster, out of our old selves.
However, there are times, when one has to ‘work on what has been spoiled’ as the I Ching says—times when we didn’t follow through and left a psychic knot in our consciousness. If this haunts us enough, it may be valuable to listen to those neglected voices, to try to revive those lost potentials.
Should one burn the bridges then, or go back and repair what has been broken? What to do with all these unborn, or in-utero children? That is always a question.
A couple of years ago I went and re-recorded a few of my old songs. It was a creative disaster. Why? Because I no longer lived in those songs, as I did before. They only became alive when they were remade completely, transformed into something else.
To bring something to fullness, is to surrendered it completely. The reason most of our work is drafting, or hesitant — is because we fear to do that. One of the reason is that we identify with a work so egoically. We want this work to represent us personally, when it may actually come from beyond us.
Perhaps if we stopped thinking of our creations as coming from our personhood, but rather a divine force breaking through us, we would not be so encumbered. We have to let go of our vice like grip on process, so that the muse can be heard. It’s not how we manipulate our tools for effect, but how we listen and absorb the signals in the air.
When people become professional artists, the soul of their work often gets lost. This is because the work gets crystallized it into craft and repeat performance. Being comes comes when one is most empty and receptive. As soon as the social ego gets a hold of a person, that soul is obscured.
What is the suitable vessel for the soul, then? Who is this hero of creativity? Certainly not the wretched artists ego. No, it is this ragged being, and this ragged moment. It will never be something that can be defined, nor should it be. You cannot go backwards in time to reconstruct that peak moment, when it shined so brightly. Therefore you have to constantly renew your pact with her, your shining potential, in every moment.
The task has very little glamour, and requires a great labor of hidden love. The spirit that moves on the waters comes unexpended, without our bidding, but only after the constructs have collapsed. The effort is in stripping away their foundations and the past images of what they could be — to not allow the soul to be reified, defined, or even described. For she is the quick of life herself.
