Is A Writer An Artist? Part II
A writer is at their best when anonymous. Sitting in a coffee shop, penning poetry and prose, sipping their coffee — one cup, two, three, growing increasingly nervous — their words a quiet unraveling.
To live a life worth writing about, one must experience things fully.
You have to be a little reckless. But you have to know what you’re getting yourself into; you have to see it all clearly, with an open mind — laid out in front of you with a crystalline sense of objectivity — in order to write about the world and your experiences within it.
A writer is at their best when they set fire to the past. Watch as the paper curls and burns. Ashes soon drift through air. We create to destroy, and destroy what we create. Art must be protected — but what about when we live our art? When it’s in our very bones? When we create ourselves, penning the outlines, shading in the details from the outside in?
There are people who go their entire lives never feeling what a writer feels.
There are those dedicated to protecting themselves against feeling with such depth, such emotion. They distance themselves from it, read about it in books, watch the subsequently bad movies concocted from the pages of formulaic love stories and cliched plot-lines.
To those I say, you must know this: A writer does not settle. We create worlds for ourselves when the ones in which we live become impossible to bear. We free ourselves and others with our words. We free the truth, let it sing from the page.
Sometimes we cut its throat, send hot blood spilling. It’s all in the time — it’s in the telling that we do our work.
You must also know: A writer never forgets.
Crazy in our hearts and wildness in our bones, a deep abiding sense of restlessness that never leaves, just grows and grows.
All the lights are spread out out in a sparkling map before me, as if the stars had come down to join the party too; and I understand that should you let the world make your heart hard (that travesty Vonnegut spoke so vehemently against), you must then use that hardness as a weapon.
You must wield it against those who would take you away from yourself, who would steal and burn parts of you. You must not give yourself away lightly, but hold on tight. Let your soul burn brightly.
Hello, wordsmith: Teller of stories, crafter of tales.
Does all of this make a writer into an artist? Is it the blazing of our collective souls? Is it that which makes us feel alive — what brings and shares the light?
And if it is, what good, then, is light kept to itself, a candle that could become a roaring conflagration? Must we keep the fire contained? Must we continue to fight the blaze, or should we let it roam free? Lose ourselves amongst the burning forests, the snickering embers of our memories.
They say you should write what you know, and I can’t help but laugh at the cliche. How we love to hate a good cliche.
And anyway, all I know is what I write, and all I write is what I know: I do not know anymore.
Not for the first time, I feel time’s hand pressing down on me, forcefully; a guiding presence, yes, but more often than not a pointed finger, accusatory tone, Why Haven’t You Achieved Anything Yet, Why Haven’t You Written Anything of Worth, Why Haven’t You . . . a repetitive drivel of negative commentary directed harshly at the creative self.
It decimates any possibility of simple relaxation. Why? Because there is just TOO MUCH to DO — too much to see, hear, feel, be; I want to take it all on, try on different personalities like coats, to shed the skins I don’t fit in. Character, meet creator — or is it the other way around?
In many ways a writer is like someone with bipolar disorder; constantly feeling that rushrushrushing of manic inspiration, scribble it all down hurry before you forget — and then the settling down, simmering into a cold brew of depression, stagnation, the uninspired tired blank comedown we all associate with writer’s block.
Have you ever loved someone so much you wanted to let them rip you to pieces, just to see what beats, raw and red inside?
A writer does this to themselves.
This is what a writer does: We make our very lives into art, write ourselves in between the lines, leave spaces blank, riddle our very bones with those self-same cliches and the tired up-and-down spiral of expectant glances.
We sit in coffee shops and stare at blank pages, screens.
Well, what now? Imagine every negative emotion as an arrow, every hateful thought or word a weapon in our arsenal. Polish them, keep them whole and close, sharp.
Take care with an author, they will remember every word you say. They will write it all down, keep it close. Resentment will fester, an infection gone undetected for days, even years, undiagnosed.
This is the time, and these are the stories.
Sometimes I think that my bloodstream is filled with ink. I dip into it like a river. Inspiration rushes fast; if you can’t swim you will drown. (But poetry cannot be forced. When forced, a poem is a terrible gaping chasm. When you find your way to it naturally . . . it is a bridge.) So, what can you do? You must write the things that people do not say — the things you wish you could say.
You must write them all down. You must make them into art.
You must create, destroy, rip yourself to pieces, shred the blood and bone.
You must throw this against the page again and again. Till the blood spatters. Till the bone is crushed.
Then you must do it again. Again! Again! Until it is good enough.
Until you know.
