How To Find A Sonnet
Where do you find fourteen lines whizzing about a whirligig of time and space as separate entities; memories without reason, nevermind a place in the world upon which you’d thrust them? I suppose, in the haze, a single word waves, smiling with an idea that you can follow like a light. And so you fly, you must fly, for light travels fast! Grab your pen and a page as you’re whizzing past irrelevant and such beautiful things, collecting their colours on your waxy wings, hoping to really look at them later. For this light is touching and upon a great many words that your pen scratches out in an inky thread — the maze of dreams in your head now woven into the tapestry of the page; how this prescient light makes you a fate of your own finding, stringing and wringing your mind into a place that makes you, makes everything real. In this forgotten reality, you wake — the light itself has vanished, though its fiery trail remains.
You look back on the madness issued from your hand under the direction of the airy muse, and only madness could it be. There are fourteen lines, indeed, but reason ends there. And so your formerly flighty hand wields a medicinal wand of purpose: the hurried breath passed on the page is steadied with a metre, protected with structure, corrected by punctuation, and glossed with rhyme. In this way, such breath becomes life; a naked, wailing babe is clothed and smiling, ready to be baptised by a loving gaze from strangers of all means. Then it will stand on its own, and then it will roam free.
The greatest source of inspiration for any creation is in feeling the weight of your own existence. It’s where the gravity of your flesh presses against the flight of your mind as it tries to travel beyond the realms even of imagination. It’s where stark reality is so inescapable you search for an escape just to understand its trappings. It’s where you feel most at home in your wanderlust. So close your eyes. Let your life surprise you. It’s all life will ever do, in the end, because it ends no matter how oft it begins or what it makes of your unique pen, be it drafting fourteen lines, a thousand lines, or ten.
The truth is that the muse isn’t bound by time or place per se, but rests in every particle of creation until we feel its weight.
Listen to this week’s episode, Fire, Arts, and Attitude:
Written by Kaitlynn McRae of Comatose.
Comatose is a weekly series of amusing anecdotes, insightful commentary, and pithy stories. Every week three contributors are featured in short segments. The segments, though often unrelated, are tied together using music and narration to set the scene. Relax and enjoy the ride while listening to topics as varied as love, birthdays, and reciprocity.
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