I'm 25 years old and unmarried, so when it comes to relationships I think of Ygritte's mantra in A Song of Ice and Fire, turned into the HBO series Game of Thrones, "You know nothing, Jon Snow." Never mind who Ygritte or Jon Snow are, just know that every five sentences or so she says to him the same thing, "You know nothing, Jon Snow." I, too, know nothing--about relationships anyway--about any other subject I know everything.
Still, I know enough about relationships, romantic and other relationships, to know what kind of effect they have on writing and one's quest for fame and success. I've said in an earlier post that I don't really approve of external muses: my muse is my mind, and to the extent that anyone or anything other than my mind can be my muse it's only because they calm me so to allow my mind to operate the way it should when I'm trying to write. In that sense, God and my bike, Cato, are more muse-like than any passionate love affair could be (I suppose that I should write about Cato in a later post, eh?). Sorry ladies, you won't ever be my muse and fulfill your dream of sneaking into literature or having a passionate love affair with a sexy poet. Won't happen. So if I don't believe in muses and I know little about relationships in general, what am I doing here? Well, I am in love.
Love love love. I had told myself after graduating seminary, and even before really, not to distract myself with romantic relationships (perhaps my next post will be about other types of relationships, who knows... I don't) because they are, in fact, distracting. Romantic relationships are exciting, satisfying, lovely, peaceful, and for depression-prone folk like me, stabilizing. All of that is true with Danielle, my not-exactly-hippie Vermont love. According to her, I light up when I see her, and I can imagine I do because she makes me feel terrifyingly wonderful. We both have promised each other to do things right and take it all slow, but when you fall in love with someone that you know intellectually is a good fit for you it's hard to stick to the slow part, though doing things right always takes priority. Of course, doing things right is a must when the couple is composed of a Catholic and an almost-Catholic. Yet, despite the fact that I'm head over heels for her, and we're a good fit, and we're both Geminis, and I think our families will love each other and most importantly love us, and she's as beautiful as the sky is blue, and she's a level 2 Reiki healer person, which is awesome; still I know that she is a distraction.
Whaaaa?! A distraction??? She may not like reading that very much. But, I trust that she knows it's true to some extent. While thinking of her and talking to her and spending time with her may keep my mind fresh and thinking of new ideas, new lines, and new situations; and may ignite in me a new understanding of the heights of love and passion; theoretically all the time that I am talking to her or spending time with her is time not spent writing. The fact that she lives in Vermont and I'm here in the Boston area, which is a far better place to live, clearly, makes everything harder: traveling there and back is exhausting, and when we are together we must make the most of it, which is exhausting. Obviously exhausting and exhilarating simultaneously, perhaps far more exhilarating than exhausting, but nonetheless exhausting. Same will be true when she visits. Since she has an actual job we have talked about my staying with her for longer than a weekend; I know, too, that the initial stages of a relationship are much more time and wallet-consuming than it is after settling in. At that point the relationship will be less of a distraction than it is now. I mean, I can't be writing all day every day, or I'd go insane, and it makes sense that my "break" time would be spent with someone I love. Even then, though, being a writer and working hard towards far-off fame and success in any area takes a lot of commitment and a lot of time, I cannot simply settle into the rhythm of life and be okay with where I am.
Learning how to manage romantic relationships, then, is a key to being a writer or an artist. First of all it clearly requires that your significant other understands, encourages, and supports your work. But it also requires your thinking clearly about what you want: if a romantic relationship will always feel like a distraction from what you most want to do in and with your life, then maybe you should think about staying away from a relationship, no matter how much you may love someone. And if you don't think of the relationship as a distraction, either because you really want it or you so love the person that you can't think of a relationship with them as a distraction, then you need to work extra hard to set aside loads of time to pursue your own goals. If in one, three, five, ten, twenty years you think you may feel like anything nearing a failure who let life pass by indifferently, and you may regret it--regret that your life has become something you never wanted, then you better not get involved.
No matter how you feel about a person, or persons I guess, if you're into polygamy, and no matter how great the relationship with that person may be, hard choices have to be made. There has to be some discipline in your life. Well, a lot of discipline. I imagine that for a writer or artist the need for discipline is greater because we don't have 9-5 schedules, we make our own schedules generally and basically. But no matter who you are, a life without discipline will secure your place in mediocrity--and if you can't institute discipline in your life without depressing yourself, stressing yourself out to the point of illness, exhausting yourself, or anything other than a sort of peaceful determination, mixed with a strong intensity, then you are likewise condemning yourself to mediocrity.
Some people say they prefer mediocrity or being in the middle of the pack. Feigned humility often plays a part here. But let's be real, most of us dream for greatness and will not truly be content unless we attain it.
Instituting discipline in my life is the name of my game for the next few months, particularly in the coming weeks. As long as the Tour de France runs, this will be very difficult. After that, though, discipline will be my main goal, especially in terms of my relationship with Danielle. In this case, discipline is very loose, because passion needs to flow where it will I suppose.
Luckily for me, and strangely, the more that I talk to and spend time with my love and think that she is a distraction to me, the better. While she may not like my constant frustration, it is my frustration that she is a distraction that will best motivate me to write and institute the needed discipline in my life. In fact, I've been writing more in the past couple of weeks when my relationship has been most a distraction. Perhaps my love is my muse, you might say. Whatever the case, I've been able to translate my frustration in being distracted into greater determination, though I've been on the verge of depression a number of times. That's key, too, obviously. So, let's hope that I learn how to not be distracted while remaining in this wonderful relationship, and hope also that I stay distracted as much as possible.
Showing posts with label muse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label muse. Show all posts
Friday, July 13, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
Inspiration
My last post included a little tidbit on the common perceptions of artists and writers. Mainly what I want to focus on is the very wrong perception that we only work when inspiration hits us, as if we sit around doing a narrow range of activities from nothing to smoking pot or getting drunk. Basically what this perception amounts to, especially in this country where most Americans are diseased with a work-complex, is that artists and writers are lazy, useless to society, and generally a waste. If you are reading this and don't share these conclusions, then great; but my hunch is that the vast majority of people, even those who appreciate the arts and perhaps dabble in artistic endeavor themselves, still think that something called inspiration does or should drive all artistic work.
That's just plain wrong or misguided, whatever you want to call it. Too many self-proclaimed or aspiring artists/writers, poets and painters especially, say that they work when they are feeling inspired. And then if they are not feeling inspired then they don't do anything. I know a lot of these people and, quite frankly, I do not like them because they are the reason artists of all kinds are poorly perceived.
There is nothing wrong with writing or painting as a hobby. If your artistic work is just a hobby, though, then please, when I say I am a writer, do not reply, "Oh yeah, I write poems every now and then when I feel inspired." Frick in the balls that upsets me. If you meet an architect, you don't say to them, "Yeah, I build little toy houses as a hobby every now and then when I feel inspired." If you somehow meet a professional football player, the last thing you should say to them is, "I played football in middle school and still play a pick-up game every now and then when we're all feeling inspired." Who cares!!
Ok, "who cares" with two exclamation points might be a little harsh. The point is, there is very little comparison between someone's hobby and someone else's profession or career, even if it's the same activity. You make clay pots every month with the pottery club, you say? Great. Does that mean your pots are sold at the Pottery Barn? I don't think so. Obviously there is very little actual pottery sold at that store, but I'm making a point here. You could be very good at this hobby of yours but it does not make you a writer, painter, sculptor, poet, or artist of any kind. As long as you think of it as something that you do as a hobby or every now and then or just whenever you feel inspired, there will always be a large gap between what you're doing and what the career artist is doing.
Poetry is perhaps the easiest of all the arts to pretend at. Many people think it takes just a few minutes to write a poem, and then they shop the poem around as if it's the next "On a Grecian Urn" or "God's Grandeur" or William Carlos Williams. Oh silliness. Real poets, the career poets, agonize over poems. It's fairly common that a poet will spend all day writing a poem and then be unable to sleep at night questioning whether they should add a semi-colon, or something.
An artist or writer cannot afford to wait for inspiration or for the next word from a muse. Writing is my life, I must write to live. That means that I write with or without inspiration. By God I hope I have inspiration, motivation, determination, and whatever other word you can think of that fits, but if I don't then I must write anyway. And if I simply cannot write then you will find me in serious arrears. If I cannot write then I am thinking about what to write, how I can't write, what's wrong with me that I can't write, whether I'll ever succeed, oh dear God why am I such a failure! If I cannot write then I also cannot just move on to something else. Writers may have other jobs but they are not fall-back options or anything of the sort, they are merely meant to keep the writer afloat to be a writer. When a writer has another job they often work themselves to death because when they are not 'working,' they are doing the real work of writing. This is even more true if the writer or artist is also a born priest or architect. Oh what little time they must have to sleep!
I encourage writing or something other artistic activity as a hobby for everyone, but please do not think that writing is simply a hobby that I or anyone else have made into a life. Writing is my life. I am writing all the time, even when I am not. Again my friend Alexandra, who is a far better artist than I ever will be, put it well when she told me not to worry about the times when all I felt like doing was reading or traveling because even then my mind was writing.
In a way I think that I create my own inspiration and my own muse. The artist's mind needs training like anything else. Since I have trained my writer's mind 'inspiration' may come to me more than others. That does not make me lucky, it simply makes me a writer. Hence there is another difference between a writer and someone with a hobby: I create my inspiration through training and keeping at it, and others wait for inspiration.
Basically this post is one big act of self-praise, so feel free to kneel before me whenever you so desire.
That's just plain wrong or misguided, whatever you want to call it. Too many self-proclaimed or aspiring artists/writers, poets and painters especially, say that they work when they are feeling inspired. And then if they are not feeling inspired then they don't do anything. I know a lot of these people and, quite frankly, I do not like them because they are the reason artists of all kinds are poorly perceived.
There is nothing wrong with writing or painting as a hobby. If your artistic work is just a hobby, though, then please, when I say I am a writer, do not reply, "Oh yeah, I write poems every now and then when I feel inspired." Frick in the balls that upsets me. If you meet an architect, you don't say to them, "Yeah, I build little toy houses as a hobby every now and then when I feel inspired." If you somehow meet a professional football player, the last thing you should say to them is, "I played football in middle school and still play a pick-up game every now and then when we're all feeling inspired." Who cares!!
Ok, "who cares" with two exclamation points might be a little harsh. The point is, there is very little comparison between someone's hobby and someone else's profession or career, even if it's the same activity. You make clay pots every month with the pottery club, you say? Great. Does that mean your pots are sold at the Pottery Barn? I don't think so. Obviously there is very little actual pottery sold at that store, but I'm making a point here. You could be very good at this hobby of yours but it does not make you a writer, painter, sculptor, poet, or artist of any kind. As long as you think of it as something that you do as a hobby or every now and then or just whenever you feel inspired, there will always be a large gap between what you're doing and what the career artist is doing.
Poetry is perhaps the easiest of all the arts to pretend at. Many people think it takes just a few minutes to write a poem, and then they shop the poem around as if it's the next "On a Grecian Urn" or "God's Grandeur" or William Carlos Williams. Oh silliness. Real poets, the career poets, agonize over poems. It's fairly common that a poet will spend all day writing a poem and then be unable to sleep at night questioning whether they should add a semi-colon, or something.
An artist or writer cannot afford to wait for inspiration or for the next word from a muse. Writing is my life, I must write to live. That means that I write with or without inspiration. By God I hope I have inspiration, motivation, determination, and whatever other word you can think of that fits, but if I don't then I must write anyway. And if I simply cannot write then you will find me in serious arrears. If I cannot write then I am thinking about what to write, how I can't write, what's wrong with me that I can't write, whether I'll ever succeed, oh dear God why am I such a failure! If I cannot write then I also cannot just move on to something else. Writers may have other jobs but they are not fall-back options or anything of the sort, they are merely meant to keep the writer afloat to be a writer. When a writer has another job they often work themselves to death because when they are not 'working,' they are doing the real work of writing. This is even more true if the writer or artist is also a born priest or architect. Oh what little time they must have to sleep!
I encourage writing or something other artistic activity as a hobby for everyone, but please do not think that writing is simply a hobby that I or anyone else have made into a life. Writing is my life. I am writing all the time, even when I am not. Again my friend Alexandra, who is a far better artist than I ever will be, put it well when she told me not to worry about the times when all I felt like doing was reading or traveling because even then my mind was writing.
In a way I think that I create my own inspiration and my own muse. The artist's mind needs training like anything else. Since I have trained my writer's mind 'inspiration' may come to me more than others. That does not make me lucky, it simply makes me a writer. Hence there is another difference between a writer and someone with a hobby: I create my inspiration through training and keeping at it, and others wait for inspiration.
Basically this post is one big act of self-praise, so feel free to kneel before me whenever you so desire.
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