Writing...

I always wonder what drives anyone to dip the barbed pen into the inkwell of their blood, rich in platelets and plasma, only to find it on paper with the entirely inadequate instrument of the tidy ballpoint pen and notebook paper, blank and familiar as well washed, pinstriped bedsheets.

What is it that drives me to pick up a pen when what pours forth is like watching myself bleed copiously in legible letters.

Worse, what is it that blocks me from expression, when I am so crammed with words, I feel painfully swollen, cystic and distended within the sheerest of membranes.

Why write or create art? Is it to relieve the pain of the 'seeing'? Do those with 'eyes' feel compelled to create expressive works of any genre, do so because they can or because they must?

Is art created by 'little tyrants" whose opinions need to prevail in some form, even long after they are gone... The last word of desperate souls, everlasting. Are we just children tugging on the skirts of society, waiting to be 'heard'?

Is it a way to live in parallel reality forever, in ones own observant world, unwilling to engage in life much at all?

I long to finish my book, which is plodding along in its way. I wonder what it is like for those who isolate themselves from the world and created great works of genius in isolated shacks of wood? What are their last breaths like? Do they clasp their paintings or dry pages of their books, the unpublished sheaf's of paper littering the bedside, and nobody is there save panicked, distant readers and collectors out there somewhere.

Is being alone and working on some great epic work, a sacrificial lamb to progress or is it a waste of a life, which in itself is the grandest work of art. Is the work an effort towards immortality? The kiss of a vampire in blood, leaving you alive and yet dead. You dedicate life to the work and yet do not live because of the work? Is that a price to pay for immortality or some miserable egotist dream of being 'known' forever?
I have come to realize, there is nothing noble or beautiful in suffering. Do we create art to give meaning to our suffering and yet make it worse?

I write because I see. This world can be fraught with shards of pain so keen, the blood is spilt before the pain and understanding. The world can be so bright, my eyes see spots of light from flashes of fire, before any form of comprehension occurs.

How do we cope with seeing? Some drink,some drug, some in the age of the internet just numb themselves with card games like solitaire where you play against yourself or a carefully skilled competitor. Even worse, are the inane 'internet' conversations with carefully crafted persona's. Mindless, meaningful in a box', communication with persons which satisfy as long as we talk, but as soon as we walk away, they and us both know it has no bearing on our real lives or even the person we really are.
Occasionally it can become a real life experience, if you meet the people behind the screen names and they are everything they say they are, and yet they are always more..because nobody can completely describe themselves without being there in the flesh and blood. Even if we think we know them, we do not know their scent, their truest selves...their grumpiness or pimply days, their total humanness. Words can be so significant, but worthless too.

Regardless in our pursuit for these anonymous souls, we often fail to see whats really around us. It sucks the seeing, the living right out of us...this numbing as if blindfolded...
To write you have to feel....
True art is taking the living, breathing chaos of life, the children, friends, lovers and necessary 'daily bread jobs', and transmuting it into a voice for all. It is the cat who lies over your notebook as you try to write...that makes it living, breathing work.
Those who hide from the world yield nothing but blank pages unless there is a live book fully formed and making a noise in ones head-garnered from so much living the quiet is to process it all.
I think the way to write is a compulsion. To write immediately in the middle of mess and noise of Grand Central Station, being busy in real pursuits and then finding corners to write in, this might mean a bench in the sun.
I find the quality of writing is the furtive scribbling in line at the grocery store, on the train or on the steps in the sun during lunch hour, places where we must rejoin life in an instant.
Books form themselves when we aren't paying attention. It is in the seeing, the experiencing, the humility of letting the writing come when it is ready and to live meanwhile. Deep, meaningful living is essential, it is our greatest work of art.