My middle is always a mess. My mother taught me not to use qualifiers, don't say always unless it actually is always, but for me, the middle ground is overgrown, untamed, and unrecognizable. It's also where I figure out what I'm really trying to say. This is a process far less glamorous than I once imagined. It involves stumbling into things, nearly throwing out my pages, letting my tea go cold. Usually, the words are hidden underneath extraneous layers, unimportant details, flowery language. Metaphorically, it's like cleaning out your closet to find a specific shirt except you stumble into a letter hidden in a pocket. The thing is, you start and you realize that what you were looking for wasn't what you thought. But not if you stop. Figuring out what it is is a relentless search made possible only by the promise of clarity, understanding.
I'm going through The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and it's changing my life. I feel silly saying that, but one of my promises to myself for this year is to let myself feel everything as fully as I can. I'm giving myself permission to be soft, to cry, to be okay with being seen as foolish if it means I'm being true to my emotions and where I am. I have unconscious triggers that quell the force of what I'm feeling and they go off as little blurts (as Julia Cameron would say), in my head.
That's too personal
People will laugh
Wow, that's stupid
You're unoriginal
Why are you even crying?
I'm tending to those ugly things I've planted. It's good for my health as an artist and a person. Pulling up the prickly growth that sprouted through years of unconscious neglect. It's a scratchy process but a practice that helps me return to good earth. Some of these weeds are blurts or thoughts I tell myself that are untrue, whereas others are practices I've slipped into out of habit. Dancing around the edge, side-stepping the issue, relying on adverbs, metaphors, and commonalities. That's what Morning Pages and a promise to write everyday, even if what I write is awful and said before, helps me identify and get rid of. Weed through the small, decrepit things that are choking out the seeds.
seed (siːd)
— n
5. the source, beginning, or germ of anything.
I don't want to kill off the growth before it has a change to grow. I don't want to harvest the plant until it's full grown, otherwise, how can I know what it is that I've planted? Yes, I will say things badly and repeat words, but through putting out work everyday I'll hopefully stumble into a new way of thinking. Understanding, perhaps? This is all a muddle, but that's okay. I write and hate what I've written. But I'm determined to keep plucking thoughts like apples, peeling away the outer layer to get the fruit of the seed. This is called, writing words down even if the thoughts galvanizes me with their utter horrendous ness, triteness, imperfectness.
"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a sh*tty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it." ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
I'm not a Kerouac admirer. I'm not a fan of his spontaneous prose. I tried to read On the Road and lost interest within seconds. Maybe I don't understand it and surprisingly, I'm okay with this admittance. Sidenote, it's intriguing how easy it is to "love" someone and their work when the general artistic community does as well. His writing is too lucid and lingering for me. It's a compendium of rabbit trails all with the beginning road of a real thought minus the follow through. He took a 4x6 snapshot instead of photographing a series, staying devoted to one message. Capote's dismissal of Kerouac makes me laugh. "That's not writing, that's typing." Yet sometimes (from what little of him I've read), he taps into inner thought and the artist's struggle like music.
"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."
Isn't that we're all trying to do? Whether we are writers or architects or dancers? Trying to take the clutter and clatter of all the extra noise and stuff and reduce it to the purest, clearest, simplest message? Untangle the knots until we're left with clean, direct lines? Discover the heart for everything What is that? What are our deepest reasons for creating? What are we speaking in our true voices? I wish there was a general answer yet I lift praises that it the answer is as unique as each person who seeks it.
So I keep writing bad drafts. I keep moving through the middle and believe that one day, I'll find the right words, I'll reach the final page, I'll understand. I hope for you the same.
No comments :
Post a Comment