from this point of view
In simply just writing, I have come to remember how, when I write, my spirit goes somewhere else and my mind focuses on some distant point and I become a different type of being.
I become a mind, a soul sparked with life, traveling and moving in the rivers of tales that have been told and retold for centuries. I become a part of that flow, a piece of that river where the only thing that matters is that you are water and you are flowing with it and in it and of it.
As a writer, I have never understood the art of writing. Many people have asked me how I can write or how I can craft stories or how I can find just the right words for the right sentence. How poetry can flow from fingertips to words in a language that humans have created to express their exact ideas. And the answer is, I have no idea.
Something within me flares like a flame and something unravels itself, spreading out a world of transparency and beauty that my brain could not tap into. Something opens and the eyes refocus to find a place that no physical thing can look into.
And, for lack of another word, something spiritual happens there. Something artistic.
It's a strange place, with strange currents that are - sometimes - extremely hard to follow. But I have always yearned to see where they go, and so whenever I am tapped into them, I chase them frantically, expending every ounce of energy I have within me, just to see what they have to show.
There, I have seen a million things, been a million things, known a million things. I have met people there and heard their stories. I have seen worlds arise and fall. I have been witness to death and rebirth. I have experienced pain and joy and frustration. I have trusted and I have been betrayed. I have seen the sun rise in space and seen stars supernova. I have felt the rush of the wind and been submerged in a river of ice cold water. I have held my breath under waterfalls and sank my feet into mud, ankle deep. I have traveled with the insane and the depressed and the naive. I have walked through walls and listened to lover's quarrel. I have flown like a bird and traveled faster than the speed of sound or light.
But, the place is strange and while everything happens, nothing happens at all, and I am still sitting in a cafe in front of my computer or bent over my notebook, cold coffee sitting - as it often does - off to my left, half-drunken. And, eventually, the muscles in my back and legs and arms will call me to rise and I will go home.
But I will never forget where I have been.
The only danger is to forget to go there, at all.
I become a mind, a soul sparked with life, traveling and moving in the rivers of tales that have been told and retold for centuries. I become a part of that flow, a piece of that river where the only thing that matters is that you are water and you are flowing with it and in it and of it.
As a writer, I have never understood the art of writing. Many people have asked me how I can write or how I can craft stories or how I can find just the right words for the right sentence. How poetry can flow from fingertips to words in a language that humans have created to express their exact ideas. And the answer is, I have no idea.
Something within me flares like a flame and something unravels itself, spreading out a world of transparency and beauty that my brain could not tap into. Something opens and the eyes refocus to find a place that no physical thing can look into.
And, for lack of another word, something spiritual happens there. Something artistic.
It's a strange place, with strange currents that are - sometimes - extremely hard to follow. But I have always yearned to see where they go, and so whenever I am tapped into them, I chase them frantically, expending every ounce of energy I have within me, just to see what they have to show.
There, I have seen a million things, been a million things, known a million things. I have met people there and heard their stories. I have seen worlds arise and fall. I have been witness to death and rebirth. I have experienced pain and joy and frustration. I have trusted and I have been betrayed. I have seen the sun rise in space and seen stars supernova. I have felt the rush of the wind and been submerged in a river of ice cold water. I have held my breath under waterfalls and sank my feet into mud, ankle deep. I have traveled with the insane and the depressed and the naive. I have walked through walls and listened to lover's quarrel. I have flown like a bird and traveled faster than the speed of sound or light.
But, the place is strange and while everything happens, nothing happens at all, and I am still sitting in a cafe in front of my computer or bent over my notebook, cold coffee sitting - as it often does - off to my left, half-drunken. And, eventually, the muscles in my back and legs and arms will call me to rise and I will go home.
But I will never forget where I have been.
The only danger is to forget to go there, at all.
2 Thought(s):
Beautifully written. Very interesting.
"And, for lack of another word, something spiritual happens there. Something artistic. It's a strange place, with strange currents that are - sometimes - extremely hard to follow. But I have always yearned to see where they go, and so whenever I am tapped into them, I chase them frantically, expending every ounce of energy I have within me, just to see what they have to show."
Perhaps many artists/writers experience the same. I do with my conceptual art but find it extremely frustrating that the unraveling of the flame is difficult to manage... the fixation & obsession that others don't understand & the exhilaration that is somehow threatening. (Or is this just my family, friends & coworkers?)
I think an artist's inner place is very difficult for anyone else to understand. I would wager - even for other artists. However, I think other artists have an easier time with it because they have a similar place, whereas those who are less intuition based and more tactile or sensory based have a harder time because they don't function that way. They see what there is to see and they find meaning in it. I think sometimes sensory based people have a tendency to think that the artist's 'place' doesn't exist and has no data. But, on the same coin, I think intuition based people can think of sensory people as shallow or uninspired.
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