November 29, 2007

• Digging around in Old Stuff

  In the course of writing words here for the past four years or so, there have been a number of “abandoned thoughts” scattered through these pages. You probably have some, too… those posts that once seemed like a great idea, but ended up “eternally private” because they were never finished, yet too good to just scrap. Or, as it often happens for me, I am cooking along with a great train of thought… and then I am disturbed, so I save… and never feel able to pick up the trail again.

  Then again, maybe other people have more functional brains than I do…
  

  Due to my current lack of creative thought, I figgered I might as well plagiarize myself. Or something like it.
  

  So, do people only write well when they are sad, angry, depressed, insane, mentally disturbed, in chaos, in transition, in pain….?

  There’s an old (and possibly true) myth that great creativity, artistic expression and brilliance arises from pain and suffering. We read of “the tormented artist,” and watch people like Vincent van Gogh chop his ear off while creating the masterpieces of his life. Poets are often overwrought and heartbroken when they come up with the most amazing love poems known to humankind. Painters are suicidal and dark.
  

  Some years ago I had an art gallery/gift store, and spent a fair amount of time meeting with and getting to know artists from many fields. I particularly remember a pair of Swedish glass blowers– and they created some really wonderful things– who lived by the idea that “we want to express the joy we feel while creating our art.”

  Nobody took them seriously… even though their work was excellent. Jerker eventually went back to being an advertising executive, and whereas Richard did continue blowing glass, he never really got very far beyond the “local” stage.
  

  I have been looking back over some of my own writing, recently. Personally, I find the stuff I wrote during the dark periods of my life to be… well… rather dark. I really used to moan and groan a lot. And whatever audience I might have had seemed to really like it. Which brings me to the thought that perhaps it’s all a matter of what people are looking for. Maybe it’s the old “misery loves company” complex. So many folks are in a place of pain suffering that they simply don’t want to hear about pink fluffy clouds.
  

  Of course, I have often been quite critical of pink fluffy clouds, possibly because I have never lived anywhere that had any. But that’s neither here, nor there.
  

  This got me to thinking about how different people have different emotions that are “easy” and “difficult” for them to deal with. For example, I deal with sadness rather easily… but I also know people who will go to great lengths to “distract” themselves in order to avoid feeling sadness… right down to the point of “substituting” another emotion. Conversely, I find anger a very difficult emotion to deal with. It’s not that I don’t– or can’t– deal with it, it just takes a lot more effort than sadness, pain, fear or something else. It makes me an odd duck, in some ways… if someone steals my favorite CD, I don’t feel angry about it, rather, I feel sad that I no longer have the music.

  Clearly, I have some kind of learning there… as I have periodically contemplated the reasons why my life has often been rather full of “angry people.” I don’t like people with “anger management issues,” and yet they show up at my doorstep, all the time. I was watching the latest episode of “Pushing Daisies” last night, and rather deeply related to the Piemaker; I have never (for example) seen the point of retaliation and revenge. Hurting someone because they hurt me doesn’t make me “feel good.” I’m not denying that maybe it does for others, but it doesn’t, for me. And yet, it often seems to offend (at least some) people that I will just “walk away” rather than “go to war.” It’s a bit like that metaphorical question “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” For me it’s “What’s the sound of one person having a fight?” That’s not to imply that I don’t have boundaries, and won’t stand up for what I believe in… but I am just going to “take it somewhere else,” rather than argue with people over it.

  I have been asked how I can possibly “win at life” with that attitude. Which tends to lead to a whole new set of mumbo-jumbo, because I’m not sure what it is I have to “win.” I like to “be” and to “exist” and to “interact” and “connect….” and the whole “more than, better than, bigger than” paradigm is somewhat irrelevant to my life.

  Which, perhaps, explains why much of my life has been about “scraping by,” rather outside the expected norms.
  

  It does make me sad that living by the ideal of simply “being” in a way that feels intuitively right means that a person ends up on the fringes of society. Or, possibly, what really makes me feel sad is the realization that my “fringe dwelling” ways are often at the core of what a billion-dollar self-help industry teaches about inner peace and contentment.

  And maybe THAT is the core paradox of the human condition: There are lots of things we want, but we don’t actually live those desires.

  I don’t talk much about this stuff, because I worry about sounding intolerant… as intolerant as those who want me to be “something other than” what I am. I don’t feel intolerant. I merely feel puzzled, mystified.
  

  • 11:57 am
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