when i went to this writing conference a year or so back... he had us get up first thing in the morning, grab a pencil and start scribbling... no coffee, no eggs, no time to gather in the thoughts and construct them like little paper dolls gathered at tea... just.. write.
theidea being you're still half caught in that dream-fugue state... and more likely to just spill open... without benefit of filter or censorship... all the good, juicy stuff just sorta' flows outta' you cuz you're not dong anything to hold it back. i like that idea so much.
i am one of those walking contradictions i suppose. in my high school yearbook, we had to provide a quote for our pictures our senior year.. i remember coming up with someting succintly like... "don't lie to people. life's too short to be your own best friend." at the time i knew it was exactly what i wanted to say, but i couldn't for the life of me, figure out what the hell it meant. i think about it often years later and i think i am just beginning to see the latent meaning in those awkward yet.. prophetic.. words...
there is something in the artist (or perhaps even in just humanity???) that longs to put themselves out there. to bare all.. to lay their innermost selves out on the table and have it be viewed by all.. i know i've wanted that my entire life.
but with it goes something... once it's out there... shivering like a naked plate of jell-o... the source from whence it came.. it wants it to be loved, to be coddled, to be ooh-ed and awed and and proclaimed lovely and indispensible. to somehow be raised beyond the thing it is and swathed in love & admiration.
maybe the person wants this too.
i have fought this temptation my whole life. if you want to be good & loved you bake cookies and compliment people on their hair and take an interest in their stamp collection and tell them things they want to hear.
if one wants simply... to be truthful..... and real.... well, that's a whole 'nother sphere of living now, ain't it?
i don't think the one excludes the other... i just know in my own life... the need to be good and loved has so often buried my deeper need to be truthful about who and whatever it is i am.... and so the love part..... for all its worth... has meant little. ... as if addressed to a stranger...
these are my thoughts as they unfurl first thing in the morning.. without benefit of coffee or an early-morning edit... i may come back and stare in horror later at the exposure here... but hey.. who know... there might be some good stuff in here, eh???
