Julia Cameron shares, very early on in The Artist's Way, that she needed to learn how to write sober. It's funny to see that because of the striking similarity to my own thoughts; the primary reason for my joining the Tweatspeak Book Club exploring this book, and Every Day Poems (explained later) is in the hopes that I will learn how to write happy. It should come as no suprise to me that my validation comes almost immeditately in the book, but it does.
Sadness has held squatters rights over my writing for my whole life and I'm not sure exactly why and I'm not sure it matters why (it may, I'm just not sure at this point). My life as a writer has shriveled up lately, become dry and lifeless and before it blows away in the wind completely I thought perhaps I'd be well advised to find a way to spend more time with the writer's voice inside. Let's call her my muse... my lonely, unappreciated, misunderstood muse.
Looking at patterns, as I habitually do, it's easy to see that the times when my 'muse' has been fully activated have been the darkest of times for me. You wouldn't always know it to read what I have written and that, I am convinced, is because I didn't write it. Not really. My muse did... my 'someone else' inside who was trying desperately to shed some light on what seemed like a dark and hopeless time. I say this because this writing I 'did' was more like writing that 'fell out' of me. It was easy, and it was often nearly flawless. Entire poems and songs came out that way, fully formed or nearly so. Words. Music. Everything already created by some 'other' part of me deep inside. The content wasn't dark or oppressive, but rather light and hopeful and even profound at times. It seems that even though I was depressed, my muse was NOT.
But lately I have been feeling better about my life - my illness* is becoming less of a burden for the most part, and more of an appendange that just travels along with me and needs attention. The days of deep depression that accompanied the early days of diagnosis and treatment are gone and, much to my dismay, so are the poems, songs, essays, and stories. I can't help but wonder if this muse has a massochistic streak - she only likes the pain? Is that it? Or is she a super hero type who only finds value in swooping in to make the save just before the main character falls head first off a cliff into the rocks below?
Or, more likely, is she under the mistaken impression that I only want her around when heroism is required to pull me back in the nick of time? Is it possible that my conscioius self has learned to attach writing to pain because it has worked so well for me in the past when actually my muse is feeling very unloved, unneeded, exploited and taken for granted? "Sure... ignore me until everything grows dark and ugly and then call on me to pull you forward into the light. Sure, I'll do it every time... but really, what makes you think that I wouldn't enjoy coming out when the sun is already shining? What makes you think that I won't be here for you even through good times... ? Why only the bad?" And then it hits me.... I really have held the belief that my muse doesn't want to be around me when I'm okay, but as is ofthen the case, it is probably much simpler and less dark than that... maybe I had simply neglected to invite her. So now this is what I am beginning to unravel... the mystery of the illusory abyss that so distinctly separates me from myself.
I need to learn to write when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm giddy, bored, or furious. I need to intimately know this muse of mine as the keeper of my soul ALL the time. Why do I need to? Because I am finally beginning to realize that this muse is me, really me, and now that I know this how can I ignore it? My muse has something to give me, and maybe even others God willing, and when is God not willing? Seriously. It feels so self righteous on one level to say that my muse has something to give others that is of value, but maybe this is the greatest challenge - to give what I have and let others figure out what they need.
So, right about the time I started to feel this niggling need to write accompanied by a cavernous sense that I had nothing worth saying to say (because these days I have been kind of happy, kind of easy, kind of rolling with the flow) along came TweetSpeak Poetry, the subgroup called Every Day Poems, and The Artist's Way book group. If you believe in the prinicpal idea of "seek and ye shall find" then you won't have much trouble believing that my muse was calling out, seeking if you will, and it somehow pulled these opportunities toward herself.... somehow the universe threw her a life line and from a place deep inside I heard her scream "GRAB IT YOU FOOL!!!" So I did. And here I am wondering what will come next.
Every Day Poems emails members a little gift to unwrap every day in the form of a poem, and the real gift for me is the open invitation to take that gift and let it roll into something else of my muse's choosing. Grab a word, a phrase, a line and fashion from that another piece of writing...a poem... Every Day. Happy, sad, lonely, funny, witty, boring, sleepy, hopeful, etc.... just a poem a day... a place for my muse to play without fear of reprucussions for breaking any rules. Not because she is any variety of fearless, but but because she is saved by the fact that the only rule is that there are no rules.
(*Not to be cryptic, my illness is made up of layers of Chronic Lyme Disease, Bartonella, and Babesia... I guess this is important and it will creep into my writing, but not now other than to release you from wondering "what illness?". Its primary importance is this: it seems my muse's most recent permission to write came from the bite of an infected BUG, and for that I owe the tick bastard a debt of gratitude.)
LINK TO AN AFTERTHOUGH: Lyme as a Footnote on The Brighter Side
