Hey folks!
Isn’t it funny how wonky and non-linear creativity is? Even when you develop various mental tools of envisioning (important in every art) you still need a combination of motivational drive, and some direction in which to deliver your work. My technician head can’t help thinking of these as Electromotive Force (more commonly known as Voltage) and a completed circuit. You know how that works – break the circuit, the light goes off!
Anyhow, I was invited to join an art group recently, and while I love my creative online chums, and do indeed see you as an inspiring audience, this cohort of creatives felt like a wonderful and very welcome boost.
All this just to say – I haven’t had a good run of poems in a couple of years, but today I woke up with a title which I knew wanted a poem to complete it, and after humiliating myself with some digital art practise for an hour or two (turns out that imaginary brushes are actually even weirder than imaginary instruments), I sat down and invoked my particularly well-built writing muscles to render the pome in question (yes Bullwinkle, I know).
Still freaks me out that I can do that (in the writing medium only). Bring intention to fruition at a single sitting, whether it is a poem, or a fifteen page essay or story. For any of my creative chums who are still on the steep part of the curve, yes indeed, it all gets easier and you do indeed gain several nifty kinds of mastery after the first thirty thousand pages or so. Stick with it!
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The moment is a mess, and we all know it.
It has never been more important for us to be rational and respectful, but we are all exhausted, and accustomed to general foolishness in any case. Those of us who have been paying attention to important changes in the environment, society, economy and military in parallel for some years, can’t help seeing this crisis as a social test. So far we are failing badly.
That being said, sometimes we need to be startled and afraid, in order to realize that old patterns are no longer sufficient. Expressing our competing needs and goals for society productively (that is, with mutual respect) sounds like an impossible dream at this point, but only because we’ve all got our priorities wrong. Too much navel gazing, not enough free grazing!
All those years we worked too hard and had too little time off – and now every one of us has exhausted our long deferred list of lazy day treats, and rode some very close to the edge of tedium. What do we miss? Society itself – that is, EVERYBODY! All those years so many wanted to tear down the system – and now suddenly the very same voices recognize – we need the system – it is the soil in which diversity can thrive. Late to it, but true.
What else do we need? Doubt, humility, respect, openness, affection, curiosity, playfulness, whimsy, cooperation, understanding – and all of these ongoing indefinitely. What we used to call the humane.
When can we (start to) get it?
I don’t know – you got any plans for this weekend?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And just for the record, I am absolutely certain that the Demicks weren’t consulted either.
I loved this.
YAY!