If you prefer to listen, here's a Vocal Recording:
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1fn6Pg5xKkQ
I used to be enamored, almost hypnotized by watching my ex-boyfriend draw. The way his strokes were precise but yet quick, the way his eraser met the paper with a fervor of irritation when one mark was wrong. As the wheels of his mind were perpetually turning, his hands were bringing something to life.
He was a brilliant man, one that could bring you to your knees if you got an inkling of what was in his brain. Something I always crave. Why, you may ask, am I rambling about this talent of my lost love? What does a trance of admiration have anything to do with why I’m here today?
Because it was in many moments with him I realized the power…No, the magic, of translating your imagination to paper.Not just to paper though, to the world.
Now I can take a piece of charcoal and a reference image and for the most part replicate some semblance of the original, but it’s not until my brain takes words and puts them together that I come up with something new. Something I want, no something I need to introduce to the world.
And I’ve grown to realize, even if only over these past few weeks of my life, to answer a question with anything but what people expect is like asking them to swallow the sun to just accept your answer. Trust me when I say I’ve been there. I’ve been the one with a stubborn smirk on my face thinking, “No. That can’t possibly be your answer.” So no, my degree inEnglish probably won’t lead to a career as an English teacher. As highly respectable as a position as that is, I don’t think it’sthe one my heart runs towards. It runs towards this elusive idea of creating words; creating stories; being a voice to those who haven’t one. It runs towards this grandiose idea that the world needs my craft; the world needs me to show up, and possess a stubbornness to succeed in writing. Isabel Allende says, “The heart is what drives us and determines our fate,” and I couldn’t have crafted a better sentence to say it myself.
Writing is my heart. It’s found a way to work its way into my identity. I’m trying to find this balance between living and writing, or something in the middle. Without living and experiencing, I have nothing to write of, and to not write, I wouldn’t feel as though I was living at all.
There’s something about creative endeavors that’s tantalizing; something to be said about not being able to tie up your thought process with a neat bow and a set in stone deadline. So when I try to meet what my heart feels with words I often fall short.
This passion for creating, for bringing to life something new, is not as easily expressed as say, “I want to be a doctor,” a career that doesn’t have this notion of a manic-depressive, alcoholic with a bleeding heart on the other end. Hemingway’sidea, “You just sit at a typewriter and bleed,” isn’t the standard quo for professions like a doctor; but a writer, we’re the ones who drink vodka at two in the afternoon to a record on repeat as we sit at our typewriters and bleed. Or so they say…Right? But that doesn’t make me drawn any less to it. It doesn’t stop words from crashing down on me to where I stop mid-sentence and grab my iPhone and feverishly type these ideas. This notion of, “starving artist,” or, “bipolar writer,” don’t scare me anymore, because I have something new to create; something I should. Words have the magic of making mundane magnificent, and I have the power to create that transformation.
The point of my little tirade is this: We all have something to introduce to the world. Something we ought to. We all have creators inside of us. I happen to use words to create. It’s incredible what 26 letters of the alphabet can accomplish! The question is this, “What do we WANT to introduce into the world, and what should we?”
The artist in me wants to tell you that I think you should shoot for the stars. Show the world what you are, what you have, and what you want them to experience with you. The secular buddhist in me wants you to know that you're already there - in the stars. That you've been showing people unintentionally from the start, and that you don't have to work that hard. Just let it be; just be, and let what you are and what you have continue to radiate to those around you. You don't need to go viral to have a butterfly effect. Our desire for approval and validation will never be satiated. If we do not love who we are, apart from what we produce or accomplish, we will not find peace in our own lives, or help to lead others to that place... Art is a process - do it because it is your passion. You describe it well. It's the act of writing, not the result that moves you. Art is not a product, and that product is not you in any form.
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