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I guess I'm in a clean-up spot here. Huh?
I know some of you are asleep. Stay that way please,
I don't want to try to bother you.
As Phil would probably understand I have a bit of a problem with today's theme.
So, please excuse me for my occasional contrariness,
not to mention, off-subject departures at times
Trying to wend my way from what we're supposed to be talking about
and all the stuff floating around in this scattered old mind of mine
throw an old dog like me a bone called courage
or creativity
or both
and I'll gnaw it to nothingness in a matter of hours or days
They didn't used to call me the county curmudgeon or worse, for nothing you know.
I can already hear Phil murmuring to himself, "Oh no! But what else could I expect
inviting this guy to my party?"
Then excuse me please if I uh...
take Rollo May the author of "The Courage to Create,"
somewhat to task
and as you see
I have my old dollar-ninety-five
cent paperback from nineteen seventy five which I discovered in my book shelf
just days ago
entire passages
underlined heavily
in black felt-tipped pen
I realize too that I never did finish the book. (laughter)
But I...
I can always tell when the last part is free of pen
so
I'll ah just underline passages in heavy black-tipped pen. I'm sure
uh... I swallowed whole
every word
as a young writer
trying to justify his own life
unaware of all the years ahead that it would take to actually become a writer
living those years now some fifty years later
still expecting every morning
with little courage
to be born again
the instant that I pick up the pen or the pencil or
begin to click the keyboard with the hope of
magic appearing on the screen
keeping in mind
as ever
Hemingway's sound advice, quote
"that every writer needs a built-in *** detector to face the world"
reminded as well of Rilke's sacred words
almost carved into the desk where I am staring out the window
"The purpose of life" said Rilke
"is to be defeated by a greater and greater things."
Courage?
Did you say courage?
You want courage?
Don't look to this sorry creative soul.
Look instead into the heart of a thirteen-year-old boy.
Bo Johnson.
who stared death
in the eyes
everyday
and was more concerned about making it easier for others
knowing that his own time
was passing
without ever experiencing all the wonder
of all the years
most of us are granted.
Now that's courage.
Let me suggest
that it doesn't take courage
to create
as much as it does take
stupidity
with more than a dash of
curiosity
perseverance
and what at times becomes
mindless compulsion
a certain
helplessness
something you can't do a thing about but eventually accept it for what it is
this is what you do, all you can do
this is who you are and why you were put here
in my case
to write. So there deal with that.
Do what you can with it
see where it takes you.
Success,
isn't even a factor.
Remember,
the purpose of life
is to be defeated by a greater and greater things.
Begin with whatever words
given you at the moment
and make them say
what you want them to say
or need them to say
and just try to get better at the job
every day.
At this point,
I come to you
by way of notes.
Yeah, notes and more notes, the writer's way
nothing, everything
ever quite finished to satisfaction
the way most
unprepared perplexed writers find themselves
caught in the midst of
a subject greater than they can handle,
given the rush of time
and for me,
overwrought,
overburdened, overworked, overextended,
lost in a floating mindscape waiting for the restoration of one's senses
one's self, one's energy
after a serious bout of bad health two years ago
but still
trying to put those words together.
So, I note.
I scribble. I say to myself,
to whoever is listening, or reading
that there is a double life to be
content with;
the life others expect you to live,
friends, family, spouses, neighbors,
and the life you have
little control living
doing what you want
and must do
to create
if you will.
Not always easy,
always open to conflict
and criticism,
being true to yourself.
Do I detect an element of courage there?
Well, possibly.
Note: Creativity and chaos
how they go hand in hand.
Every day the serious writer tries to establish some kind of order
out of chaos.
Does that take courage?
I'm not sure.
I know that the challenge of making something out of nothing
but words, words, words
and shaping that chaos
day after day 'til...
Well, there!
Everything
finds some kind of place.
Fini, the end. Not too bad.
Note: One's personal history
in finding his way to the freedom to write
and this would take hours,
years to deal with.
It would take a novel, a memoir,
something huge,
the message being,
without freedom you cannot create.
And it takes a little courage to break whatever bonds that keep you from
who you are
and what you must do.
But back to the stupidity factor I mentioned in the beginning,
Stupidity, was leaving a secure job teaching honors English
on a high school level
and later literature in a junior college,
a contract,
a comfortable enough salary, a great pension plan
respect in the family,
the neighborhood,
among the friends,
students who loved what your ability
to encourage, to teach on your own terms and was all about?
But no!
You wanted to write.
So, you threw all that overboard
after less than ten years,
without the safe money stashed away in your pension fund,
traveled,
took that money,
traveled throughout Europe
for months and months
because
discovering Europe,
living in Paris awhile, was a rite of passage for every real writer you had ever read.
Throwing all that away
'til everything was gone
and you had to borrow money
to get you and the dismayed, reluctant,
distraught, concerned wife
come home.
Home, to what though?
No real job.
Nothing in mind
but the stupid and growing desire
to live a writer's life.
Now, few people would call that courage.
That's not what my parents called it,
not what my in-laws called it,
and my mostly blue-collared boyhood friends
with a future,
all on the way to a house and family in the suburbs
earning good bucks for what they did
with their hands,
banking on retirement
and social security.
Did it take courage for me to finally get a job delivering mail door-to-door for the
US Postal Service?
and occasionally filling in as a substitute teacher?
...while all the while
wanting to write?
The explanation of the joke was, whenever some someone asked
my in-laws, or my wife,
"What's ...he doing?"
And their pert reply was,
"Oh. He's thinking."
or
"Oh, he's trying to find himself."
...as I slowly did,
beginning to publish my first short stories
for little-known, little read,
underground literary magazines of little payment but copies,
and then beginning to publish
major features
in all the major magazines and newspapers from Chicago that paid
real money.
But was the writer
in me satisfied?
No. Of course not.
Did it take courage
to leave all this behind
and... I do mean all, especially work,
friends, family ties,
especially in the Chicago art scene,
the fellowship of seasoned writers,
old and new?
...courage to pull up stakes, leave all that behind
for the peace and quiet of the backwoods of Door County because
everything,
the city especially
was getting too loud?
I couldn't concentrate
on the serious stuff.
Everybody wanted to be a writer but nobody was writing.
For ten years,
I survived
as what was known in the trade as a freelancer.
In other words, a gun for hire,
living on the road back-and-forth, Door County to Chicago,
going down there
to look up the stories, take the notes
bring 'em back,
write the story and wait for the check.
Back-and-forth
writing to put food on the table
and...
writing serious short stories,
and essays,
and novels,
attempting to get at both the art and the matter,
which is pretty much where I find myself
to this very day,
though I have chucked the freelancing for the most part
and devote most of my time
to honing the art writing.
Note: Well there's so much more
but you people have been sitting here long enough already
and I don't have the time or space
and I have no doubt that I have already worried the subject to death
and wore out my welcome
and I didn't even get to the serious hazards of
...this trade,
of any artistic persuasion.
By that I mean alcoholism,
substance abuse of all sorts, broken marriages,
too many marriages, confused children,
poverty, depression,
plain and pure craziness,
not to mention a pension for self-destruction.
Because when you get right down to it,
what's it really all about, Alfie?
Nothing. I have a lost
less than courageous
friends
through everything that I have described thus far,
writer friends,
painter friends,
photographer friends,
all going down in one way or another.
You want depression?
Here's Joseph Conrad's wife
describing her experience living with one of the world's
great writers.
"The novel is finished
but the penalty has to be paid.
Months of nervous strain have ended in a complete nervous breakdown.
Poor Conrad is very ill
and Doctor Hackney says it will be a long time before he is fit for anything
requiring mental exertion.
I know both you and dear Mrs. Melgram will feel every sympathy with him.
There is the manuscript, complete but uncorrected and his fierce refusal to let
even I touch it.
It lays on a table at the foot of his bed
and he lives mixed up in the scenes and he holds and converses with
the characters.
I have been up with him night and day since Sunday week
and he who wish usually so depressed by illness, maintains he is not ill
and accuses the doctor and I of trying to put him away into an asylum."
Here's another thing
in Conrad's life
that often leads to depression
a life that often drives many serious writers
a little crazy
writing stuff you don't want to write but have to write to survive,
writing pot boilers.
I wasn't aware that this was true even of... uh...
Conrad's life 'til I picked up this biography of him recently.
Conrad led with exhausting vitality from his actual roles
as husband and father.
There's a famous anecdote Illustrating a quite literal and domestic instance of
that quality of appearing aloof and apart
which Virginia Wolf noted in his genius.
He would allow Jesse and the boys to travel with him in a train compartment
but only if they pretended not to be with him
and was once most annoyed when the evidently sorely tired
Jesse needed him to help with the luggage.
One biographer has compared Conrad's literary career
and his financially insecure but artistically flourishing period
to that of the hero of Henry James' short story The Next Time.
Pressurised by his family commitments, the writer then tries even harder to
write in the popular manner he feels will provide a money-spinning
bestseller
only to find
that every "next time,"
he produces a work more brilliant
and unsaleable than the last.
Final note:
Where is the joy?
Well, you're gonna have to ask me back another time to talk about that.
But, let me leave you with this, that uh...
It's all joy.
That uh...
every stupid
and courageous minute of it
is really pure joy.
I have lived an impoverished life,
richer than anyone
could ever imagine,
and to hear just one person say,
"You know, what you wrote, changed my life."
end of quote...
is the only social security payment
that matters.
Thank you.