Ghosts
Tonight I'm thinking of ghosts. Not the kind you see, pale or white or looking as though they are draped in sheets. Not those of the low-pitched moan or the occasional shriek tearing through the night. The ghosts that I encounter most are aural, residing inside my skull.
What do I hear? Always I listen. Always trying to find something clear through the constant chatter and buzz playing like a radio tuned to several stations at once. The overlapping dialogue, the multiple tuggings at the sleeve like too many children calling for my attention. I don't mind so much sorting those out, though. What troubles me more is the steady whisper of defeat, of discouragement always hissing in my internal ear.
What do I hear? Before I sat down at the computer tonight, I looked at the CD shelf in our study. I hoped that music instrumental would prove instrumental, would feed something, silence something, lift something to the surface. But I still hear the hissing, the steady whisper so common I don't really distinguish it most of the time from the sound of the wind outside or the hum of the refrigerator or the burble of the television in the other room.
Two impulses have pulled me as long as I can remember in opposite directions. The first is the desire to explore the sensations I sort through constantly in my head. As far back as I can remember, the world has seemed to speak to me in its surfaces and its depths, in shadows and colors and blinding lights. Whenever I sit still long and don't let myself be distracted, the ordinariness of life slips away and I find a gleaming melody of experience to immerse myself within. If I only let it happen, if I only turn everything off for a minute or two, a shimmer rises like a tide and I can float or dive or roll in it for hours.
But the other impulse does distract me. It pushes and shoves and chastises me about letting my mind and heart explore. Its chief accusation is that I'm wasting time. No one, it says, has any real interest in my desire to drift and play through what I see and hear and feel and taste each day, each moment. This other voice points me to productive work like my job or chores about the house or socially acceptable interactions with friends and family and the thousand obligations of being human with other people, going out to dinner, catching a movie with friends, making sure I see this week's big game or the must-see episode of my favorite night time drama. My only value to the world, it tells me, is to be normal and interesting and entertaining in the ways most other people seem to seek to be. And these strange thoughts that pass through my mind deserve no more than a small corner every now then so long as they promise to behave, so long as I don't follow them too far or try to spread them or share them with others, so long as I don't devote any real time to them.
I wonder if every artist feels, as I do, like a criminal sometimes, like a pervert? I wonder if we all carry the guilt of our deviance? Maybe some get used to it. Maybe some learn to embrace it. I only know that for myself that until I find a way to embrace this strangeness, I'll always be a little crazy. I'll always be refereeing this wrestling match between demon and angel, never quite sure which is which, or whether they will both turn out to be me. These two ghosts that haunt me and won't let me sleep.
What do I hear? Always I listen. Always trying to find something clear through the constant chatter and buzz playing like a radio tuned to several stations at once. The overlapping dialogue, the multiple tuggings at the sleeve like too many children calling for my attention. I don't mind so much sorting those out, though. What troubles me more is the steady whisper of defeat, of discouragement always hissing in my internal ear.
What do I hear? Before I sat down at the computer tonight, I looked at the CD shelf in our study. I hoped that music instrumental would prove instrumental, would feed something, silence something, lift something to the surface. But I still hear the hissing, the steady whisper so common I don't really distinguish it most of the time from the sound of the wind outside or the hum of the refrigerator or the burble of the television in the other room.
Two impulses have pulled me as long as I can remember in opposite directions. The first is the desire to explore the sensations I sort through constantly in my head. As far back as I can remember, the world has seemed to speak to me in its surfaces and its depths, in shadows and colors and blinding lights. Whenever I sit still long and don't let myself be distracted, the ordinariness of life slips away and I find a gleaming melody of experience to immerse myself within. If I only let it happen, if I only turn everything off for a minute or two, a shimmer rises like a tide and I can float or dive or roll in it for hours.
But the other impulse does distract me. It pushes and shoves and chastises me about letting my mind and heart explore. Its chief accusation is that I'm wasting time. No one, it says, has any real interest in my desire to drift and play through what I see and hear and feel and taste each day, each moment. This other voice points me to productive work like my job or chores about the house or socially acceptable interactions with friends and family and the thousand obligations of being human with other people, going out to dinner, catching a movie with friends, making sure I see this week's big game or the must-see episode of my favorite night time drama. My only value to the world, it tells me, is to be normal and interesting and entertaining in the ways most other people seem to seek to be. And these strange thoughts that pass through my mind deserve no more than a small corner every now then so long as they promise to behave, so long as I don't follow them too far or try to spread them or share them with others, so long as I don't devote any real time to them.
I wonder if every artist feels, as I do, like a criminal sometimes, like a pervert? I wonder if we all carry the guilt of our deviance? Maybe some get used to it. Maybe some learn to embrace it. I only know that for myself that until I find a way to embrace this strangeness, I'll always be a little crazy. I'll always be refereeing this wrestling match between demon and angel, never quite sure which is which, or whether they will both turn out to be me. These two ghosts that haunt me and won't let me sleep.
posted by A Pilgrim at 9:56 PM
1 Comments:
"Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation."
John Fowles, Daniel Martin
He begins and ends his novel with this line. For Dan Simmons (in Worlds Enough & Time, a collection of five “tales of speculative fiction”), this line is “both ultimate question and ultimate answer to the creative artist’s queries” (1). It is “clear sight…a fierce gaze across worlds and time…whole sight” (226).
Artists need to see it all – and yes, that makes y’all (us? Do I dare include myself?) crazy, as far as the rest of the world sees y’all. Us. Whomever. The practical gaze and this other one are put in warring relationship with each other, even though they are not, in reality. The one that moodles and meanders, that makes us feel criminal and perverted because we dare find relevance and energy in this (non)activity, only feels that way because someone somewhere declared this a waste of time, while the one that cleans the house gets applauded.
Why can’t both be fine? Why can’t both exist in us without causing cognitive dissonance?
I personally define my craziness in this sight thing as a badge of honor. (-; Accepting it in myself and those I love is a fight to redefine what is worthwhile in the life, what matters, what should b valued.
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