As most people likely do, I try to imagine myself into the minds and lives of those I’ve never been. I’ve often thought, for example, that were I to be an alcoholic, I’d no doubt find myself drinking furtively when I was upset, as well as satisfying the addiction to celebrate joy and jubilation, in and of itself. There would be little to hold me back, and I could see a real commitment to making a commitment to fill in the space between the two extremes, to ensure that I was able to ride out the mundane and mediocre days with an inebriated constancy that would demonstrate a true fidelity to a terrible ideal.
I remember years ago, the way emotional turmoil would drive me to black out my bedroom, turn up my terrible little amp, seize my guitar as it it were the only flotsam in a cold, indifferent ocean, and make all manner of noise in an adolescent, cacophonic expression of everything the world could never understand (you wouldn’t understand). Nothing could separate me from that guitar, and that amp, be it a melancholic turn as much as a manically mirthful one.
When I turned my mind to writing some years later, it was, more often than not, anger and bitterness that spilled onto that blank page, in that sophomoric rage and lack of self awareness that likely taints most early literary endeavours. Again, negative emotions were hardly an inhibitor of creative output - but rather the opposite - they fostered and drove the creative habit.
Now, I must admit that I’ve allowed the acceptable emotional range for any creative act to become so limited, that on most days, it could become utterly impossible to turn to the task. I’ll not discount the very real and tangible challenges of parenting eleven children, holding down a demanding full time job, fostering a vocation in marriage and Carmel… but I feel it most honest to admit that it isn’t a tangible lack of time that constrains the creative act. It’s not as if the opportunity doesn’t arise, ever, or the time simply isn’t there. It’s that the emotional preconditions don’t support it. Which is worse, a real tragedy, in the sense that the time and faculties are there. Music and writing are life giving for me, in ways I can hardly articulate, but I cannot access them when the fallout, or the wounds, or the woes of the day still linger.
Recognising the crossroads when you’ve reached them is critical. I apply the analogy in a twofold manner, to encapsulate both the long term prospect and the immediate moment. There is a definitive crossroads when you realise, painfully, the manner in which time, pain, loss and hardship have cauterised the creative instinct, making it harder, and rarer to bring your fingers to the keys, or the fretboard for that manner. This can be accompanied, of course, by that poisonous, therapeutic materialism that fosters an obsession with the tools (ie the instruments, sounds, pedals and effects) - perhaps more prevalent with guitarists than other instrumentalists. Rather than play the guitar, you wonder what it’d be like to play the guitar through the effect pedal
But annoyance, anger, fatigue, confusion, stress, are all enough to stop me from writing, or playing. This is of course compounded by the fiction that it would be irresponsible and insensitive to apply the creative act to a time of great emotional tumult or confusion. Isn’t creativity a luxury? An indulgence? A trivial distraction not befitting the sound and reasonable schedule of the responsible adult? This is completely and utterly wrong, and these fallacies just as applicable to prayer, no less.
You should always pray, in thanksgiving, adoration and supplication. Well, perhaps you should always write, or paint, or compose, or sing. Our God given talents have, for millennia, been employed in our expressions of faith, hope and love. No less by the psalmist, than any of us. As scripture illustrates: I will turn my mind to a parable. With the harp I will solve my problem. I couldn’t think of a more resounding statement of support from a God who loves and knows us. A God who has impressed the creative act upon the very fibre of our being, with an intellect and insight that renders us in His image and likeness.
But here I am, allowing the slightest annoyance, or trifling concern, stop me from writing, or playing or composing music. It is a juvenile, self indulgent wallowing in the much and mire of self pity that turns us from the lyre, and the harp. I am at a crossroads, beloved reader, and I can no longer sustain a writing life without the ruthless, dogged, maniacal obsession that has driven the brave, the bold, and the inspired for millennia. There is a force, a momentum, a machinery that churns within each and every one of us - oriented towards some goal, some end. It may be a fictitious comfort and consolation of addiction, distraction, entertainment or consumerism. It can grip us an any number of ways - unless we temper and orient it to truth, beauty and goodness, and the works that speak of these transcendental wonders - pointing us inevitably to the source of their wonderment - God himself, who saw fit to imbue these strange talents within each and every one of us.
I hear it doesn’t go too well when one buries their talent in a field. How will you give ever more, back to God, and avoid becoming mired, unable to access all you’ve been given? Only time will tell. Time, blood, prayer, sweat and tears.