Single Sittings and New Beginnings
Finding a new way for Wristwatches and Radios - Creative constraints with Purpose and Productivity.
“They can be like the sun, words. They can do for the heart what light can for a field.” - St John of the Cross
It’s been 25 days since the last piece on Wristwatches and Radios, and I know in my bones that something needs to change. This medium has afforded me a rich opportunity to ponder and share thoughts and perspectives around fatherhood, family and creativity, allowing me to better understand my own philosophies, experiences and motivations. The ideas for these pieces arise in the daily treasure and toil of my own work as a husband, father, teacher and writer.
My love and respect for the discipline, the detachment, the passion and ardour with which artists, lovers, family and the faithful pursue their vocations is an endless source of inspiration and humility for me. To try to capture and celebrate these practices, this articulation of love and learning in a literary form is an honour, a delight, a luxury. In the context of a day job, a family and other literary endeavours, I know I’m a blessed man each and every time I take to the keys and try to give shape and form to abstractions and inspirations that come alive before me in a thousand different ways.
Trying to balance this writing with the practicalities of my life has been an endless source of personal conflict, and delight. The joy that comes with finding a way to make space for art and expression is delectable. You feel like you’ve pulled off the perfect crime, to know that you have come to understand your proclivities, procrastination and distractions well enough to tame them, finding the time to bring your thoughts to light, to life before you. Balancing that time with a day job, family, a spiritual vocation, reading and your own musical refinement isn’t always easy, but possible and incredibly valuable. To know when to strike, when you’re best poised to write, to pray, to play is critical if you’re to pull it off, but that’s another notion for another piece.
But what I’m writing on Wristwatches and Radios isn’t enough. I was aiming for a piece a week. When I haven’t written, it isn’t a matter of inspiration and interest, it’s a matter of discipline and restraint. Often, I’ll start a piece and fail to complete it before the week is through. Furthermore, writing a novel at the same time as working on W&R is a complicated balance, as the pattern and pace of maintaining and refining that work is also critical. But the incomplete pieces drag out their own publication. Often, it’s the final paragraph or refinement that holds it all back. For the last piece, it was my intention to scan an image, wasting days before finding one online that suited my needs perfectly.
And when I say that what I’m writing here isn’t enough, it’s not hubris or a distorted desire for ‘content’ and ‘newness’ that frustrates me. It’s the delicate state of being that comes from returning to the notion, the ethic of Wristwatches and Radios that fades when I don’t return here to write. It’s the same with any artistic endeavour, that the familiarity, the routine and discipline is critical to what it can bring you. Working on something for consecutive days, even if only for brief sessions, provides a state of flow that is near impossible without that constancy. And that is what I’m missing, that is what I’m lacking.
So from this point on, I intend to complete each piece in a single sitting. It’s a challenging concept for me, as my writing is often interrupted, or ended I should say, by the kids as they wake up in the morning. The familiar shuffle of footsteps down the stairs triggers an alarm that informs me I have scant minutes, if not seconds left. As any parent will tell you, the lure of a backlit screen and an array of keys is near irresistible for any child. So I need to get each piece done and out in a single sitting. If I am interrupted, if I fail to accomplish my intent, I’ll use my journalling time in the evening to tie up loose ends and get the piece out. My day is structured enough that I can build in contingency plans. It’s the only way I can feel as though I’m writing, reading, praying and meditating enough.
So from here on in, what I post here may well be shorter than it has been. It may be more haphazard, with an offensive rate of language errors and incomplete phrases. I may have to reduce posts to a single sentence, riddled with expletives and nonsensical words from when my kids mash the keyboard with their little fists. But the creative restraint should be healthy for me as a writer, and for the blog itself. Once a week, I’ll have something new here to ponder, to question, challenge or try out.
So thank you for visiting my dusty corner of the universe. I hope you may continue to find something of use, of relevance, of significance to you. If it doesn’t, I’m sure you’ll forgive me for marking my own quiet presence, a trail that may be followed to the heart of something true, something of that means a great deal to me, if no-one else.
I urge you to find the conditions that allow you to create, to construct, to design and divine your own purpose and place in the world. As parents. As artists. As humble, creative and honest to your particular inspirations as you possibly can be.
I know I’m trying.