5/28/2008
A brief writing note. I had mentioned in a recent posting that I don't write--writing writes me. Kind of a cryptic shamanic thing to proclaim. But for my many writers and students who check in on the blog, I thought I could say a bit more about this process.
Can you learn to write from Cheap Trick? Years ago, the song "Surrender" fascinated me. Not just because it was a crankin' rock song, nor because Bun E. Carlos was the coolest drummer in the world. I didn't know it yet, but "Mommy's all right, Daddy's all right, they just seem a little weird. Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away...." was a key to wisdom! Yeah, man; no wonder Cheap Trick played at Budokan: they were masters of enlightenment.
Surrender. But don't give yourself away.
Later, when I really discovered haiku poets after years of reading haiku and liking it--I was in my darkest hours in that Arizona desert, starving and beset upon by demons and unclean spirits (you thinkI'm kidding) and trying to survive the blast-furnace of Teresita and medicine and curanderas and despair--I of course found Issa. Issa is the suffering poet for when you are suffering. Stop reading if you've heard this before, and many readers have heard this from me before: Issa's great rule of life and writing was SIMPLY TRUST.
Trust!
Surrender...
William Stafford likens writing to swimming. Everyone knows, he says, that something as weak and clear as water can't hold up a human being. You can't walk on water. Yet, when you relax and surrender (trust) the water, you start to float. And though you cannot grab a handhold and force your way along water like you would a cliff or a mountain, you can cup your hands in its evanescence and move yourself along. And watchers on the shore can't believe what you're accomplishing. Especially if they can't swim. I might add that if there is a current, the water carries you if you just let it. And writing has a current.
Writing (water) carries me. When I write, of course, but also when I do not write. Tom McGuane points out that we are all made of 2/3 river water. Well, we are also made up of writing. (Story, if you will; dream, song, thought, aphorism, verse, bullshit, prayer, yarn, explanation, exultation, whispers, rogasmic cries, laments, jokes, memoirs....)
I write it--otherwise it cannot exist. It writes me--otherwise I can't get anywhere. In other words, as I revise my writing, I revise myself. As I revise my words, I revise my vision. As I revise my books, I revise my way of being. Or--I am beginning to believe--I allow them to revise me. I am surrendering. I trust. It is a trance state, a dream state, a state of grace. And it's also play-time: wrestling, running, eating chocolate, jumping up and down on the bed.
William Stafford says:
"It tells you:
all you do is tell about it."
The hard part for me is to get to that place where I can simply trust--surrender. It is sometimes hard to enter that space. But once there, I crank like a hurricane.
It's no cheap trick.
L
Post a Comment
Can you learn to write from Cheap Trick? Years ago, the song "Surrender" fascinated me. Not just because it was a crankin' rock song, nor because Bun E. Carlos was the coolest drummer in the world. I didn't know it yet, but "Mommy's all right, Daddy's all right, they just seem a little weird. Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away...." was a key to wisdom! Yeah, man; no wonder Cheap Trick played at Budokan: they were masters of enlightenment.
Surrender. But don't give yourself away.
Later, when I really discovered haiku poets after years of reading haiku and liking it--I was in my darkest hours in that Arizona desert, starving and beset upon by demons and unclean spirits (you thinkI'm kidding) and trying to survive the blast-furnace of Teresita and medicine and curanderas and despair--I of course found Issa. Issa is the suffering poet for when you are suffering. Stop reading if you've heard this before, and many readers have heard this from me before: Issa's great rule of life and writing was SIMPLY TRUST.
Trust!
Surrender...
William Stafford likens writing to swimming. Everyone knows, he says, that something as weak and clear as water can't hold up a human being. You can't walk on water. Yet, when you relax and surrender (trust) the water, you start to float. And though you cannot grab a handhold and force your way along water like you would a cliff or a mountain, you can cup your hands in its evanescence and move yourself along. And watchers on the shore can't believe what you're accomplishing. Especially if they can't swim. I might add that if there is a current, the water carries you if you just let it. And writing has a current.
Writing (water) carries me. When I write, of course, but also when I do not write. Tom McGuane points out that we are all made of 2/3 river water. Well, we are also made up of writing. (Story, if you will; dream, song, thought, aphorism, verse, bullshit, prayer, yarn, explanation, exultation, whispers, rogasmic cries, laments, jokes, memoirs....)
I write it--otherwise it cannot exist. It writes me--otherwise I can't get anywhere. In other words, as I revise my writing, I revise myself. As I revise my words, I revise my vision. As I revise my books, I revise my way of being. Or--I am beginning to believe--I allow them to revise me. I am surrendering. I trust. It is a trance state, a dream state, a state of grace. And it's also play-time: wrestling, running, eating chocolate, jumping up and down on the bed.
William Stafford says:
"It tells you:
all you do is tell about it."
The hard part for me is to get to that place where I can simply trust--surrender. It is sometimes hard to enter that space. But once there, I crank like a hurricane.
It's no cheap trick.
L
# posted by Luis @ 9:42 AM 
<< Home
