Writing from the Inside Out (3 page)

Try as I might to produce ideas at will, all I can do is be curious and organize the thinking that's present to me at any given moment. It has become important to live each day as a seeker, going beyond the concept of truth, and living the inquiry. Rather than expecting inspiration to come to me, imagining that good ideas are somehow scarce, I do things that support my practice energetically. In yogic terms, this effort means fighting the battle of
prana
(aliveness) and
apana
(dullness, heaviness). It means having familiarity with the tools and fundamentals of my practice. And something always emerges.

 

 

It is freeing to imagine that poetry can live in and amid words and phrases regardless of the author's intention. When I read
Moby-Dick
, I respond to the poetry of the lines, even though I am sometimes aware that
Moby-Dick
was not written in the shape of a poem.
Moby-Dick
rises from the page as poetry when I welcome poetry not as a form (such as a sonnet or a sestina), but as what arises, figuratively, out of language.

The poetry I find depends on factors that give rise to the experience. One particular phrase or form will be striking to me at one or more moments in time. What remains consistent is language's lithe ability to meet me where I am.

In the United States, the prose poetry tradition can be traced back to Europe; it can be traced back to China as well. In France, some admirable early adopters were Francis Ponge, Henri Michaux, Max Jacob, Jean Follain, and Charles Baudelaire. In China, the tradition of wen fu has Su Tung-p'o as an early adopter. The prose poem tends to be short — from a few sentences to a couple of pages — and can be referred to as a smoke-long story for the reason of duration — the experience lasts about as long as it takes to have a smoke. This quickness is an aid to perceiving the work in a way that connects to the sudden images of the dream-mind.

I am concerned that, as writers, we lean on the novel's superiority when we could benefit from looking into other forms of storytelling, other uses of language, both older and newer than the novel. A prose poetry practice leads to better novels, because familiarity with other ways of shaping experience gives writers the freedom to work more lucidly in the mode that best suits their intent. A sentence is a story; sometimes a single turned phrase can impart the very best of stories. We are only beginning to shed light on the myriad ways of shaping stories.

My approach to writing prioritizes the lucidly lived truth of the creative moment above the insistence of a polished final product. How can I know how to polish something that is emergent? I can't fully recognize what the final product will be while I'm at work on it, intimate with the experience, not holding back, fully engaged with what might be beyond my level of skill. Keeping balanced arithmetic along the way may be useful as a means of imaginative play but it won't get me there. I will get there by the grace of creativity, which transcends my intention and rewards my effort.

As I write these words, it is early spring on the East Coast of the United States. Outside my window, cherry and plum blossom trees are in bloom. Some women walk by wearing breezy dresses, and one or two of them smile as they pass a group of guys headed to the basketball court. Sometimes circumstances afford me the recognition that I am participating in a sublime interconnected web of life, in which the most amazing event imaginable has already occurred: I have somehow become a human being — and I am alive and free.

The common definition of poetry has come to refer to a typewritten thing that lives in books. These literary creations are poetry, but so is my heartbeat: its activity, its sensation, the fact that it is there. Life is the magnum opus of consciousness. Writing things down offers an organic expression of the creative moment.

To some extent, I make my world what it is. I direct my attention to thoughts and objects, my actions shape various effects. This is true and only partly true. I also exist within a living system. In a grand sense, the universe moves as one in its own turning phrase, and it's pretty wonderful that I am included in that. Because we're all in this life together, we would do well to dedicate ourselves to what makes us fully alive.

It may be useful here to distinguish the literary thing as a “poem” and the lived thing as “poetry.” What is even a writer to make of either of these? I am apt to be critical, because I wonder what poetry is supposed to be doing. Poetry does not seem to put dinner on the table or drive the kids to school, though I must remember that a lack of usefulness is not always a bad thing. It's more that my insistence on getting by in the world and being useful is really part of the hang-up. Is life as a whole designed to be useful? From what or whose standpoint?

Art's job is to remind us that life is a dream, to rouse us into the experience of being. The more I give myself to my practice, the more confounded I am with wonder at how life already seems to be doing this feat that art accomplishes. Whether I willingly and creatively devote myself to a life of humanity depends on whether I am sensitive enough to the truth of my being. Whether I devote myself sincerely or not, what emerges could not have been anticipated.

 

 

As a tribe, creative people are nearly always also obsessive people. That's as it should be. It takes commitment to develop skill and to produce a solid body of work. It's not easy to unwind the authenticity that has been spooled up by years of conditioning. And to stay unwound — that is another challenge.

Producing works, performing, rehearsing, reading, writing — these things keep the wheel turning. The show is not over when one piece is finished. Years ago, at an art opening where he had some paintings, Robert Motherwell overheard a man talking about his work, telling his friend that they looked like something his eight-year-old child could do. Motherwell replied, “Yes! But day after day after day?” An eight-year-old may make such marks, but he would not in truth find that effort to be his place of practice.

It's good when I can work my creative practice into my daily life. This union in itself requires innovative thinking. The challenges of writing do not start and stop at the page. Finding place and energy and focus are more of an issue than I happily admit. There is, of course, the standby belief that because I'm passionate about something, I make time for it. Let's just start by saying that yes, this is true.

If I think of writing as a kind of performance, and I want to write a novel, then everything that happens each step along the way — even when it doesn't show in the product — is part of the overall performance, and therefore is important for me as a writer. The ritual of writing is part of me. In fact, I may discover that what I deeply wanted wasn't a novel, necessarily — it was to be a writer. I will end up finishing the novel, at which point I will discover that the work of the writer is not over. What I really needed to do all along was
be,
which means that I do not wait for a result; I live moment by moment in the truest expression of who I am.

I am a writer not because I have a nametag attached to my ego that declares me a writer, but because writing, in one form or another, is natural for me. Nothing would alter that truth unless the outward form of my natural calling changed so that, for example, it evolved into what looked like painting or photography but felt the same as writing once did. No rule fixes anyone to a prescribed category. This notion of result is something that gets set aside when I really follow my path. Going beyond categories might make it harder to make sense of the world, but that's as it should be. Life invites and rewards my awe-struck curiosity.

There is monkishness to living fully. It is necessary to put aside the need to have anything else in my life except my art. Life, like art, lacks an implicit stated-from-the outside purpose. I can communicate significance, but meaning and purpose I can only enact individually, and it's my responsibility to live a life of immense gratitude for that ability.

One theory about ancient cave paintings is that they were a type of hunting magic, whereby the artist formed the images to make hunting more successful. I know there is magic to them, but I am not sure it is functional in that way.

My concern is with an argument that presumes art submits to the stomach of society. The deepest urge to sing doesn't arise to drop coins in the parking meter. Many of the painted images in cave paintings — wild horses, for example — do not represent primary sources of wild game. If I insist that the paintings were made for a reason that I deem superstitious, I am likely to believe that art is superstitious — meaning that practical living knows something of which art isn't aware. The reason for making cave paintings is no different than the reason we are moved to live creatively nowadays. I don't fully know about the hunting magic of cave paintings unless I, too, am engaged in making art. And then I know. I have a say over whether I open my creative tap. It leads me to an enticing three-way collaboration among what interests me, what there is a place for, and where my natural skills lie.