Recently, when corresponding with a friend, the topic of a relative came up.
My friend stated that this person lived in “a kind of prison of his own
making”. This written conversation
brought to mind a Henry David Thoreau quote: “Most men lead
lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in
them.” This morning, upon waking,
I profoundly felt the sadness of this statement – not only for my friend but
for me. There is a truth in confining
oneself that I understand. And, I fear
that I am headed for that demise … the inability to listen and share creatively
because I box myself in a psychological prison of my own making.
For me, the concept that I have a song that needs to be sung is a
hurdle. I know that what separates the people who take action and those who
live in a mental world is this: doing. We are all the same in that regard. The person
who releases their “song” has had to walk through the shadows, knowing that
there is sun, during those times when the artist is stuck. This is when she questions if what she is producing is worthy. An artist
has to reside in this mysterious, sometimes frightening, gloom and yet, keep
working to produce the image she has held in her mind and heart in order to
birth the end product ... art. This creation is a personal expression of interacting in the
world and what it has meant, how living has felt, at least in this one instance, a written piece is an attempt at offering a personal truth.
Last December, I received a Christmas card with a simple one word
message: “Believe”; that was it. This word is a perfect descriptor of
what I have lost or, more likely, never had. I do not have a deep sense
of knowing what it means to believe.
Looking up the word in the Oxford
Pocket Dictionary (2005), I
found a couple of definitions that I would like to share. Believe means
to accept that something is true or someone is telling the truth and secondly,
the word is defined as to have faith in the truth or existence of.
There are limitless examples in the world of people believing …
people who have overcome the melancholy, the Venus Fly-trap sticky spot that
lures them into nonproductivity. There are no excuses ... action is
required. No person who achieves is spared ... "Yea though I walk
through the valley of the shadows of death, I will fear no evil."
(23rd Psalm)
I understand this, I too have built walls of confinement to stifle inspiration. I have gotten very good at running away from a song that screams to be written … my song. I am writing to you to pronounce that I am continuing the journey … the excursion to produce work … to unlock the prison confinement, the one of my own making.
