"Here’s a true story: for the last three summers we (my wife and child and I) have lived in a 150 year old barn in upstate New York. I renovated it two years ago, putting in just enough work so we could spend the warm months sleeping in it. One night, when the baby was one and a half, our second summer in the barn, an hour or so after she’d finally drifted off into sleep, the light in her room suddenly switched on (her door is made up of glass panes covered with a thin fabric)–then it switched off. Then on. Then off. On. Off. For the next half hour this continued–we crept to the window–she was standing in her crib, reaching out to the switch, then looking around the room as it snapped into light, aware that she was the one controlling it.
She’d only learned to walk a few months earlier.
Her room, from a distance, pulsed like a huge firefly.
What’s interesting about this, beyond the image itself, which I find remarkable, is why I remember it, why I am choosing to tell you about it now. Remarkable. But then, nearly everything she does is, I believe, remarkable.
I am her father, after all.
“Pulsing like a huge firefly”–the word “pulse” is also remarkable. Unlike the electrician, who simply makes the lights go on, our job (as artists) is not simply to enter into the darkness, but to pulse in and out of it (there is a real danger when we pack our bags and move into the darkness permanently).
The pulse is what gives it life. It’s what makes our writing (or any art) a living thing. It’s one of the things that makes reading an active, rather than a passive, experience."
Then he said more stuff, some of it lovely, some of it just silly to me. And yet, he concluded with this:
"What I can safely say is that it’s not the worst way to spend one’s time, standing before works of art that bring you catharsis. Just don’t expect it from your own work. Don’t expect to get anything from your own work. The carrot is an illusion at best, but more than likely it is a cage. Feel what you feel as you make it, whatever that feeling is. Track it. Trust that you might bring some small cathartic moment to another human being. It might only be one other human being, or it might be a handful. And it might not be now, it might not be for a hundred years. Or ever. Even this has to be enough.
The good news is the same as the bad news. There is no carrot in the sky.
Just this eternal pulse.
This is what we need to do–pay close attention to the world, and track what we notice, for whatever we notice is a glimmer of the blueprint of our glorious subconscious realm. And this is the only reason to write–to get and give a glimpse of this hidden realm.
Just don’t expect anything more from it. Don’t expect to be healed. Try to be grateful for the glimpse that is offered."
To not approach writing, or any art, as a way to find catharsis. To never expect to heal from your own work, but to do it anyway and just be grateful for the simple act of it. I love it when someone tells you the truth, even when (particularly when) it's depressing as hell. You might work and work, and dig and dig, and yet find nothing but darkness at the bottom of the well. But maybe the act of digging is enough. Maybe smaller things like momentum, appreciation, and the simplicity of paying true attention to the world, will have to be enough.
Tricky, tricky.
Yes. Yes, this.
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