Today I woke up to wallow in misery and self-pity. I have no job. I have no school. I have no structure to keep me sane. I have no published works in a literary magazine outside of my high school's. I have no self control. Every time I try to finish a story I start to have a panic attack, Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, cries into corn flakes.
As I was flailing for control over myself and my life, my boyfriend came home upset over childhood traumas I cannot even begin to explain. Beyond "I love you" and "it'll be okay," I had no idea what to say to him. However, I had to do something; I hate seeing him in pain, so because he's a gamer and his favorite method of coping with things he can't control is escapism, I gave him a hug, sat down with him at the PS4, and started playing The Unfinished Swan, a game he recommended to me months ago. In the game, players play as Maxwell, a young orphan whose mother was a painter. As Maxwell, I walked around the inner world of her unfinished swan painting.
At first, I was frustrated and confused, because when the game first starts, you cannot see anything but white. You are living inside of a blank canvas. The only way to find out where you are and where you are going is to paint. However, the more I painted, the more I discovered, and the more I ventured through the world of the game, the happier and more wonder-filled I became. I began to remember why I fell in love with drawing and writing in the first place. I began to remember my worlds.
Entire worlds are birthed from the tips of pencils. As creator, you are both god and citizen of them. However, as you grow, you find they develop with or without your recording them and you are less of a creator and more of a mediator. Still, you scribble everything down because if you don't, no one else will know the worlds and they were created to outlive you. Naturally, you also have the "actual" world to worry about. You will have to put your work down billions of times to pay your health insurance, work your day job, do your laundry, call your mother.... When you return to the work, you may find it's not as eloquent or complete as you thought, but that is only opportunity to explore deeper. If you never cease, you never lose.
E.L. Doctorow once said, "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
And so, my fellow creatives--and if you're human, you are a creative--for five minutes, let us forget our plans, our deadlines, our responsibilities, get out some paper, and explore our worlds. Write. Draw. Paint. Fold. Sculpt. Sing. Whatever you do, honor your world. Honor yourself.
God bless you, friends.
Belinda
No comments:
Post a Comment