It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything new that I’ve written.  (Is this where I’m supposed to say Forgive me Father, for I have sinned?)  So I awoke in the middle of the night and felt I might write something.  And as I picked up a new pen my uncle made for me with beautifully polished wooden cylinders making up the instrument, the words below came.  Seemed worth posting something finally…

Interesting, although short, video commentary by John Irving (who may be my favorite author ever) regarding the fate of first-time novelists in today’s book market:

This week is a salute to a poet whose brilliance, honestly, has me feeling uncharacteristically timid as I proceed to write.   Walk with me out on the wire… I perhaps hear him saying to me. 

On both Tuesday and Wednesday nights I stayed up late hoping to see some of the meteor shower expected in the skies in those nights.  On Tuesday night in Oakland it was foggy, so no luck that night.  On Wednesday night, we had pretty clear skies but for whatever reason I was again without any luck seeing the shower.  But what I did get to do is listen to some clips on YouTube while I was allowing the clock to tick past my usual bedtime hour by quite a bit— and I’m actually a bit of a night owl already.  And when I came across the video at the bottom of this post I guess I found myself reminded of some of my guitar-playing moments where I’d learn a song by listening to it either with a tape player or a cd player, playing it back over and over again until I got it.  It’s actually quite tedious— neurotic, some might say— to stop and rewind and play again, and stop and rewind and play again… and again… and again.  It’s not for everyone, I assure you.  But there’s a certain intimate, even hypnotic, suggestion that comes through the practice that only those who endure it could probably ever appreciate. 

But in this moment, I was not rewinding with any hopes of picking up the chords and notes of the guitar riffs.  It was the poetry I was after.  It was the cadence and the word choices that always represent far more than the words alone possibly could.  This total is immeasurably beyond the sum of its parts.   In these moments of such demanding examination of a work of art, in essence we are asking the artist to show us how.  We are asking the artist to reveal how he found those words.  We ask for an insight perhaps beyond our invitation so that maybe as aspiring writers maybe we, too, can see the very process of inspiration— especially on that level.  I think we ask of the artist simply, how can one view the world around him and pick out the jewels of inspiration so well?  So incredibly well. 

And as any great work of art will do, these intimate requests are rewarded from this persistence.  Eventually she gives in to the flattery with a return stare slightly longer than expected and allows you, her subject, an ephemeral glimpse deeper.  She affirms your sincerity, modestly acquiescing, and shares your admiration of nuance and subtlety.  And once granted such a moment by a piece of art, perhaps then one has genuinely encountered a willing muse of inspiration… where the words spoken reveal far more in symbol and the pulse of their delivery beckons distant ears. 

Indeed, I do listen… and hear… and repeat.  I gotta know how it feels.  I wanna know if it’s wild, I wanna know if it’s real. 

One post script:

During the writing of this post I heard news of the great Les Paul passing at age 94.  It’s hard to over-estimate how his inventions opened the doors for volumes and volumes of new music in many different genres, including of course rock ‘n roll.  So, if you have a moment check out this video of The Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home show in 1953.  Rest in peace, Lester William Polsfuss (1915-2009).

Since this blog project found its greatest advocate in a friend who consistently read the business weekly email-newsletter financial commentary I wrote, I must first give a great thanks to Patrick Schwerdtfeger for encouraging me, and often prodding me, to get off my butt and develop a web-log/online journal.  (I have to admit the word “blog” still gives me the inclination to think of something the body rejects biologically!  Ha Ha!)  And it’s especially significant to mention Patrick today because within the last couple of weeks he has experienced both the great high of seeing the publishing launch of his book about internet marketing (which you can check out for yourself at www.webifybook.com) and the sad passing of his father.  My prayers are with Patrick’s family and I know that his dad could not have been prouder to have lived long enough to see his son’s book launch in brilliant defiance of the health challenges he faced in these recent years.  Peace be upon you, Mr. Schwerdtfeger, and a huge congrats to your son for showing us all how to translate our own passions to the new media spreading ’round the world! 

So it seems a proper segue to isolate this concept of translating our passions to this new medium that enables anyone in the world with an internet connection to view the writings of someone they’ve never met and somehow commune with the writer in that private world that the written word alone creates.  When I first started keeping a journal I was in high school in the 80s, and writing in a “notebook” really was writing in a notebook.  Sometimes the words would flow for hours as I explored my own thoughts, played with the art of paragraphy, and found connections with my own soul that came purely in lingual form.  Indeed, these WORDS were representing emotions— across the spectrum— and I filled spiral notebooks with them for many years to come.  Writing was the therapy that lifted me when I was down, and it was the channel that insisted I both face my own demons and find my own angels.  And when the writing brought some tears to my eyes, and maybe I turned the music up a little louder, and when it challenged me to go deeper I sometimes wouldn’t hesitate to howl out loud a “fuck yes!” (or something to that effect) because I knew I was really getting somewhere.  I knew I was reaching into that underground well that so many writers, and artists in general, refer to as the source of the inspirations.  It’s always flowing underneath.  We just have to punch through and dip a ladle. 

Finding one’s passion is sometimes a process of elimination, and sometimes it seems that the passion finds YOU.  For me, it started with a spiral notebook and a Bic pen.  And as I grew in maturity through high school, and then college, and through moving two thousand miles away from where the writing project began, and on to this day where writing in the “notebook” is a portal to the world, I am sincerely moved by how following one’s passion opens up the world to us.   And while this phase of the “writing project” is actually beginning a couple decades into the process that writing has been for me, I know that it’s tremendously exciting for me to dip the ladle in the endless aquifer that is inspiration. 

That’s it.  Let’s publish!