Art's End Is Not Despair
5 Responses
Martin Avery
This makes me think of a Rumi quote:
“A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed, cut holes in it, and called it a human being. Since then, its been wailing a tender agony of parting, never mentioning the skill that gave it life as a flute.”
Kara
“With time and sincerity you will discover a way to work and write that does not harm you spiritually, that does not tempt you to vanity, that is the deepest expression of your spirituality.” What a beautiful and wise perspective. I love this concept of being gentle with your creativity. It is something I try continually to do (and fail a lot – see that part about vanity!). This was a great reminder, something I have experienced personally in my writing life: the easier I take it, the more fruit-filled the work. Thank you!
Angela Doll Carlson
I love this thought and I love “The Sun” as well! The mistake I think I made as a young artist was that I thought I needed to be in a constant state of angst in order to create something worthwhile. Now that I’m knee deep in my 40’s I realize, finally, that the transformative act of creation is not only NOT limited to my angst but is, at best, limited BY it. The deeper I climb into that well the more I understand myself but the strength I have to climb back to the sunlight comes from having done the work of joy up at the surface. Knowing what’s at the top of that deep well is what keeps me WANTING to climb back up instead of sitting there in it and making it my new home. Thanks for this quote today, Amy!!
Robert Pope
In “The Nature and Aim of Fiction” Flannery O’Connor said “people without hope not only do not write novels, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.”
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The Waking is an online literary magazine and a part of the Ruminate creative community that houses high-quality literary writing about what it’s like to be human. We are interested in short-form prose and image-text hybrid work. This art can be beautiful, it can be strange, we just ask that it feels true.
John McClarren
February 17, 2017
We’ve all read phenominal works by people who have created those works only through their own creativeness and perhaps some very positive experiences. Many extremely creative people have had horribly traumatic and corruptive lives, but that is not to say they are the only or even the best writers and performers of our time.
I like to think that I have some very significant ideas to present to a very large readership (not that I have attained publication YET), but my ideas have not come just from trauma. Many have come from very humorous events that have occurred in my life, and I am quite sure that many will be more than just a little humorous to others. I also have an angel story that I am now thinking about for submission to Ruminate Magazine. Yes, it was from a rather serious event, but it turned out to be extremely positive, in that I should have died, and I am still very much alive. It was just one of many events that confirmed for me the existence of angels.