Demonology: Writing to Expel Worries

to understand Through the Eye of a Needle for me, for you -- to make sense of the senseless.

I get in these moods, as I’m sure everyone does, where a deep well of sadness fills the pit of my stomach. I feel it’s weight pushing against gravity, trying to resist the natural laws of physics as I try to resist it. The well taints every reflection of me, spoils it, until all I can recognize are the faults. I know so many people face this— to them I say be gentle with yourself.

Recently a friend of mine received good news, partial news that were more of a ‘maybe’ than a resounding and resolute hooray but still nevertheless good. I’m not a jealous person. I, at my core, want everyone I meet and come to understand as an artist to succeed and this isn’t just some bullshit I say to convince anyone of anything, my actions behind closed doors attest to it. And yet I am still, like anyone else, prone to the ills of comparison. Through the eyes of my melancholy only I am at fault. I am the lowest common denominator and therefor anything I could ever create is simply the gibberish of a withering fool. I never went to college and this stings me, not because I haven’t learned what I would have but, because I have no outside source to prove to myself (truly no one else) that I can do it, whatever it is. When not flooded with sentimentality I know these things aren’t true though. Through the eyes of logic I understand what is needed from me. I see the steps forward taken by those who “make it” in whatever capacity that is as an artist. Then I think;

wouldn’t it be nice to just create something without attaching a price tag to it, trying

to shape the purity of our intuitive minds into an hollow concoction that serves capitalism alone? I don’t love ads, I love the people who are screaming behind their borders. I think about the weight in my stomach as it relates to this. When I write something for no other reason than through impulse, I find myself elated. There are no comparisons. When I do it to serve the greater figure of “writerly-ness” as a profession, then I am overcome by comparisons, and replete with them I seek new ways to correct what I perceive as my flaws. The guilt and shame of being imperfect is outstanding.

I suppose that is why, at least in part, the work of artists like David Lynch — whose imagination roamed free on the visual fields of our screens, seemingly uncensored — feels as though it taps into a time when our creative output wasn’t so intrinsically linked to our commercial viability. I seek to create as an extension of living, rather than

to create as a synonym for working.

Those that “make it” — which is to say, find a way to create and pay their bills in tandem—make it because they have money, which they exchange for time, and they continue to try, again and again, without shame or fear of failing. I can see why so many people in my position — from families who have nothing and whose attachment to shame is routed in a childhood marred by the scars of religion, trauma or both —grow bitter and angry. I am not an angry person and so

this energy inside me is turned inward, it faces all of my wounds. I begin to tear

apart the kind words of others, distrusting their sentiments. Surely if I was as great as they say then I wouldn’t feel so wounded by everything I make. I must be dramatic. I dismiss myself and coincide with only the harshest critiques I, alone, have of myself. I wouldn’t dream of saying this about anyone other than myself though, I know how difficult it is to live, to pull yourself up and find a way to make nothing count for something. We

squirm away the hours to fit in all of the cooking, cleaning, and caring for loved

ones we must do and attempt to rest, seek relaxation and, if we’re lucky, pursue our souls desires with what remains. I become inert in the face of my own expectations. I’ve been given a gift. I am about to have more time in exchange for some work that closely resembles that desire, so much so, that I wake up conflicted by it’s reality. Its the most marvelous thing; the ability to work alongside others in the journey of creating something

and yet I do not feel I deserve it. My partner, my husband, is not in the same position

as I am. I see him toil over work that is hollow trying to sustain a balance that is not sustainable. His time is broken into parts that do not fit together. He cannot use what is leftover due to the inertia this work saddles him with. He becomes dry and, as if a light-switch on a string were pulled, the energy from behind his eyes turns off. I do not know what to do in moments like these. His inertia breeds my own and so I write this stupid note on my notes app to help myself out of it. Maybe,

if I can separate the shame from the self for long enough to hit the damn button, I’ll

have shared it with you. If so, you’re reading this now. Know that this is all I can do. All I know how to do. I write because I process the world around me through the words that, much like puzzle pieces, form a picture only after they click into place. I do not know what will come out of me before it has —which makes structuring work in a way that is appetizing to magazines or commercial endeavors a challenge — yet I recognize it the moment I read it. No truer portrait, and the statements those words contain make relative sense, enough to share it. I’ve always been this way. I was raised in a

small suburban town more familiar with the sound of cicadas than that of crowds

and so in the rush of meeting against the surface of everything I observe, I write to understand my place in it. Attempting to pin-point my coordinates in the emotional fabric of the universe. That doesn’t mean I am immune to the worry; that

despite this — despite my everything— it may not be enough.

A friend at a pub a little bit ago asked me what Through the Eye of the Needle was for and, unable to answer them, it made me think. I’m smart enough to know that if there was a purpose to it, besides the tenderness of a wandering mind seeking to tether herself into the here and now, that the machines that categorize our lives through mathematics and capital would be better able to savour me. I would succeed then because I wouldn’t be writing to understand my self and the world around me but instead because I would become an ad. The shell of a person attempting to be a ‘writer.’

I write because I am flesh, meaning broken, meaning existential and seduced

by the wonders of a moment. I write for the people that read it and think phew! At least I’m not the only one. I do not write for mathematical equations. I write as I breathe. Even if, at times, I am drowning in my melancholy. I do it to understand why I feel and this, written at one in the morning in bed with my partner snoring next to me, is just that.