I follow a lot of artists, writers, chefs, and musicians online. One of them said something that gave me some peace. They said they didn’t understand the myth that an artist tortured was more prolific, or talented, or authentic than a perfectly happy and well-adjusted one. For me, the last eighteen months have been a creative desert. I’ve not felt like writing, or drawing. I’ve not wanted to build anything, and cooking was actually a chore. But that idea, that happiness is as much a muse as sadness or anger, was a cool breeze for me.
Last year was bad. Real bad. It was the first time, in a very long time, that I felt I had no hand holds. The first time I felt really helpless. And it became compounded with the discovery that a loss of hope was also robbing me of a lifelong desire to create stuff. My brain had become a jar of insects frantically squirming, and I hadn’t the energy or desire to calm it.
Then I found a little hope restored, and with it a green shoot of creativity. My muscles are rusty and unfocused, and I find that my requisite optimism is fragile and tough to hang on to, but I sense the possibility that I was in fact right all along. Everything will be ok.
Everything will be ok. It’s a mantra that has, for me, become a little corrupted. It used to be an essential, involuntary organ. Then, for awhile, it became vapor. A thing associated to an old and spent version of myself.
Now I think I may have rediscovered a comfortable yet old and shabby sweater, packed away accidentally in a box. One that I have to try and work back into heavy rotation.
Everything Will Be Ok.
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