My friend Scott said of this website, “Get rid of the bloggy stuff.” He’s right. Maybe. If all I want to do is show my art. But I’m a writer, too. I’ve been a writer for a long time.
“If birds talked, they couldn’t fly…”
In Northern Exposure, Marilyn Whirlwind says words are heavy, like rocks. “If birds talked,” she says, “they couldn’t fly.” True, but on that same show, Lightfeather says, “Give me the words. I want the words.” Some people want the words. This is for the people who want the words.
What is it to write? Where does the writer live?
Silence is the habitat of the writer. The inner silence where one listens for the words; silence where one sits, fingers above the keyboard, hovering, attending to the very silence itself and its myriad revelations, its images that flicker and dance like screen images; images that emerge from shadowy depths as from a dream.
One must be attentive to the silence, letting it grow and move and expand until it opens of its own accord. In the center of that word, "attentive," is tent. One is tented by the silence. Beyond the tent, towering pines, mist, the smell of dark earth and ferns, the sound of slow water dripping from high branches. This is how the writing happens. This is how it emerges.
To put it out there into the world in any form is breaking the silence. Within the silence is the sound - roar and pulse and beat and breath. Beyond the silence, on the other side of the silence, lies the expectation of others, the need of others, the desire of others. The great gift is when we can give to the reader something they never expected, something they didn't know they needed, never imagined they wanted.
There is no reading without writing. That sounds so simple, so obvious. But when I am reading I am entering the silence of printed word on page, be it paper or electronic, it doesn't matter. I enter the silence and as reader or writer I listen. I listen and I watch. I watch until I see what the writer is revealing to me. A stand of pines, a meadow, a long split-rail fence, a farmhouse abandoned, its porch tilting in on itself. And overhead the harsh caw of the crow, the drone of a distant jet, and somewhere, down a hill, by the unseen stream, the strange song of spring frogs and children laughing.
Words falling in patterns like leaves. Words blown away like leaves. Words leaving their imprint long after they are gone.
This is the bloggy stuff. These random thoughts. But it can be, you know, a meditation. Sitting here in the studio, listening to the hum of air purifier, the light shining on the easel and the painting of cracked ice, the June thaw of the lake on the side of the mountain, I feel, rather than know, the darkness outside. I feel the winter cold approaching. My feet curve over the metal bar of the typing stand I use. Have I anything to say? At all? Not really. Sometimes that’s how it goes - with the bloggy stuff. Kind of blah. Blobby. Empty. That’s a good way to be at the end of the day.