The Way The Machune Works

A lot of the time, I'll start a writing project where I'll have the whole thing pretty clearly in my head, and I just have to go through the process of squeezing the tube until the words come out of my fingers.  I don't like to stop before I'm finished because once  I stop and do something else, it can take me weeks to return to the piece and finish it.  I have four really promising pieces in a folder now named "unfinished" that I hope to get to this week.

I'll never have enough confidence in what I'm doing that I can stop in the middle, go do something else for a few hours, and return to my keyboard and finish with the same energy I started.

This morning, about an hour before my alarm went off, an idea about a memory began poking needles in my brain.  When the alarm did go off, I thought I could get up and bathe, brush my teeth, shave my head, get dressed, and go downstairs to meet my ride that takes me to church, as I had planned...

Or I could write.

Children with communication problems can become very unsocial.  That was me.  If it's not dealt with, it can become something of a critical problem for the child, and they begin to lose what little vocabulary they gained; at the very worst, they can become functionally mute and anti-social.  That was not me.  I had three very vocal siblings, a very vocal grandmother and mother and nursemaid, and more than that, I had Martha Hammond's kitchen across our backyard, where I could sit and listen, and for whatever reason, there I could talk.  

I do enjoy socializing.  I enjoy church and Sunday school.  I was going to lunch at Hal & Mals and go see the last performance of Passage at Millsaps, but once I touched the keyboard, I saw the word count meter advance, but I wasn't getting closer to where I wanted to finish, so I typed and typed and typed and missed my leave-the-house time for Sunday School, then Church, then Lunch.  One-thirty came, and I could either leave for the play or stay and read over and edit my work.  I'm really bad for not doing that.  It's so anti-climactic and so unlike the passion of making the words new.

I suppose that makes me an unreliable friend.  I suppose it's always been so.  There will always be times when I have to be alone to work out the things in my head.  Sometimes I get them out and decide to show them to people, and sometimes I decide whatever it was I created, it wasn't worthy.  

I wouldn't wish the artist's mind on anyone.  It's not a stable or happy way to live, even though there are moments of ecstasy when what you create matches what you saw in your head before you began.  

The Agony and the Ecstasy is a movie about Michangelo made in the sixties.  It's also part of the deal for those who wish to create.  So are questions about "Who is that funny man in the dark with a pen and paper?  I never see him talk to anyone."   

It's not a matter of "this is what I choose."  It's a matter of "this is what I am."  and I've made peace with it.  If you ever expect to see me and don't, there's always a chance this is what happened.  It's not a bad thing.  It's just the way the machine works.