Skip to main content

Fearlessly Honest

There is a pretty common myth out there about being creative and being messed up, in that it seems that we create better art if we are wrecked.  

In a way, the myth isn't a myth at all.  We do seem to create good stuff when we are messed up, when we are flayed open and ruined, when the world is a weight and there's nothing to do but crawl into a bottle, to hide behind chemical curtains until things don't hurt anymore. 

We do create good stuff when were messed up.  You can see it in the wreckage that Hollywood serves up, sacrificed for our entertainment, in the suicides and broken homes and arrests of creators.  Brilliant art made by complete and utter ruin, human beings tortured by talent and psychological disaster. 

But it's not about being smashed; it is about honesty.

The greatest, most heart-wrenching things we read and hear and watch come from someone who is just messed up enough to be honest, who is brave enough to just lay it out there for the whole world to see.  But it doesn't come from the thing, it doesn't come from the ruin.  It is good because the creators weren't afraid to be real, to expose themselves, to be hurt and to say honestly that they were hurt.  It's just that for some of us it seems harder to be honest when we're present in our bodies and our psyche, maybe we need a little chemical courage to be open.         

You don't need to be messed up to be honest, you have to simply be brave.  And with some guts, with a strong backbone and thick skin, with a little faith and an unshakable belief in your content, you don't need to be a wreck to make good stuff, you just have to have the balls to be honest.

It's easier when you get older, I think.  I'm married; I dont have to worry about some potential mate reading something I wrote and thinking I'm a tool.  My wife already knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that I'm a tool.  She married me knowing it, and God bless her heart, she has stuck around this long, I doubt that anything I write is going to change her mind. 

And to be honest, maybe adult truths are less exciting than young truths.  I don't consider myself a wreck, not anymore at least.  I live a reasonably peaceful life and my truth has changed.  My truth now is I mostly don't miss the firey passion that drove me when I was young, that led me to do such harmful and willfully stupid things.  I don't miss the fire, and I definately don't miss the ashes, the guilt and regret and the exhausting uncertainty. 

Sometimes though, I do miss the fearlessness, the easy honesty.

Because the best art comes from fearless artists.

           

Comments

  1. When you're to much of a wreck you can't create. I believe that you not only have to be honest but you have to feel deeply. Put your heart out there when it' hard to do. To care so much that it hurts. I know this is part of what you are talking about. It does bring to mind, Robin Williams. The more I learn of this man the more I like him. I've watched close friends just crushed and saying things liike "Why?". So sad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congrats on finishing your book and getting your blog started! I'm not a fan of combining writing with altered states, because I don't think we really do our best work that way. We only feel as if it's great work when we're hiding behind the "chemical curtain." Write first and celebrate afterward. :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for coming to check out my blog; and for taking time to comment on it. I have two agent queries still pending. I'll let you know how it goes!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One of the Best of Us

In the stifling heat my breath comes fast and heavy. What the fuck am I even doing here? What the fuck am I trying to accomplish? I'm sitting on the mat, maybe dying, a forty something dad playacting at being a fighter. This is my mid-life crisis, this is so, so stupid. This has to be the end for me, assuming I can get my heartbeat under control, assuming I don't just peg out here on the mat.  I can't do this anymore. "It's okay man, it's okay, you just need to breathe through it. You're fine, you're okay." The voice of my training partner, gentle and kind. My partner, the maniac that drove me to such a state, that I think I might die, he sits next to me and shows me how to breathe, how to calm my body. He teaches and guides me through it, and in a few minutes I actually am okay, the panic settles down, and maybe this isn't my last class after all. "You're alright?  Okay. Now lets get back to work."  And back to work we go. There

We Would Be a Song

I seem to define my life with soundtracks, playlists that encompass epochs or periods of change or development.  My earliest music was my mother's: Van Halen and Judas Priest, Def Leppard and AC/DC.  I remember a friend of hers explaining to second grade Ralph that the big balls that Angus was singing about were parties, but even then I didn't buy it.  My teen years were heavy on grunge, Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and that was the first time that music ever felt like it was mine , that I discovered by myself or through the radio, or like minded friends, that was the first time that I took it and owned it and loved it, and even now I'll hear Black Hole Sun or Rooster or Smells Like Teen Spirit on the radio and back I go. In the fifth grade, I moved to Kelso, Washington. I want to say that it was hard, but what I remember mostly from childhood is just this sense of taking every day as it arrived.  What else do we have except our own experiences to measure th

Fighting for Clarity

There's this to be said about fighting: while you're doing it, you don't have room in your head for anything else, not your busted ass car or your worries about your family, not the leak under your bathroom sink, or how you're going to pay your bills.  There's only breathe one two, step out of range, shift off the center line, move breathe one three two slip the jab level change three to the body check the low kick counter one two...  it is a better escape than most, and I've tried most of them, believe me. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. I get humbled and beat up at every session, I don't understand why I even go. I'm feeling defeated; everything is so fucking hard for me, and I don't know why I'm doing it. I should just quit, right? Fuck you.  I'll show you motherfuckers what I am capable of. I'll show you-  And then I go and I try and my knees give and I get pummeled and twisted and what the fuck man how humble do I