Glimmers

Greatness

It seems to me that greatness comes from doing, and more importantly having mucho fun doing it.  I'm not so sure it's even something you really set out to do - like "enjoying life" or "falling in love," it just happens as a result of things.

Every time I sit down to write a "great" story, or paint a "masterpiece," it's a lot of hard work. I stare at a vast field of unbroken white, for an indeterminate length of time.  Then, carefully and deliberately, I write a sentence not connected to anything in my mind, or draw a few disjointed lines.  Finally, after staring at the broken field of white for an even longer, frustrated breath, perhaps erasing and starting a few more times if I'm particularly determined, I give up and pick up a novel to fume over for a few hours.  My best stuff comes when I'm so captivated by each little circle of shading, color, and line, how every word and punctuation mark make it flow and flourish, that I don't consciously think anything about it until I'm done.

"Greatness" is another of those tricky concepts, like "being productive," or "finding a career" that keeps making me stumble.  When I sit and think about things - a dangerous habit, and where I think the phrase about "idyll hands" comes from - I get all sorts of silly grandiose notions about what I do, and don't do.  To combat these, I've armed myself through the years with an arsenal of stories and memories to remind myself of the illusory nature of thoughts. 

Here's one from the memory file:

I used to go to an all-night coffee shop (what a brilliantly evil idea!) and have all sorts of intellectual conversations with young egotistical maniacs like myself.  My jadedness, worn with such a trendy flair at first, gave way to the real thing after so long of this, and really came to a head after I noticed my picture was gone from the wall. 

I had asked the shop staff to hang it to sell.  After a brief flare of elation that perhaps it actually had, I was horrified to find out from one of the employees they had simply taken it down and stashed it in the closet.  Angrily I demanded it back, and sat glowering over my sketchbook, with the frame displayed on the couch; a silent protest of sorts. 

One of the regulars, particularly opinionated and well-spoken in his conversations, plopped down to say hi, and after asking got the full, impassioned story of why my picture was sitting next to me.  He heartily agreed what a travesty the actions of the staff had been, and said he had always loved that picture and would have bought it if he could afford it. 

A reaccurring theme throughout our conversations had been his ambition to write his manifesto, his "great" work to tell the world what he thought of it.  It came up again, and I told him there's no time like the present to actually start it.  He ducked his head and mourned his inability to actually sit and put words to page.

In a moment of disillusioned inspiration, I threw an offer on the table.  We would trade for the picture in one month.  I'd keep it safely in the back of my car, to be certain I'd have it the next time I saw him.  All he had to give me in exchange was something, anything, that he had written in that time.  For even as little as a diner napkin with a few lines of poetry or political ideology on it, he could have the original charcoal, framed and matted.  He enthusiastically agreed, and promised me whole chapters for such a beautiful drawing.

I was selling myself short, I knew.  But Milwaukee was a hard place for independent arts of any kind, and I was burning to help my friend along his road to greatness, even as I foundered on mine.  Perhaps all he needed was an immediate reward to get motivation and the creative juices flowing.  Perhaps, because of my nudge, a book would be published that would make people THINK!  That, even as I played the part of the starving artist, would be worth far more than money for my art (which I wasn't getting anyway).

Almost a month to the day after striking our bargain, I walked into the back room to find him engrossed in a circle of caffeinated philosophy.  I strode up to him, basking in my benevolence, and said "Your picture is in my car outside.  Let's see what you've got."

Instantly, he broke the unwritten code of the coffeehouse by looking sheepish.  Staring at a cigarette butt on the dirty floor, he confessed he had not had the opportunity to write anything since we spoke.  "I could give you some stuff I wrote in high school?" he tried, hopefully.

Nope, no deal.  Sigh.

I'm looking at the picture right now.  It's not one of my better efforts, although interesting in the fact that - unintentionally, as I drew it - it has another picture in it when turned around.  As does the story hanging over it.

That disappointment still helps to keep me on track.  It reminds me how delusions of grandeur - mine, his, everyone's - do nothing but hold a person back.  Greatness so often is like the mechanical rabbit greyhounds chase; forever out of reach, as the hapless animals run themselves into the ground until they're put to sleep.

I still have desires to be great.  Doesn't everyone with compulsions to create?  It's hard, but usually I look at those desires like mosquito bites.  It might feel better to scratch, but it makes them linger and more distracting.

I'm honing my technique, and want to get published (I really should start submitting stuff then).  I think it would be really, really neat to be able to live off of selling things I have fun doing.  But most of all, I want to keep it fun, and not worry about the results.  If I don't have fun with it, no one else will.