You Write. Right?
“Snap Shot,” Detail of Oil on Canvas 30x60,” © Frau Kolb 2012 Location: Garage-Studio in da’ Hood, Los Angeles.
Writing, like loving, caring, and creating requires practice, consistency. You can’t just turn it on and off when you want to; or at least, I cannot. I can only write everyday if I want to be ready for when the Muse, finally arrives, to host her… in style. Muses, being in high demand are very picky about what kind of (YUCK) work they pick up. Muses, usually, must be tricked, coaxed, or seduced into working with writers, artists, musicians, and other dreamy creatives. Otherwise… forget about it!
I sit down to write in the morning, before the sun fully rises I am writing everyday; but this change came about in an unexpected way. I fell into serious daily writing via the blog hole… I always thought of myself as a budding author. I started a novel… once. Three hundred and fifty rambling pages, which I still am using for pallet paper for paintings.. I ditched that dead horse. Plotless, that sad pony had no more pull. I had to abandon it; but I must say once in a while the first scenes in that book… they haunt me… an opening into another world…a giant juicy and throbbing vagina; I see the setting; a grand mansion (of course, this was my first novel…) populated by a curiously perverse family of women… three generations under one roof, with twin granddaughters… obsessed with violence, crime, and… they were strange… those twins.
The biggest problem with the novel-to-be-made-into-a GREAT FILM (hah… finish the book, first, Darling) was the totally fantastic all-white cast of characters (people in the same extended family as the posh British, I guess, people in the books that were standard issue when I was a child); kept being interrupted by a little brown girl in a lemon-yellow handmade cotton dress; her black kinky braids tight on her pretty little head; kept showing up… Popping into a story she, where she was not invited. Suddenly, this little bumble bee was inside the story I wanted, or planned on telling: about queer and glamour soaked creatures… stalking about the grand halls of a massive home, unlike any I’d I’ve ever visited… so suddenly was the brown girl there; and so silent was she… a ghost, of some kind, a little brown and pretty healthy looking GHOST of about eleven or twelve years of age.
See her now: she parts the curtain in the Round Room filled with vases, on pedestals and tables… all bursting with cut flowers of infinite (computerized for the movie version, of course) flowers… there… yes… I remember so vividly a scene that made it to printed paper form… yet those characters were not well developed, mature enough, to survive… in the harsh environment of a novel; demanding a plot and story progression. They had no substance. They were, two dimensional, cut-outs; they all flickered and failed… faltered and died. Not a single one had enough past to sustain a believable fictional future; because all these characters sprung from an insincere place; even the brown girl was nothing but an egoistic interloper in a story she was, not precisely, born from, but instead a foreign environment, which she was invading; each character in a novel demands their own private, unread book, written by the author, which explains and details their individual and complex history; with every detail written in… Perhaps, right now, in this re-writing of words; I am building up the strength for that level of literary achievement.
In the meantime, Frau Kolb: blogs, interviews artists, attends art fairs, collects a little art, and keeps tending to the little garden, which is her fruitful daily world.
This I know now:
Writing is NOT WANTING, it is not desire… Writing is daily… focused… driven work with words to create shelter for ideas; homes for the wandering reader; the avid hungry mind, that craves a dip into the cave of knowing where the fountain of chocolate words covered in diamond sprinkles eternally overflows...
tell us do you come more than once a week to check in and see if Frau Kolb is still writing and uploading daily? Do you find yourself lingering over an idea you gleaming from skimming these virtual pages? Well, please let me know, what you think of this scattered; way-to-personal, intimate art chat: Frau Kolb is always OPEN for conversation: Who know where my NEXT BIG IDEA will come from and I’m forever welcoming Muses, embracing dreams, diving into the beautiful, the brave, and inspiring. Please, bring Talkinggrid your eyes and If it pleases you; leave Talkinggrid a comment, donation, a crumb of appreciation: proof that indeed my efforts are appreciated. Thank you.
Now, I arrive at this familiar starting place…early morning silence is my best friend.
I try and “coax,” the Muse(s) to write and they might want to… they do. Yet…
Muses love to flitter… they are busy and they just don’t do what others want them to do… The MUSES are wild, free, things that may perch like hawks, for a moment of observation, on the outer branches of one’s life. Yet, you might be better off not waiting for The Muse or any of her lovely sisters and cousins; Melody, Rhythm, Timing, and Pace; being cousins of Mars, the god of war, whose “conflict,” is said to be at the center of every good telling, these Frauleins are rarely cooperative, collaborative, compliant… Muses dance when they want to… you may NEVER see them move; unless they want to race against Mercury and then they have jet-engine feet.
Ah! Muses… don’t try and base a business; not a blog or a culinary empire on their input. It is only the elbow grease of dedication, determination, and perpetual… "What business?"
You ask me… “The business of getting on with life, thriving, and succeeding of turning thin air; weaving words, into money and/or power… because, even if people don’t pay you with dollars, every person that pays attention to you, gives you a compliment for your determination, takes time to read the words that rise from sleepy habit; a little editing, in the first edition of any blog post… that sacred business which the priestly class at the temple complex, which is the intellectual universe, are knee deep in its sticky reality, are investing precious time, admirable curiosity, and allowance of YOU into their otherwise private world. I’m happy to be in that quiet and elegant mansion of many minds, together, everyday.
Oh so… what to write about? During the course of a day; so much happens. There is all the personal drama; the doctor’s visits and the mountain of laundry… the demand for attention from friends and family alike. Giving attention, all the time, supporting and encouraging others to pursue dreams, expressing loyalty, making pledges, donating time, volunteering… and the list goes on… all the little squabbles with other adults about petty nothings; who speaks German and who does NOT… Who speaks Spanish when commended to speak this romantic tongue? We must remain vigilant. Pushing distracting intruders out of schedules and making time for creativity is no accident. The battle, the little pin pricks of criticism… the hollow thunder of applause. Ah! There is too much to write about. The hours speed away. You keep chiseling. Working.
We must find our way, home. WE must find a way to get from here to there and back again. Home is the place where you can get your needs met while making a dent in the imbalance that is so prevalent; so worthy of being dented.
The way demands that we find it, follow it, obey. We avoid writing, thinking, processing this splendor into a good yarn, spinning the material of memory and miracle into a fine garment of knowing; the kind of glittering covering the emperor wears with pride: at our own peril, because if we don’t write a new world; recording our condition and creating standards for future writers, the universe may unravel/ravel; splitting apart… into a bleeding trail of sentence fragments and other irrelevant debris.