Language, Poetry, Art and the F-bomb

I started this blog…well for lots of reasons but mostly to break away from fear, out of myself and past the block I’ve been rutting in for oh…about 3 years. I have all these poems and snippets (things I haven’t looked at in years if I’m honest) and thought I’d start there – revisit my writing past, see if I can’t trigger some cogs into motion. But when I read them and think of posting them…I can’t distance the words from the girl who wrote them enough to be objective. I remember where I was then, and it’s SO FAR from where I am now. But I know, too, that being an artist means putting it all out there, even the ugly. I know that despite our differences, that girl did what I am struggling to do - put it all out on the page, especially the ugly, so that whatever power it held could be transformed into something else....something that might just touch a cord with someone, something that could possibly resonate on a different scale, something that would mean more than a singular moment in a single day of one ordinary person's life. She knew that if you write something that doesn’t come from a place of truth, your reader will know it, you will know it, and yet…here I am agonizing over the last poem I posted. Why? Because it uses a certain word some people might find offensive.

Oi vey.

When I wrote Act... I found that specific word to be the most appropriate expression befitting the poem, line and momentum…I still do. Read aloud, there’s no mistaking that word is there for a reason, and everything that word carries with it is intentional. The explosion of the hard consonants after the push of breath between teeth and lip – there’s no getting around that sound. So why am I wringing my mental hands over a four letter word that might offend someone who reads my blog?

“I think there’s something missing in an actor’s persona, or maybe mind, about censoring out certain emotions. They are “overreceptive” …People who are tremendously good at closing out the troublesome tend not to be brilliant performers.” Michael Boyd from Mind, Memory, and the Actor a public discussion held at New York’s Columbia University.*

I think what Mr. Boyd speaks to here applies to all artists and art forms. I think it’s a crucial, integral part of creativity, and that same “overreceptivity,” I believe, is what compels an artist to create in the first place. And it is fear (another four-letter-word beginning with F) the stunts that creation, or keeps it in hiding. Do I really want others to see the world as I perceive it? Maybe. Do I really want to show the world my vulnerabilities? Mostly (like 99% mostly) no. Do I have to bear my every tender feeling, bruised heart, or wrenching sob story for the world to see? No, I don’t HAVE to.

That being said…I will. While I may not give away every naked detail, I will at times allow (or force as the case may be) myself to pour out whatever prompted the work in the first place, warts and all. Because I must never allow the feared reaction of others to affect my pen, I can never allow my own trepidation to make my voice stutter, I cannot hesitate to embrace the embarrassing and painful as I reach for the wondrous and joyful. MUST I be completely honest with my subject, and myself, and my work if I’m to be even remotely satisfied with any artistic endeavor I embark upon?

Without a doubt.

So prepare yourselves.


*Thanx for the article Eric .