Why do I still breathe?

[Countess]

Why do I still breathe?
It appears to me to be
a waste of my time,
another moment in mind
clinging to life by a string,
or by precious oxygen suffering
additional bits of sentience -
it tries - oh how it tries!
and tires my patience.

I have spent the greater part
of my life repenting that grievous insolence -
when at the tenderest age of sixteen -
I fell from grace and sold my soul
for some **** and bull murmurings .

Then it seemed to be worthwhile,
to exchange soundness of brain
for fevered eloquence or strategic
rearrangement of words to bring pleasure
to the ear, or succor the sweet stirrings
from one I called "dear"..

But tis yet, tis yet another lie, I fear,
another artifice constructed to
make sense of non-sensible things
and give me hope, and by my hope,
endured sufferings.

[blp]

Sorry you feel like this. It's not clear from this why, which is a problem for the poem and possibly also for you. Perhaps you need to say more just to begin to get over this.

The poem has many great moments when you speak in a very plausible modern human voice. 'tis yet', however, is not one of these.

[Countess]

I've been told by other poets that I have a tendency to merge old style language with modern voice - but I consider this to be my differential advantage if you will - the nuance that distinguishes me from others whose writing is pure. Therefore, I don't consider it a weakness but rather a strength.


>I have spent the greater part
of my life repenting that grievous insolence -
when at the tenderest age of sixteen -
I fell from grace and sold my soul
for some **** and bull murmurings .

I prayed for the gift to write at sixteen,
and was bequeathed that gift along with
bipolar disorder.

>Then it seemed to be worthwhile,
to exchange soundness of brain
for fevered eloquence or strategic
rearrangement of words to bring pleasure
to the ear, or succor the sweet stirrings
from one I called "dear"..

I thought it was all good,
but in retrospect I wonder if sanity
isn't worth losing one's creativity.

>But tis yet, tis yet another lie, I fear,
another artifice constructed to
make sense of non-sensible things
and give me hope, and by my hope,
endured sufferings.

I try to find the reasoning behind
this complexity, and to make sense of
my life.

Thanks for your response.

Countess

[blp]

Thanks for explaining. This is very interesting subject matter and does deserve a poem (or several). If you don't mind, I'll ramble on about it a little.

A few lines from Lorine Neidecker I've quoted on this forum before seem apt

What would they think if they knew
I sit for two months over six lines of poetry?

I feel a lot of sympathy with the problem you describe, having had some deep depressions at times and having felt them to be pretty closely bound up with art. To some extent, there are universal aspects to this, making art being neither obviously practical nor instantly gratifying and therefore seeming Quixotic at best, crazy at worst. But for this very reason, it may be that art gets made the scapegoat for mental ill health when it's not really to blame. Two arguments in favour of this:

A lot of people who have nothing to do with art are also severely confused, even clinically (and they don't even have the comfort of art).

I've found it easier to write the longer I've been in psychoanalysis.

You say you prayed for the gift to write and along with that received a bipolar disorder. This is similar to feelings and experiences I had in my teens and early twenties. I remember feeling quite close to madness and feeling I'd brought it on myself by wanting to be creative. But looking back, this seems to me to be based on two misapprehensions: 1, that creativity would be something bestowed from outside myself somehow and 2, that it was somehow something not really allowed me. The second, I think, derives from a general societal problem with art: to generalise, society sees artists as loonies or wrong 'uns. The first misapprehnsion is, in a way, playing along with this view. In wanting one's mind to be touched with art, one's already abnegating control to some extent, already verging on madness, already in frightening territory. And in seeing this abnegation of control as necessary, one is playing into the hands of a societal puritanism about art - an idea that its freedoms and pleasures must carry an equal and opposite reaction, a kind of punishment.
I don't see it like this anymore. Art is work - admittedly of a very different sort from scientific research, engineering, selling coffee or punching tickets in a movie house, but that list already indicates the variety of tasks that may be called work - without work ever carrying any of the burden of mystification that art so often does. It is not craft, at least not solely and it differs from craft and other types of work in that every artist has to figure out how to make their own work - sometimes with each artwork. That makes it harder than a lot of other work. There's also a big risk of failure, which there isn't with punching tickets, but then the successes are bigger to, which all correlates neatly with the first rule of stock market investment: you have to take big risks to earn big rewards. But some of its pleasurable and simple - reading a lot, looking a lot, thinking a lot, listening a lot, taking notes, doing one's own personal version of finger exercises - in short, not waiting for inspiration, not mentally abnegating control but instead becoming looser, suppler and stronger and taking in a lot of nutriment from the outside.
Worth noting that Rimbaud wasn't actually able to write much when he went all out for 'the disordering of all the senses'.
I don't mean to patronise - some of this is pretty obvious I'm sure.

[Countess]

[QUOTE=blp]Thanks for explaining. This is very interesting subject matter and does deserve a poem (or several). If you don't mind, I'll ramble on about it a little.

I agree.


>I feel a lot of sympathy with the problem you describe, having had some deep depressions at times and having felt them to be pretty closely bound up with art. But for this very reason, it may be that art gets made the scapegoat for mental ill health when it's not really to blame.

I think art and practicality are an irreconcilable paradox. I remember a line in Type O Negative's "October Rust": "Vandalism is functionless art. We are the vandals."

I agree that art is not the cause of neurosis/ dysfunction (effect). Strangely enough I think it is the other way around. Creativity by its very definition is abnormal, for if it were normal, it would be status quo and thus not what it is.

There is also a biological link between mental illness and creativity. New studies demonstrate that creative people have a lower threshold of latent inhibition (this is the ability to tune out unwanted stimuli from the environment.)

>A lot of people who have nothing to do with art are also severely confused, even clinically (and they don't even have the comfort of art).

This is quite sound logic (congratulations. Many people miss this syllogism.)

The fact that many creative people are mentally ill does not mean that many mentally ill people are creative. I see creativity and mental illness as two subsets in a Venn diagram - but there is a disproportionate overlap between the two when compared with the general population.

>I've found it easier to write the longer I've been in psychoanalysis.

Have you gone through the book "The Artist's Way"? A friend recommended it to me and it has been quite helpful. I do not feel therapy has made it easier for me to write, but being clean and sober has significantly enhanced my writing ability, contrary to what is popularly accepted about artists. :nod:

>1, that creativity would be something bestowed from outside myself somehow.

Well, I do believe this to be true: that all talent flows down from our maker, and it is our task as creative individuals to flow that talent back up to God. The Artist's Way takes this approach.

>The second, I think, derives from a general societal problem with art: to generalise, society sees artists as loonies or wrong 'uns.

The Artist's Way covers this stereotype as well.

>one is playing into the hands of a societal puritanism about art - an idea that its freedoms and pleasures must carry an equal and opposite reaction, a kind of punishment.

I am neither going to agree nor disagree here as I don't think I can make an absolute statement either way. I will say the very best of my poetry stems directly from overwhelming feelings of love / admiration or overwhelming feelings of sadness / fear / despair. Without these two polar opposites my poetry becomes a function of my rational mind, and as such plants ideas in the reader (usually of the philosophical variety) but does not elevate them to levels of happiness or melancholy

>Art is work.

It can be. It can be pleasurable as well. With my fiction (such as The Life and Times of Jules Vercini) I find I must pour a great deal of work into my product. I spend time thinking up ideas, working through these ideas, coming up with the next natural reaction in the book. Poetry, however, can be remarkably different. Sometimes I sit down and it literally flows out of me with little effort.

>There's also a big risk of failure, which there isn't with punching tickets, but then the successes are bigger to, which all correlates neatly with the first rule of stock market investment: you have to take big risks to earn big rewards.

Now I understand from whence you come. See, I write purely for myself with certain concepts in mind, and then I evaluate my niche market. I cannot imagine writing a story that I did not feel needed to be told, or that bored me (so many do!). I must entertain myself first, for if I do that then I write a good story. Otherwise I am simply going through the motions.

>In short, not waiting for inspiration, not mentally abnegating control but instead becoming looser, suppler and stronger and taking in a lot of nutriment from the outside.

All my work is inspired; it is just that some of it is based on former inspiration - a moment in time when I conceived an idea - that is drawn out by necessity (such as writing a book like I have been doing for the past year.)

I understand your method as well though - writing for the pure sake of writing. There is value in that also. :nod:

Countess

[blp]

I'll be brief for a change. I don't write for the sake of writing. I write to find out why I want to write, or to remember why. I must entertain or at least interest myself too - that's the big reward. It's work and it's pleasurable.

all the best