The best five dollars I ever spent? Easy. A kit to build model train scenery when I was ten.
The best eighteen bucks? Bee gloves to go with my bee suit.
The worst seven bucks? A Rev. Horton Heat special record store day 45 rpm record, with Beer Write This Song on the B side.
He had writer’s block, the beer didn’t fix it, but boy did he document it, on red vinyl, too.
Punk.
There’s a rule that one shouldn’t write about writing, and I’m breaking it. Hopefully it turns out better that the Rev. and his scam of a record. (Pity, because he’s usually good.)
There’s a million and nothing things to say today, and in short, I’m reminding myself of the Artist in The Great Divorce.
He gets a chance to take the bus from Hell to visit Heaven. A friend there is trying to save him. I wish I brought my (art) stuff - I’d love to paint this!
“You don’t need to paint this.”
The angelic friend tries to remind the artist that his paintings were good because they captured a sliver of heaven, and that’s the important thing, not the paint.
The artist scoffs, and rejects paradise, preferring to remain entrenched in the world of interpretation. (C.S. Lewis “paints” a much better picture, and avoids puns.)
The Lawn Mower
Writing group is like a lawn mower. God will cut you down if you run on for a long time, and Jen will cut your sentences down if they do the same. Something was needed - I’ve been falling in love with the format writing and not the saying. It was starting to show. I was dangerously close to becoming the Artist.
Everyone shared nifty stuff, but three friends in particular helped me out last night.
Alannah went out and did something cool. (She walked for 12 hours, alone with her thoughts, inspired by a motivating story she heard.) Then she wrote about it. (Read her story here.)
Jamal took a bible verse, and brought it down to earth for the rest of us to understand. I woke up at 2 am, went outside to look at the stars, and started thinking about it. His writing was about something bigger than himself.
I’m leaving the last friends’ name out of it. She wrote the most gripping account of what it was like to be young with mental illness. If one of the characters in The Inferno had kept a diary, only slightly fictionalized, Dante would have stopped to read it on his journey through the underworld, torn up his poem, and started again. I sat there, stunned, and then told her how it reminded me of Son House or Robert Johnson. Those guys didn’t play the Blues. They were the blues. Her writing was art as survival, a raw cry of the human spirit. She wasn’t writing to be clever. She had something to say, and needed to say it. I was so proud of her, so impressed…I went up and gave her a big hug afterwards.
All I have to say today is….
Bravo!
(And to my friends…thank you.)
- Josh