So yeah, this past week at work was /really/ slow, so I usually spent at /least/ an hour a day just sitting around waiting for more parts to pack. Some days it was more like 3 hours, but hey: they're still paying, who's complaining? So on Wednesday or something, I finally remembered to bring a book to work, but (of course) I didn't remember until it was 5 minutes before I had to leave. I was quickly searching the whole house for my collexion of Chekov plays that I still have to finish, and I wasn't finding it. So my eye alighted on a thick book entitled "Paradise Lost and other Poetry" and I quickly snatched it. It was, of course, a collexion of John Milton's poetry.
Perhaps at this juncture, I should take a moment to expound on my history with M. Milton. You see, for someone who writes poetry, I read even less than most non-poets do. So whenever literary conversations get around to influences, I have to say that, aside from:
1) Mr. Shakespeare, who taught me a love for form and meter but didn't really influence the content
2) Lyricists like Aaron Weiss and Efrim Menuck, who definitely direct my ideas and metaphors without really influencing the form that they are presented in.
I don't think I really have any "influence" in my writing aside from my life. Now, I am coo with that. It makes me feel a little less avant-whatever, but hey: I'm only a beatnik in my head. The thing is: there are perhaps two poets whose few poems that I have read came at such a time that they were pretty influential on my initial poetry, and indeed my conception of what poetry even is. They are: John Donne (who, interestingly enough, is a large influence of Aaron Weiss') and John Milton. I encountered those two poems of Donne's in my Brit Lit class Junior year of highschool, which is about when I first started writing, and Milton even earlier, in middle-school.
My history with Milton begins at my grandparents' cottage "Up North", with weeks spent there in the summer. The house and cottage are since sold, but one summer, with nothing better to do, I picked up an old edition of Paradise Lost and started to read. I believe I only got as far as Book 6 before I lost steam and stopped, but I can't have read that much of something without it influencing me, however subtly. So fast forward perhaps as many as 6 years to this week, when by chance I happened to pick up a collexion of Milton's poetry on my way out the door, thinking to myself: "Well, at the least, it's long!" So I cracked this book open at work, and read the first half (his non-Paradise Lost work) first. It pretty much blew my socks off! I was amazed by how much I connected with his material, and his take on life, whether it was written in archaic English or not. I also got about 4 books through Paradise Lost, and it has some /very/ striking parts in it as well (though I'm sure some of the carefully detailed descriptions are wasted on me).
Now, the point of this whole post is that reading Milton's work again, and reading the wordy introduction that preceeded it, really got me wondering: Why on Earth do I write? John Milton wrote because he believed that God gave him an extraordinary gift, and destined him for literary fame. I, on the other hand, would not be at all surprised if I never published a poem in my life. Part of the problem is that society today does not appreciate writing enough for a man to devote his entire life to writing, like Milton did. The other issue is that I have simply never felt called to dedicate my life to writing, it has always been more of a side-thing. So why do I write? The typical answer these days would be "self-expression", but I think that that very vague, subjective-worth-only mentality has led to more tripe than good writing. Besides, my main reason for writing is not expressing /myself/ as much as it is expressing a state of affairs, or a metaphor that I think gives insight into humanity. I do not write for myself to read it. Whether or not I will ever be published, I write to communicate to others, rather than simply to present myself with a mirror. I am interested in all things "tremendously human", whether they are ordered or disordered, happy or sad, so long as it is a part of "the human experience", it intrigues me.
Part of the issue, I guess, is that I've come to the conclusion that I'm not very good at writing. Now, I'm not talking about the finished product. I am generally at least satisfied with what I write, and I know that at least a couple of people find them authentic, which is all that I ask for. No, what I mean is the actual act of writing. Generally, if there is anything that I could do /other/ that writing, 9 times out of 10 I will choose distraction over creativity. So why do I write? I'm not really sure. An attempt to communicate humanity to human-kind, perhaps in the vain idea that I will have original thoughts... I just know that it is nothing nearly as "vocational" as Milton's reasons for writing. I don't really feel a Diving Calling to write, but sometimes I wonder if, if perhaps I /can/ write, that somehow indicates a responsibility to do so to advance the kingdom of God as best I can. I'm not sure. Is a gift ever given without a responsibility to use it for the Kingdom? I don't even know. I only got six hours of sleep last night, and I do believe I'm rambling, and have been writing this for so long that I have pretty much lost track of where I started, and where I was going. Oh well. So I guess I'll end it here then.
God is so nuts and, like Dntel says: "Life is Full of Possibilities". I'll try to get that more "creative" writing done sometime soon and post it up. We see. I also have yet to write that post about music... but this post was supposed to be a setup for it anyways. I think I am addicted to Mr. Menuck's music, no matter how awful his singing voice may be.
"TOGETHER, TOGETHER, TOGETHER, TOGETHER... never to retreat."
-L
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