finding the pearl

interesting title, i know. i swiped it from an article i read online awhile back. it was about finding your muse and how to use it, and how to ease the inspiriation out from within; how to find that little piece of insight. in a sense, how to 'find the pearl' in the million oysters at the bottom of the ocean.

i like to write, that's no secret. i've enjoyed writing all my life and it's a natural God given talent that i am lucky enough to possess. the inevitable writers block strikes everyone though, and it's usually at the worst of times. so how should you get past it? find your muse. find what inspires you. it can take time, sometimes weeks, months, even years. but you must find the source of your inspiration, your drive, your passion. you have to find that source that makes you giddy, that gives you a certain euphoric high, that makes you feel like you're on top of the world with a pen in your hand, that makes you feel free, that makes you feel like the most powerful person in the world, receiving the most baffling of revelations. but revelations of what? and from where? you have to find that muse.

it's taken me a while, and by no means do i have anything figured out. but i think i'm getting there. i think i'm learning how to search for it, how to look within myself and try and pry out that impish muse frmo the depoths of my mind. it's elusive, let me tell you. the harder you try, soemtimes the harder it is to grab at. but i have the ideal picture of it painted in my head and for right now, that's good enough. it probably won't make sense, but this is what i see. to me, inspiration is this. and it comes from this. from somewhere inside of me. my heart, my head, my soul, my unconscious. something like that. this is an excerpt of a journal entry i wrote a few months ago, and i think these parts capture my idea of a muse best.

"i feel the heaviness of it deep within my soul, and i feel the darkness of it. it's never going to be light and pretty, it's the way my inspiration works. heavy and dark. it's brand new. i want to BE brand new's lyrics. i want to belong to jesse lacey's words. i want them to flow through me and be a part of me. it's that certain music that gives me that feeling. what feeling? i don't know. just THAT feeling. it's also death cab, sufjan stevens, we the living, kings of leon, sigur ros, band of horses, thrice, third eye blind, damien rice. it's brothers on a hotel bed, john wayne gacy jr., demons, western front, volcano, motorcycle drive by, god of wine, losing a whole year, no one's gonna love you, volcano, rootless tree. and most of all a song for milly michaelson. in one song, it's a song for milly michaelson. what do these songs all have on common? i don't know. it's running on the cold, dark beach in a dress, long hair flowing behind me, and it's early in the morning with the sun just rising. even though i hate the cold. and even though i hate the early morning. or it's at dusk with the sun just setting. it's only partial light. or it's a lovely spring day. spring specifically; with so much potential in the air for unknown things to bloom into unknown beauty. it's innocence, but tainted. it's splashing in those cold waves on the beach, tasting the frothy salt on my lips. laying down on the damp sand and letting warm tears slip from the corners of my eyes. so much heaviness that i have supressed. so much hurt that lies deep within my heart. it's being alone even though i hate it. and it's being in emotional distress even though i hurt from it. and it's longing for a perfect lover, but not wanting that longing to come true. because that is precisely what drives my fingers to scratch pen across paper. and that pain is precisely what drives me, what stirs my innermost being, what stirs my soul, what fills my heart and gives me the clearest picture of how to put these thoughts and feelings into words. these are the things that put words in my mouth. why is it always pain that drives me wild?"

i hope that paints the slightest bit of a picture of what drives me. that's my muse. i don't have a name or a word for it. but that paragraph is it. and that paragraph continues to grow, but in essence, there it is. if you have insight, please i BEG of you enlighten me. i would love to have a different perspective.

i leave you with a beautiful and thought-provoking quote to ponder, courtesy of charles simic.

"what makes the act of composition so complex is this mixture of deliberate and involuntary? one is continually torn between the desire to yield and the desire to assert oneself. the peculiar intensity and weight words have in a good poem are probably due to this split, and the turmoil it causes in the psyche. in any case, the great wish is to make room, to let the spirit of the occasion manifest itself. a poem which would be a threshold between two immensities where the poet is simply the ceremonial doorman."