Minotaur
Lately, I’ve had more moments of less. Moments filled with less noise and more presence. I don’t want to write. I don’t want to read or talk. I only want to sit and let my fingers trail through the grass, and let everything be. Let texture and smell and qualities of light be themselves, distilled and concentrated.
Let everything slow. Inhabit every second as if I were memorizing it to tell later as a story to someone very important.
Like when I was little, before I learned I was supposed to be busy. Supposed to be earning my keep.
I suppose the year itself has a lot to do with this, with pandemic and unrest, with losing my job and adjusting to a different routine, a different level of income, a new kind of moment-to-moment unpredictability that bleeds from the outside world into the private.
The odd dissonance here is that, even as the moments have less, they are more full. Even as I don’t want to write, I want to write. I come out of these gelled moments with little sparks, little realizations. I’ve watched as from summer to fall my topics have shifted from the intimate to the public to somewhere in between, and as the images I use have shifted from trees to forest gods to ships and smooth stones and spools of ribbon and bodies of water. I don’t want to talk, but I want to say everything.
I’ve learned that it’s possible to feel this dissonance and be at ease — to hold restful presence and restless creativity simultaneously. As the poet says, we contradict ourselves. We are large. We contain multitudes.
They coexist so well because they both require a kind of folding in of the self upon the self, like reaching the center of the labyrinth to learn that the minotaur is you.
We talk a lot today about identity. About what defines us to the world, and how much we want to defend it, shore it up, make it seen and respected. We talk a lot about identity, but we don’t give much airtime to the self — to that deeper, more intimate thing in us that makes it possible for us to observe ourselves as we act, that defines our values and actions. A thing that is like the core of the earth, molten, possessing incredible gravity, pushing up the energy that shapes the surface.
It is what creates our identity, but it’s not identity. Identity is the deep self’s projection. The deep self is the thing that knows immediately what is right, what is wrong, what must be said, who will benefit from our compassion. It’s the foundation of your voice.
The deep self is a thing that we as artists must know, and must come to terms with if we want to make truly good work. And when I say “good,” please understand that I mean a quality that supersedes trends or the unwieldy and vicious politics of art. I mean rather that quality that is honest, authentic and that can ultimately only be judged by you and by the deep and truthful impact the work has on others.
This can only come from your deep self, and your deep self can only be known if you spend time with it. Listen to it. Wrestle with it. Honor it. To do that, we have to pause in our consuming, selling and striving and simply be with ourselves in honest silence.
In What Are People For? Wendell Berry wrote:
“One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources.
In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.”
This is not navel gazing, nor is it self-help. It’s the simple and necessary work of being human. What more important work can we do with our sole, invaluable life than to know it and to use that knowledge to help others know theirs?
None of this is scientific or quantifiable. There’s no data to analyze. It’s all about inner knowledge, about personal ethics, about every moment of your life up until this one and how all of that has shaped you. It’s about feeling.
E.E. Cummings summed it up this way:
“A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
Philosopher Susanne Langer specialized in the philosophical “why” of art, and she had a lot to say about feelings.
“The aim of art is insight, understanding of the essential life of feeling … Art is the articulation, not the stimulation or catharsis, of feeling; and the height of technique is simply the highest power of this sensuous revelation and wordless abstraction.”
The pace and rough surface of life today has us looking at feelings askance and spending most of our time reacting. Even in creation we are reacting rather than bringing forth something that originates within ourselves. It’s the “f**k your feelings” era, and all the social media, entertainment and news we consume seems to reinforce this. I’ve written before about how disconnected our minds and bodies have become. The same is true of our identities and our deeper selves. We need to re-establish a loving relationship with the deeper self. If we stop, if we look inward and past our immediate wants, our past regrets, our career goals and ego, we can listen to that deeper self that knows what it not only wants to say, but must say.
I know a lot of people who confess to being afraid to sit still with their own thoughts, and I understand. We all have our own ways of reaching this deeper self, be it meditation, prayer, reaching out to ancestors, running, Mozart, Norwegian black metal at full volume… it doesn’t have to look the same for everyone and that’s ok because we’re not all the same and because, as I said before, this ain’t science. We can’t track our deeper self with an Apple Watch or an electron microscope. Thank God.
It’s time we embrace the unquantifiable. Get reacquainted with the mystery of feeling, and the deeper self. If you get to the center of the labyrinth and find yourself or a minotaur, shake hands. They have something to tell you.
