Soumik Datta, a student and friend and fellow-Cohenite, posted something which I am having the urge to quote in its entirety
What if you must have something on your mind constantly, not as an obsession possessing you, but as a perpetual contender to your attention, a corollary distraction to anything you’re consciously occupied with? Something neither driving you insane (for nothing ever will), nor yet letting you be…
You don’t receive as well anymore: you listen to music, and you only appreciate its ambiance; you watch movies, but they only affect you when they do so viscerally; and you can’t read, for the printed word offers the least degree of unconscious pleasure: it barely lulls you in despite distractions, like the rhythm of action, the resonance of sound. You can’t create in any form: for words sounds visions slip past you too fast, and you know not what you want to say nor how. Even intoxicants leave you high and dry, their effects restricted to the dullness or animation they bring to your spirit and body, and no more.
Context limits our choices in courses of action. And things makes less and less of a difference when you’re not free to initiate those courses that can make the difference.
If you must have and hold on to something on your mind, you must resign yourself to a restless exile: a loss of centre, and control. You must keep running, though you’ll have nowhere left to run to no more.
Do you say, ‘Don’t think twice, it’s alright’? Well, what else can you do.
***
Now here is one of my brighter students and I am not actually worried that he is not attending classes these days. That’s never a big deal, but the state-of-affairs above is, ’cause it succinctly describes the state I am in too. He named the post – tellingly enough – ‘acceptance’. Thus, here we are, teacher and student: ‘acceptance’ is such a great leveler!
The only difference is – and it is a goddamn pissing-off one – you are younger than me Soumik! I can, now, feel it ticking away in my body: the time of youth, the time when ought to start it, the work which then should have been patiently pursued for the rest of life. And I am absolutely clueless of what it should be, what is the shape of the work to come.
To me, it is the act of writing the self into history. The self, not necessarily my own. Writing, or creating sounds and images, some kind of toil, some kind of slogging which will burn me out to a long satisfying sleep.
The problem is, something is eating me that this act of writing needs a collateral of living it out, forging a consonance between the two. And the bird says that since I am not doing the one I can’t do the either.
Symptom: I am not being able to express myself in prose these days. It bursts out through poetry, an overcharged gush of sickness gets coupled with a throbbing pressure of eros. It makes me feel momentarily alive. The more vicariously sexual it becomes the more I taste blood. But these things are not worth it. I am not happy with the language I produce. This is not mine.
Just read everything about ‘writing’ in my paragraphs above in terms of ‘living’, you will get it. Slowly it is sending me nearer the edge, towards the time when I will wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, part my hair behind, dare to eat a peach, wear white flannel trousers, walk upon the beach. I need to know why I am here! What I was supposed to be busy with! In this evening-office called life! I hear something rumbling inside, but I cannot grab the shape of it… I know, I need to wait.
But it feels better if the noise inside is shaped into words by someone else…like Soumik, like Inam…
Let me instead stare at the following; I don’t know why. The words are Irving Layton‘s…
The truth is this: instead of remembering they are prophets and the descendants of prophets, the poets have swapped roles with entertainers and culture-peddlers. They have refused the crown of thorns.
(“Foreword,” Balls for a One-Armed Juggler, 1963)
I now see there is no way for the poet to avoid misunderstanding, even abuse, when he follows his prophetic vocation to lead his fellowmen towards sanity and light. If he offers his hand in friendship and love, he must expect someone will try to chop it off at the shoulder. … A poet is someone who has a strong sense of self and feels his life to be meaningful.
(“Foreword,” Collected Poems, 1965)
Image Courtesy: Sign No. 2 by Kasper Sonne
Posted in Living like a Log
