"- don't be so quick to knock it. People don't usually part with the weird shit they personally know because they know how easy it will be to punch holes in. Now I'm tellin you somethin. It's for you to poke through the soup and find the meat." John Patrick Shanley's 'the dreamer examines his pillow'

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

3:13 pm in a cold body coffee filled belly nicotine buzzed head

To write. Writing to write.
I believe to be truly good at something you must love it inherently.
Ex: architecture; i.e. referencing The Fountainhead – the man who gets the glory does not love architecture inherently, he loves the recognition he gets from it, so he works for the recognition and gets it in spades.
In contrast, Howard Roark only creates because there is nothing else to do. He loves it (not a giddy kind of love, but love with a deep and simple longing and appreciation for its creation for its own sake.) He doesn’t get recognition, but the buildings he would create would affect how people live every minute they’re inside them. Just read it if it makes little sense.
I love budgeting. I’m good at budgeting. I don’t love it because it saves me money or because someone said I should; I love the very act of typing numbers into my budget; of adding and subtracting and general Figuring. And however it may or may not benefit me, I will do it as long as I have the means to continue.
This is not a particularly good example to illustrate what I believe is most important about this way of looking at the world, but I want to include it because the love doesn’t make sense – it may not be something grand or exciting or reasonable in anyone else’s eyes, but I’ve got to do it.
One can “be good” at most anything they work at, be it budgeting, cooking, traveling, relating, etc etc… but will that action inspire more than admiration at a well-honed skill in others? Will it affect who they are?? Perhaps change how they live or open doors in the mind or momentarily in the soul – through art, relationships, practical aspects of living, therapy, music, innovation, on and on and on – whatever it is,
I don’t believe one can consistently affect other human beings on a level that touches anything beyond the superficial unless one is acting on a love that is inherent in one’s soul and a love for the action or task or being itself , the un-understandable and possibly incontrollable (although certainly suffocatable and ignorable) passion, quiet or otherwise, in oneself.
I can work as hard as I want to (for whatever reason) at a romantic relationship or close friendship, and succeed at finding out more about a person, having a good time, feeling that my relationship is a “success” and making it look as if the same is true.
But if I want to affect this other person and even allow them to affect me, if I want one of those relationships that alters the way the earth turns by a few degrees, I think there must be a love for what and who that person is left over after I subtract what they can do for me, how they make me feel, how they make me look, the Obvious/Practical/Superficial. A simple love that makes their value in my eyes unquestionable and makes attempts at improving the relationship pointless, because the love itself draws one closer without thought. No, I don’t think all relationships should be easy; people are people, (i.e. difficult, selfish, in varying states of denial) but without a simple love for the one you’re relating to for the sake of the love itself, it does nothing for your Reason to live.
The same is true of acting. A great actor, in my opinion, acts because he/she must, not for the adoration or persona or even to affect others, because there are so many other ways of doing that, but to Act. To Act, period, everything about it is Good and torturous because you can never Grasp the thing you love, we can only run blindly at it and into it and breathe deep while we experience it; ‘true love never dies’ because it’s not humanly possible to stop trying to reach the thing we love, we have an insatiable unable to be satisfied hunger built in to our passion. I have no clue why. Ignoring the hunger is the scary part. That’s the Death I’m afraid of and the Stability I long for. But we can rest in the fact that our true passions will never be satisfied; we can’t take them too far. Despite what our Others may say about moderation and money and reason. Just try taking it too far. I can imagine it will only become more necessary for life and Life will become what you breathe and pump through your veins instead of what you think about.

I think I’m finally ready to go through the practical pain and drudgery it will take to get to a point where I can exercise my passion on a regular basis. I think I’m going back to school. Fuck. Damned if you do, dead if you don’t.

Lenny, please notice the many decorative punctuations (bloop; bweep) that I inserted in my writing. I maintain it improves the overall effect of the message;
Yours;
El;zabeth

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