Senseless Art?

I stare at a blinking cursor this morning. I am here, at my computer, honoring this moment of carved out time to write. I am late, if you can call it being late when it’s your own self-appointed schedule. I fought a dull fight with resistance today, and I lost. It was far more interesting to iron a shirt, sweep the floor, sip on cold water and start reading a new book then it was to sit and write. I have but a window of time before a boy calls for me from his crib, “Momma, momma, momma,” getting louder with every repetition. He does not care if the words poured out of me easily this morning and if they were successfully captured. He doesn’t care if the artist had time to release something creative so she can breathe once again. All he knows is his diaper is wet and his belly is hungry and there is a Momma who can put a stop to them both and set his world right again. I am that Momma. And I am staring at a blinking cursor and ironing shirts because the words feel trapped inside me, and I have no creative drive today to get them out.

There is a novel that I can edit, but it feels old and tiresome and dawdling, like an untied shoelace, dragging on the ground underfoot, left to collect dirt and be transformed into this strange shade of gray. The novel doesn’t call to me. It sits, lifeless. I too feel lifeless. Why are some mornings like this? Dull. Gray. Smile-less. I should think of a reason to smile. There should always be a reason to smile.

I scroll through my accumulating list of blog post topics, searching for a diving board to spring on so I can leap into that water of writing again. I know it’s going to be cold. I know the initial contact will be a shock, just as it is most mornings, but I prefer it to the unaccomplished feeling of sitting lazily on the end of the board and skimming my toes along the top of the water, flirting with art. Flirting always leaves me wanting. Pardon my flirting this morning.

I try and tell myself this is valiant. This blinking cursor, this procrastinated start, this dull battle with resistance. This is the stuff great artists are birthed from. I try and convince myself I am living my dreams because I’m staying in the chair and I’m letting my fingers dance on the keyboard, even if I’m not quite sure the dance is of any sort of importance. I try and believe that the successful artist is not the one with the most completed pieces to show for it, but the one who shows up every morning willing to wrestle with whatever comes out, even if the outflow makes no contribution to a finished piece of art. I try and console myself that “this is enough.” I’m not buying it.

An eBook calls my name. It’s waiting to be finished. It’s breathing down my neck. I feel claustrophobic. An eBook has this monetary value attached to it. An eBook gives me a little bit of worth. An eBook is short and can be sold, and selling something makes me feel like I am sustaining this artist life in some way. “Someone pay me to write,” I scream, but I don’t know why I’m screaming it. And at the same time I am also screaming, “Please don’t pay me to write,” because I know if someone pays me, I might start writing for them instead of for me. I might start thinking about things like commas and passive voice and what is worth publishing and then I won’t even be on the diving board, neither springing or flirting. I’ll be shivering, all wrapped up in my towel along the side, my lips purple with the disgust of who I could have been.

Each beautiful word joins another to make up a sentence. A sentence that masquerades inside a useless paragraph. As useless as this blog. As useless as a beginning with no end. As useless as my black high-heeled shoe with the chipped heel. The shoe with the little cute bow. The useless cute shoe that has a screw sticking out of the broken heel so that when I walk it makes a sharp “clink, clink, clink” sound. I know of a good shoe repair shop, but I’ve never set foot in it. The shoes gather dust on my closet shelf. I don’t fix them. I don’t wear them. I don’t get rid of them. They are dead weight, useless.

Tomorrow I’ll feel different. Tomorrow I won’t expect so much out of myself. Or maybe tomorrow the water won’t seem so far away or so cold. Tomorrow I’ll spring out of bed and it will all make sense again. The creative fury and the joy and the purpose will all fall into place, and I won’t hobble on uneven heels, clink, clink, clinking my way into a piece of art. Tomorrow the eBook will interest me or the novel will come alive or the blog will seem like it has a semblance of meaning. Things could all change tomorrow. Like that blinking cursor – I bet he won’t blink intimidatingly so. He’ll be more like a metronome that keeps time with the rhythm of a song that pours freely from deep within. I bet that’s how he’ll look to me tomorrow.

Today I’m left with an essay tossed into the winds, where the words get caught up in some sort of confusing tornado and I can’t make out what exactly I was trying to say or why I was trying to say it. Today I am gray like Dorothy, and I have hit my head perhaps and my house is spinning. Today I am telling myself that staying in this chair with my dancing fingers IS the art, even if I don’t want to be here and I’m laughing at myself for trying so hard to be something I can’t even explain. Today I am a writer, lathered in self-proclaimed pretentiousness because the quiet confidence of my God-created soul feels squashed today. Today I end with a period because it’s the only thing that still makes sense in my art.