You ever just look at something, a scene or an object, or maybe just the colors of light crawling through your window and get a feeling? A big feeling?
I can't really explain it, but in an attempt to capture what it is I'm feeling, I write poetry. Sometimes poetry doesn't make sense, people may think. It's "obscure," or "cryptic," or "hard to follow." For me, though, poetry is a way to conjure a feeling in me and in others... And sometimes those feelings are neither logical nor linear.
A good part of my academic writing career was spent trying to untangle it all, to make phrases and terms more everyday, to put a story or narrative to it (the feelings), but what I have allowed myself (post-college) is to just... write. I have silenced the committee, somewhat, and learned to trust what I write. But this isn't just poems.
A couple years ago, a barista friend of mine from Starbucks asked to use my friend and I as her thesis project. She came over, made us doodle or color or paint, all the while allowing us to just be, just emote. Before that moment, I had rarely given myself the chance to draw or paint from me—instead I copied and mimicked the world around me.
Now don't get me wrong, I have loads of respect for those who can paint as detailed and realistic as a photograph, but this is the very thing that kept me from painting and doodling more. I wasn't pressured to create an exact replica, but permitted to explore my own creativity. Wow!
I can only assume this is what happened with my writing. Once I was able to transcend the lines of reality (along with my own version of it) words became completely unfettered for me. It seemed boundless.
I can trace the world around me with a sharp pencil, memorize inches and hues, or I can take all that lightning in my chest and use it to shake the world, make it my own.
I hope you do too. I hope you wrangle your own storms and stop trying to chase everyone else's.
mt
