Thanks to my friend and creative partner Laurie Smithwick’s inspiration, I’m focusing on art every day for 30 days. Laurie did 100 consecutive days of watercolors (twice) which was amazing to follow. However, I’m no painter so I’m going to do poetry. I’m no poet either, but I do have moments when I see beauty in the routine and mundane.
My fear is that I don’t know whether I even have it in me to stop and think about something deeply every day. Something that doesn’t earn revenue, I mean (God knows I spend enough time now on things that don’t earn revenue.) Which makes me wonder about the role of an artist in the world and whether I’m even an artist at all. Because while I can crank out commercial poetry for money, taking that skill deeper–into a trance, with the only reward being a silly accomplishment–sounds like a rough go. This is not to say I’d consider myself any more of a artist by doing this (something I definitely thought about with the novel–because basically I’m a cliche), I just know that I need to write to quiet an internal beast I don’t understand. That, along with my belief that if we all focused on creating and sharing art–the world might be a better place. Clearly, you don’t have to read any of these. This is personal.
