“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” — Henry David Thoreau
The writers responsibility is to remind the people that the garden of Eden has never existed; lusting after a state of innocence and purity is a naïve illusion. Only deepening our distance from facing the problems of modern life; security more important than faith, money having more value than people, and the reliance on other peoples opinions to live are the results of the garden of Eden fantasy. This deep inability to live internally deteriorated everyone’s life, and the reorienting the people’s focus on the fabulous, the legendary, the mythical become the writer’s assignment. Every generation needs a new spirituality and the writers role is to diagnose this need, and offer his point of view as a potential stepping stone to man discovering his own path. The writer brings balance by offering opposing thoughts to the dominating zeitgeist of the time; becoming a hero is more important than a CEO job or any certifications and qualifications. The writer’s role is not pacifying the journey, but assuring that the journey is difficult, long, but extremely rewarding; which means the writer must be involved in the ever evolving round-a-bout process of living a devoted life. Forever involved with words like faith, hope, endurance, and sacrifice; all men want to become something, but the writer has the desire to become fully himself. The pen is his weapon of choice, and through all the doubt must find his manhood and connect it to the source that provides life.
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.”― Henry David Thoreau
Language is the articulation of an experience, and writing is a cleansing ritual of recollection and letting go; because writing is an act of healing, we are required to remember our pain in order to release it all onto the page. We are taking experiences that still haunt and stiffen our bodies and inputting them onto white paper using cryptic shapes. Writing is the ritual of making sense out of nonsense; simultaneously acknowledging the strangeness and difficulty of living while creating lessons for use outside the writer’s table. Solitude is a confrontation with ourselves, and it allows us to move beyond fishing for other people’s energy; we began to discover, if we are quiet enough and patient enough, that everything we have been through the wise men of our times have also gone through. Solitude brings coherence, and we are given the opportunity to listen to our own sound; writing is a deep cleansing, wringing out the soul for a refinement to the habits and customs we have given our life. Writing is the product of following our genius and learning to repeatedly apply our new techniques; we are training the heart and mind to become vulnerable and attentive.
“It is the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.”―Henry David Thoreau
Attentive sensuality is the act of capturing the beauty, and preventing the impending madness of our ultimate transcendence. Madness is a virtue because it signals a need for a change in our environment; insanity contains the potential to destroy us or connect us to the world in a new way. Everyone comes to this point and is either destroyed or uses it as a point of departure, a call to action. Since everyone is constantly coming in and out of this fortunate despair the writer’s mission is always having his pen available to offer advice in this very lonely revolutionary journey. Everything we have used to clothe ourselves and define, or constrict, our identities is thrown to the wayside, and the naked terrifying rebirthing process begins. Living in alignment with every philosopher, healer, spiritualist, and naturalist the reader that throws off the illusions and lives a life devoted to the internal becomes a hero. He, or she, becomes an adult, and enter into a rare league of people that fought off temptation and decided to live truthfully. Writers have the ability to take man through his experience; whether the forest, the blues hall, a school-yard, a spiritualist safe-haven with a house covered with books and crystals. Which is why his expression of solitude cannot be sentimental, but mythological, allegorical, and realistic; man needs the woods, the trees, but most importantly the silence. Once this silence is conquered man can come into communion with himself and discover the importance of sound; which means discover how careless we have been with noise. Silence can provide man the strength to release all security and walk into a life of faith, appreciation, and sensuality. The inability to face grief can lead to madness, but silence is a welcoming of the insanity and using it as a stepping stone for deeper living. Writers are the guides on this existential, terrestrial, and mythological appreciation of life’s complexity that has stumped everyone since we stepped out the primeval ocean. Writers are the messengers on the journey letting the warrior know the path he must traverse; carrying the legacy and tradition left for him the writer discovers he is apart of a long spiritual family.
