Staff Writer - Katrin Callender
Some days ago I whined to a friend about the frustration I felt over a poem that I had written and posted online that evening. The reason that I complained was because I was displeased with the nature of the poem.
Although I am grateful for the ability to write well, and in spite of the praise I had been given, I was unhappy because the poem spoke to a part of myself that I was unsure of and as such, dissatisfied with.
The poem spoke of a yearning that I felt ashamed of because I wanted to be above it; to be free of a desire which could, as is the nature of desire, enslave me.
My friend was amused but supportive, and revealed some of her own work, similar to mine in theme. I was relieved to have such a perceptive friend, with a welcoming shoulder.
But I could not leave off there. I needed to understand the reason for my reaction to the work. I needed to know why I had been ashamed of what I’d felt and so, documented.
After a bit of soul-searching, I found that I had objected to the way I had exposed myself. I had been more honest than I had intended. Ironically, it was not the only time that week that I had found myself being ‘more honest than I had intended’.
My initial reaction to my displeasure with the piece had been to wave it off with a cavalier statement like “Oh, every artist finds flaws with their work”, but here it was that after my contemplation I had made a fascinating discovery.
Photo courtesy noida-uttarpradesh.olx.in
While I thought I was unhappy with a ‘mushy’ poem, I was actually fearful of being seen as I truly am by those who read it. And so I thought of all the artists that I love in their varied media, classical and contemporary; conventional and eccentric. How many of them expressed dissatisfaction with their work?
Did they similarly fear that we would all be able to see them; did those artists and do today’s celebrities crumble because they feel the nakedness I was dreading?
There are so many people who walk about with an unbelievable amount of pain- this burden weighs them down until they can no longer bear it. Sometimes people create out of necessity; but many of us create for the sake of our sanity.
We feel emotions swirling about within us in such a great volume that they threaten to upset the balance we need to function efficiently; to take us so far into one extreme or the other that we may become blind to our immediate concerns.
I believe, now more than ever, that the thing that makes art beautiful to us is that honesty; the humanity written into text or as a lyric, played on an instrument or built into sculpture.
Often the Arts have broken barriers and brought us together because of the qualities we share as humans. So why fear the expression of the thing that binds us all together?
So, mere days after whining and regretting and hiding, and apologizing for and rejecting the work of my own hand and more so, my heart, I am resolved to claim this poem and all my creative works as a part of myself and more significantly, as yet another thing that binds me to my beloved human race.
