The Next Thing

When asked why he made "Curb Your Enthusiasm," Larry David answered this not-very-interesting question with what is a not-very-interesting but reasonable answer: We made this special, people seemed to like it, so why not?

(Ted Danson, who became a regular on the show, famously did NOT think much of that special/pilot)

That empty feeling one has after finishing a thing I once heard called (but cannot attribute) "the empty attic of achievement." Many artists never recover from success, and even those that go onto have long careers can be marked by that one hit they never managed to top.

(I saw They Might Be Giants in concert last year, and even though they closed with their one-hit-wonder, which might even objectively be their best song, they still seemed to sing it through gritted teeth.)

One reason I admire Rick Rubin's book The Creative Act so much is because it starts, and really ends, with the mystery that we do not know, precisely, the Source of art, but that we can learn to ways to work (in concert, harmony, not quite right) in various ways to channel, harness, and, by making, satisfy it. As he says there:

“Our work embodies a higher purpose. Whether we know it or not, we’re a conduit for the universe. Material is allowed through us. If we are a clear channel, our intention reflects the intention of the cosmos.

"Intentions is all there is. The work is just a reminder."

Somewhere in Peter Jackson's 3-hour Let it Be documentary, we see this remarkable moment where, under the pressure to write a song, Paul McCartney manifests "Get Back."

Sometimes, we fear starting a thing because we are afraid we will not be able to continue the thing. Some part of us fears the loss—through failure, success, work, or something—so we lose out by not beginning.

In the category of "it gets worse before it gets better," one might experience this phenomenon, this resistance, even more once you have done the thing, and then are staring down the need to do that thing again.

So what is one to do? Well, as a poet, I must give the standard-issue, but almost always-right answer: love.

In the Phaedrus, Socrates talks about two sorts of people, the lovers and the non-lovers. Lovers are given over to the eros of pleasures, so are in perpetual motion, in its service. But non-lovers stand outside desire, and thus by living more rationally, are safer, saner and by all measures happier (although such assertions must read through the lens of Socratic irony. He offers the image of the cicada.

Once upon a time, the story goes, cicadas were human beings, before the birth of the Muses. When the Muses were born and song came into being, some of these creatures were so struck by the pleasure of it that they sang and sang, forgot to eat and drink, and died before they knew it. From them the race of cicadas arose, and they have this special privilege from the Muses: from the time they are born they need no nourishment, they just sing continually without eating or drinking until they die.…

(for information on the coming US cicadapocalypse, see here.)

To be an artist, or a maker of any kind, and sustain the effort beyond an initial burst of inspiration or desire, requires this energy and spirit that is beyond willpower, beyond work ethic. It requires the intention, the sturdy commitment, that is more like a divine madness than merely a goal.

As Rubin writes in the chapter called "Freedom": [Art] requires the obsessive desire to create great things.

So rather than wonder why you should do the next thing, maybe ask: Why not? Then...go on singing.

Famous First & Second Acts

Thirteen Authors Whose Second Books Were More Popular Than Their First

50 Greatest One-Hit Wonders

100 Best Debut Albums

Amazing Comebacks: in war, in sports, in politics, in the arts

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Sunday Morning

At one point along the long way here I was planning to call a newsletter "Sunday Morning" after my favorite Wallace Stevens poem (oh, "Complacencies of the peignoir, and late" and all that). So, although this one has yet to get its rhythm, my plan is to honor that intention and send this on that schedule.

A few poems about Sundays

Those Winter Sundays, by Robert Hayden
Sunday Morning, 9/16/01 by Lucille Clifton
Atlantic City Sunday Morning, Gregory Pardlo

A Few Podcasts for Writers & Creatives

At The Long Schoolroom

Summer Writing Workshop at the Long Schoolroom June 14-August 2, Friday Afternoons (USA)
April Book Group, April 28, 10 a.m. (Central, USA) - Rick Rubin's The Creative Act
New: Office hours, Every Thursday, 10 a.m. CT
New: Creative Recovery Meeting: Every Other Wednesday, starting May 1, 6:30 p.m. CT

The Long Schoolroom Bookshop at bookshop.org

I've started curating a shop of beloved and popular books (which would provide a small kickback if purchased through these links) at bookshop.org. See it here (and recommend titles for inclusion!).

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