A Wildman Taught Me How To Bleed

When I was younger, I loved to write random fantasy stories. They mostly had something to do with aliens, and great adventures in space. I was one of those daydreamers that couldn't keep his eyes straight. They wandered about seeking adventure, and seeing the fun in the most dull classrooms.

It was not until I was about 30 that I really wrote full fledged works. I would say, the late poet and storyteller, Robert Bly, really inspired me to take up the pen. His energized words guided me, and his wild ferocity pushed me to find some within myself. I became a lover of poetry through him. Then I became enamored with poetry and found the inspiration to write my own works. Looking back, it makes some sense that I could not tap into the emotional depths of my life until I was more mature.

Writing is a perspective, an experience that is unique and personal. To me, writing gives me a channel for the many ideas that swarm in my head daily. I tend to be an anxious person and always have been since I could remember. Putting words to my often fragmented thoughts helps to make them more a part of me, and less some foolish wanderings of an over-anxious mind. I now feel that I am creative, not air-headed. I believe for children with attention deficits, that they are perhaps constrained by our current modern guidelines. Rigorous, and repetitive learning is not for every person. Keeping the childlike energy in us entails walking down those winding, often scorned upon, dreamscapes. They are little gifts from something outside of us.

My intention in this life is to help usher in a new cultural shift. I believe there is purpose through all of this constraint, destruction, and division. I believe a new age is trying to push its way up, and it will bring new art. It will bring new poems, new stories, new paintings. The medieval age was squashed at the sight of the Renaissance. The weight that has been pushing down hard on the world, can be lifted. We can find a beacon in the dark unknown, its through unashamed, courageous, and blissful art. Love is how we move forward. To move the pen is to bleed a little, which is artful in its own sense. No good work is born without some sacrifice.

We find our way by full, unaltered expression. Art is the way to salvation. I believe Robert Bly sums it up best, from his poem "Listening";

The hermit said: “Because the world is mad,

The only way through the world is to learn

The arts and double the madness.

Are you listening?”