The Whale Belly

What I really need is a project of some sort, one that I can stick to for many months or several years. But every time I start something it’s only a matter of days, sometimes hours, when I get bored with it. Not just get bored, but hate it. So I jump from lilly pad to lilly pad and never get beyond the surface of the water. That’s been the question I’ve been asking myself ever since I began spiraling out of control in my doctoral studies — how does one commit themselves to an idea when they don’t feel it as a vocation? And then, how does one find a vocation?

I assume the answer is through meditation and experience. Finding the things that stir you, but also meditating to discover if it truly has meaning for you. Then again, maybe it’s misguided to think about meaning. Maybe it’s more of simply following your gut, but then we’re back at the problem of the waning enthusiasm.

I don’t know. I don’t know how any creator can spend a long time on a single project. I suppose it’s like a child or a marriage. You have to make your vows and work at it even when you don’t want to. You become a bit of slave to it, but in hopes that it will make you a better, wiser person as a result. Of course many marriages fail, and many fathers either leave or check out.

Next to my desk I have Wordsworth’s lines,

Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,

And Hope without an object cannot live.

It reminds me of this concept of critical hope from my critical pedagogy days, that we tend to talk about hope as simply smiling through ugly situations. But critical hope is built on a solid critique of the state of things, and hope is an active, if audacious, attempt to change them. I don’t think it has to be saddled in Marxist theory though. Even those engaged in aesthetic pursuits ought to be firmly aware of the slope and length of ascent to reach their goal, whether it is training, or research, or man-hours. But of course, what is the object and how does one either discover it or generate it for himself?

Maybe it’s as simple as going through one’s day and adding to a list of things that stirs him. Maybe he plays a gritty medieval video game, or reads a Victorian romance, or sees an eagle hovering over a mountain-top. Whatever stimulates the emotions and the desire to share the experience with other people, to feel the same things and mark them for their importance in human, or at least cultural, understanding of existence. Or at least to share a fun experience.

And all of this has to be superseded by the wisdom of not forcing anything. Work, yes, but forcing any creative act with the monkey-mind is bound for failure. Instead we have to listen and wait. In the meantime, we keep our fingertips nimble, to show the muse that we’re prepared to tell her story, to paint her picture, to compose her tune.