If a good cook is asked to share her recipe for a great meal, and she knows you know nothing about her, her history, her lifestyle, her shopping habits, she'll tell you what products she used and how she combined them. She may even give you the step-by-step instructions.
If you asked her why she prepared this meal on this occasion, she'll be speechless. Too much to analyze and distill for your ears. Her whole being and history worked the magic to bring this meal to you. That part called motivation is hidden inside her dreams and aspirations, and the dreams and aspirations of her ancestors. I'm most serious about this. Ask me why I prepare my pasta and beans on Mondays and I can give you the history of four generations.
Ask a poet, a novelist how to recreate that poem, that novel, and he/she will not be able to guide you much. He'll tell you it is a progression of insights you have to discover yourself. It is a butt-on-seat tenacity, it is all the books you read and absorbed. It is the love you have hidden in you; all your ideas lined up to exit through a few thousand words.
Most of all, he'll say, it is a passionate act, a sharing of great magnitude, an act of confession. A work of art will speak like no other work. It will tell a story. Evoke hidden feelings. Create a universe where you the reader are also sharing and confessing your innermost thoughts.
I loved this; so true.
ReplyDeleteHow true. Creating comes from within and a tenacious mindset.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting, isn't it, how you can sense a person's depths, even if you don't know their story.
ReplyDeleteoh this was beautiful...and truth
ReplyDeleteI'm new at this kind of self-revelation. I was always a guarded person, determined to portray a cool composure, professional habits. I even dressed in conservative garbs. ( Occasionally, my husband would tease me about my "suits" and favor me with frilly stuff!)
ReplyDeleteOnly after I retired I found a freedom to be all I could be!
Thanks for your visit.
I appreciate you very, very much.
so true your words of creativity - for me, i have these little wordvoices that live in my heart - and beg, demand, to be let out - to be heard - and so they are - and it is my deep hope that they find favor in the hearts of their readers!
ReplyDeletewow. so elegantly put. yes, ask a cook how she made something and you get an ancestral lineage. there is so much more than tablespoons and temperature, there are dollops of love and stirrings of faces, memory and conversations that go into the best dishes, which i am sure yours are.
ReplyDeleteso of course writing would be the same- a passionate impulse, butt on seat tenacity and yes, an act of confession.
lovelove this. dear rosaria.
i'm so excited for the potential that is your life, rosaria. you were guarded? oh god, live now woman. live now! passion. yes, it is passion. and why do we ever choose to guard against it. cook for me. write! i will eat and rub my belly.
ReplyDeletexo
erin
How lovely to see you all here. Yes, writerly friends, these are the experiences we share and nourish ourselves with.
ReplyDelete