Bukowski v. Beethoven
Sunday, 30. June 2013 23:07
In a recent Brain Pickings post, “So You Want to be a Writer: Bukowski Debunks the ‘Tortured Genius’ Myth of Creativity,” Maria Popova quotes a poem by Charles Bukowski which contains the following lines:
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
The poem says a great number of things that ring true, particularly about the need to get out what is inside. And I have talked before about how for most artists, it’s not a question of “want to” but rather a situation of “have to.” With all that I have no argument.
However, the implication of these particular words seems to be that writing should just flow out of the author and that thinking hard about it, or considering the work difficult, or having to search for the right words, or rewriting means that you should abandon writing all together. I cannot help but find this a rather narrow and naïve view of writing, and, by extrapolation of making art in general. This seems to say that if you have difficulty getting what is in your head, heart and gut onto the canvas, or paper, or into whatever your materials are, you should do something else.
Admittedly, sometimes the limitation is that the artist is not yet ready. He/she may not know enough yet about any number of things, may not have developed enough expertise to do the subject matter justice, simply may not be mature enough as an artist or a human being to deal with the topic properly.
However, to suggest that the work must flow perfect and unhindered from the artist in a somewhat mystical fashion is to deny the experience of many creative people. Consider Beethoven for example. According to Billy Joel, in an interview with Andrew Goldman in the New York Times, “[When you hear] Beethoven you hear the struggle in it. Look at his manuscripts, and there’s reams of scratched-out music that he hated. He stops and he starts. I love that about Beethoven, his humanity shows in his music.” Joel compares Mozart: “Mozart pisses me off because he’s like a naturally gifted athlete, you listen to Mozart and you go: ‘Of course. It all came easy to him….’ Mozart was almost inhuman, unhuman.” Whether or not we agree with Joel on Mozart, most of us would consider Beethoven a significant artist despite his creative struggles and rewriting.
Even though Bukowski seems to disagree, most believe that art is not easy, and that there are many sources for the difficulties. On the other hand, most of us would agree with Bukowski when he says:
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.
Make what you are compelled to make; art will happen.
Category:Creativity | Comment (0) | Author: Jay Burton