My favorite blogger has done it again. Tone Deaf inspired me to write a post.
I started commenting on his blog a few years ago. Okay, I don't really know how long ago it was. Does it matter?
Robbie may be as old as Methuselah, you know, 969 years old. He is scary honest, and starkly opinionated. There is no one else like him. Consequently, I had to force myself to overcome my trepidation when I first commented on his blog. I expected to be ridiculed and outed as a hack. Sometimes that happens, but mostly I learn a lot. Most of his comments on my or other blogs make me laugh out loud.
He writes about many things, just about anything really. Sometimes he writes about aging without apology or fear. When the spirit moves him, he doesn't hold back. He probably wouldn't anthropomorphize the creative spirit. But I will.
He wrote today about the various restrictions aging has imposed over time. That was interesting, but then he included imagination in that lot, which gave me pause.
Now this post becomes about me, because that pause turned me inward. I'm hoping the creative imagination is the last to leave. Coy as she is, withholding, and then bam! A Muse holds us close to her heart and the words flow.
I think creativity is an act of faith. Surrender. Blind Faith. Sea of Joy.
Just following my Muse where she takes me.
Thank you. Happy to learn about him. I was thinking it would be nice to add something new to my reading list.
ReplyDeleteAnd getting ready to release my fourth book, I protest at the creativity muscle diminishing with age. Our minds (hopefully) will be the last to go.
Your 4th book! Wow. I just went to your blog page and noticed them along the side for the first time. I will have to read them.
DeleteI've been reading Tone Deaf for a while now, and I think I must have found him through you somehow. Not sure. I'm going to head over and read his latest post. I'm thinking very seriously about giving up blogging, but these delightful connections keep pulling me back. (NewRobin13)
ReplyDeleteI would be very, very sad if you stop blogging, but I get it.
DeleteCreativity is very much an act of faith - and hope. It is belief in a future.
ReplyDeleteHello! Thank you for writing a comment. I guess I see a creative act as more a belief in the moment, a surrender of sorts. A moment in which the hope you speak of is fully realized and felt. But I like the idea of it being a belief in the future, too. Many thanks.
DeleteSometimes real life interferes with the creative process. It is hard to begin again. But when the juices start to flow you're creating again.
ReplyDeleteReal life sometimes intrudes on creativity, it's true.
DeleteI find myself at the center of Roderick's whirlpool of diminishing returns. Much relinquished willingly, as the spirit left. A whole lot could be hired out, I learned. Life goes on, however. One can give up, or continue making noise. Whether anyone is interested is another interesting question.
ReplyDeleteYou are always interesting.
DeleteReading blogs has been so helpful to me since I have retired. I feel as if a new community of friends and penpals has opened up for me. Thanks for posting, Colette.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy you enjoyed it.
DeleteWriting to say "Thank you." or "Sorry your goldfish has died." one risks banality. Also the associated vocabulary is so poverty-stricken. I'm really having second thoughts about dying given someone might commit the ultimate solecism and send a message to VR (my wife) containing the word "condolence". A lumbering, fifty-year-old diesel lorry of a word, groaning under the load, belching particulates, driven by a one-eyed Republican voter prepared to do seppuku if it gets old Orange Mush into the White House.
ReplyDeleteThe logical response is to use my imagination. But then there's the further risk of my running off at the mouth. The great thing about limericks is they're short, with the exception of the following (which I didn't write):
There was a young bard from Japan
Who wrote verses that no one could scan
When asked why 'twas so
He replied "Yes I know,
but I always try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can."
So here's one I prepared earlier (five minutes to be exact):
RR spent six years in Pa
Teaching Yanks the right way to say,
"I'm awfly afraid,
My mind's kinda frayed
And my English is US of A."
Actually it took seven minutes, GIve me more plaudits and I'll do you a Shakespearean sonnet AB, AB, CD, CD, EF, EF, ending with a rhyming couplet.
Anyway "Danke schön."
You bet!
DeleteYou are so right about the word "condolence." It compares well with machinery. Nothing comforting or kind about that word at all. I loved the limericks. Waiting for my sonnet.
DeleteI've always loved the young bard limerick. And yes, what does condolence actually mean? It's a completely vacuous word.
DeleteYour wish is my command.
DeleteBlogging’s Götterdämmerung>
Why do I blog? Maybe to blow off steam,
Or tune noun clauses so they sing like birds?
Or cite hard stuff like – Why not? – epicene?
Or prove I do polysyllabic words?
Technique apart, might echoes be the aim?
Echoing lifestyles distant, far from mine.
Echoes that light a more elusive flame
Calming my Angst – I grow benign.
Replies are down in these more recent years,
Tone Deaf is deafer, crueller, less profound.
The power to think shrinks as death nears
That forward look becomes a grey background.
Perhaps there’s comfort in the eastern states
Or way up north, to hell with dire straits
Yes, I also hope the creative imagination is the last to go. How else would we escape the dispiriting reality of the outside world by conjuring up something prettier?
ReplyDeleteGood thought.
Delete