The way we look at the world around us is, I think, what sets writers apart from non-writers - or, I should say, what sets creative people apart from non-creative people.
I'm a wildlife biologist, so I have to do a lot of wildlife biology things. This week, it's been dove banding - catching white-winged and mourning doves in wire traps and sticking unique metal bands around their legs, so that if they're hunted during dove season, we can (hopefully) retrieve those bands and learn more about where the doves go.  |
| paths of mourning doves from banding to retrieval sites |
I set my traps in a blasted, dusty parcel of land about ten miles outside of town. It's overrun with feral swine and invader brush species, and looks nothing like the rippling grassland of yore, the beautiful habitat West Texas used to have before naive ranchers showed up with their sheep and goats and ruined it.
Every morning I drive to the sites, flip over the wire traps, bait them, and then sit around for 30-60 minutes waiting for the doves to get caught. Lately, I've been combining this waiting-around time with exercise time - I love to jog, and there's nowhere to jog in my town except a little park with a 1-mile loop that, frankly, gets boring very quickly.
So I put on my running shoes, sunscreen, and sunglasses, and take off down the dusty desert road.
In the morning, before the blazing sun reaches its full potential, or when it gets lost in the banks of clouds that usually hover on the horizon, jogging in the desert is glorious. Even in such an "ugly" habitat. Giant tarantulas bask in the middle of the road, roadrunners and jackrabbits dart across my path, and dung beetles roll their putrid prizes through the ruts, cleaning up after the Mexican fighting cattle that I hope not to run into.
And as I jog past, appreciating them, my mind starts to swirl with language so I can get home and write it all down.
I wonder if I would feel this level of appreciation if I weren't a writer.
And if I would feel the same sense of futility about expressing how I feel about what I see - like seeing a beautiful sunset and trying to paint it, knowing the painting will never be able to communicate what I want it to.
And if I would feel the same sense of futility about expressing how I feel about what I see - like seeing a beautiful sunset and trying to paint it, knowing the painting will never be able to communicate what I want it to.
I've had a long-standing theory that this is the reason musicians, writers, and actors have a tendency to descend into drug and alcohol problems. There's a certain amount of "mental risk" that's part of being a creative person. Creative people think differently - they allow themselves to wonder "what if", allow themselves to sink into other worlds, and to feel things about their own world that non-creative people have no patience for.
On the one hand, that kind of sensual experience is bound to screw with our brains; spending so much time in a wonderful, exciting, adventure-filled world of our creation, and then having to go back to reality, can eat a person alive. Falling so deep into imagination can affect our real relationships and instill a sense of dissatisfaction that infiltrates every aspect of daily life. And like the artist trying to paint that beautiful sunset, we face the judgment, the uncertainty, the terror, that we'll fail in our task of communicating what we think is of the utmost importance.
But on the other hand, the joy and satisfaction we feel when we're painting, or writing, or whaling on that guitar - entrenched in those worlds, in our imaginations - can be well worth it.
Take music, for example. I love being able to hear a song and let it just fill me with something indescribable, even if it leaves me, on the other side, emotionally wrecked. Why did it leave me emotionally wrecked? I don't know...that violin part at the end, or the crescendo guitar riff in the instrumental break or the...melody thing at 3:27.
But talk about going from sky-high to rock-bottom in the space of a single song. It's a dangerous line to toe.
Yet I think I am extremely fortunate to be able to experience that kind of emotional depth. I always feel sorry for people who don't "get" music; they're probably happier but damn, at what a cost! It's the same feeling I get when I read certain books or watch certain movies. I'm never able to pinpoint exactly what part messed me up so much. I like to think it's because that's what art is supposed to do - communicate something of the world, or of the artist, in a deeper way than language ever can. Expose a piece of a human being's soul that you can't see in any other way, a piece they're desperate to show you.
I want to be able to communicate my awe when I jog in the desert. In my short story Ten Toes (which I'm currently trying to publish), I want to communicate the destructive effects of violence in a way that sticks with you. In The Great Divide, I want you to see my love for the wilderness and understand the fear that keeps me up at night that it's going to disappear. I want to show you. I need to.
Creating art leaves bits of the soul behind, sure. And all that soul-leaving can't be good for a person. But thank God creative people risk their sanities to do these things.
