On Creativity and Sloth

Random thoughts.

Just now I am watching a biography of Janis Joplin,running on the tv just to the left of my shoulder as I face the computer screen, and as she rehearsed “Down on Me” with the Holding Company, and I turned to watch the grainy black and white video and felt her energy and heard her strong voice, so full of life and vigor and feeling, I felt again (as I did the last time I heard Janis – months ago- and danced to her in my living room) – I felt again an excitement, a thrill, something in my stomach and chest, wanting to be , maybe not her, but someone like her (the full of life, funny, powerful, talented part of her , without the drugs and insecurities, of course)– remembering me in College – wearing my tight or short clothes, my long hair, my white lips and eye makeup, drinking beer and dancing with a wildness that I had not been able to show in high school (or I had been afraid to show then)………..it comes back………….the exciting freedom of movement – and this has been a morning for that, since prior to this biography, there had been one of Jimi Hendrix, and though I came into the show during his final phase, just before his death, nevertheless, during the few moments when his music was played, I felt a bit of that emotional rise, but not so much. Now, with Janis, I want to move all of the crap from the floor and surfaces of my living room, all of the bags and files and books and boxes and furniture, to make room to move, and to put Janis on the stereo (on the Bose), and let my hair out of its ponytailed band, and just move!


And I know that both Jimi and Janis were sad, lonely people who died young of drug overdoses. But when they flamed, when their fires were still lit, their flames were so blindingly bright that you couldn’t stop yourself from being drawn to them, and moving your body and feeling your soul rise from the sheer excitement of their sounds and their personas. The purple pants and the feathers and the high full notes followed by gutteral emotion or the squealing and erratic guitar riffs -just writing about them brings back those sounds and feelings swirling through my aging body and catching in my throat.

Now, interestingly, when they (and I) were in our primes, I had no interest in them – I think that I felt they were too far out there. I loved the beatles and such. I loved music you could dance to. My wild abandon was mostly relegated to the dance floor.

But in recent years, whenever I hear their music, I regret having missed them – I am angry at myself for having let myself miss it – and I feel that emotional high, that almost orgasmic need to move, that I should have felt back then.

And I wonder, had I let myself feel that way when my life was as blank a slate as this Sunday started out being - back then, would I have skipped law school, and taken a guitar and a notebook and a pen and wandered through Europe? (Instead of sitting on a beach in high school with a ukulele for a short time, and sitting in my living room with a soprano recorder and some bongos, but otherwise following the path of least resistance through college, and a teaching degree, and law school, and employment). Would I? I feel so much stronger a connection to that life then my current life.

If I had let myself succumb to the joy and excitement of Jopin and Hendrix would my life have moved into the creative mode that I now regret having bypassed? That I keep promising myself I will find and work with ( but then put aside for tv or the newspaper of a client project? )

Yesterday, as I fast-walked between three and four miles to my daughter’s house (to sit with her cat recovering from surgery – maybe a bit more on that later) , I listened to that Obama biography by David Mendell – “From Promise to Power” – and heard about his desire to leave the world a better place then when he entered it – and the optimism inherited from his mother, along with her conviction that there was good in everyone, and a commonality to all humanity, and I related to those feelings, as I have always felt the same, and I remembered having first heard him in 2004, and read his book in 2005, and how I loved the beauty of his way with words and the beauty of his introspection and raw emotion; and then I came to the part of the book where Mendell described Barack’s proclivity to write down his thoughts and observations and his feelings and insecurities in a notebook, and that he was doing such as early as his college days in New York, and that he later continued to do the same in a leather bound notebook, and that he probably wrote (and perhaps still writes) short fiction, and how he used those notes to write “Dreams of My Father”

And I hated myself for having umpteen partially filled notebooks, sometimes written in with regularity for days, weeks, or perhaps months at a time, and then abandoned for many more months at a time, and the good stuff I often find when re-reading them but hardly ever use for any regular writing activity, and my disciplined starts and lazy stops, two steps forward, one step back, perhaps then another step back, the short stories I haven’t written since 2006, the books of short stories I have intended to read in order to learn my craft, and the political books and great fiction that I sometimes read and sometimes just start, all as contrasted to Barack’s control and energy and discipline and organization and voracious and diverse reading habits, and his writing (which left me in tears when I first read “Dreams”) .

And so here I am sitting at my desk, looking out at what appears will become a cold, overcast dismal day smothered with a blanket of thick and dreary clouds hiding the sun and sky. Here I am, once again with another blank canvas - another Sunday – another day in which I could possibly move forward and accomplish something and do something fulfilling or useful – another Sunday, now at 7:37 a.m., and this morning I have so far slowly and slothfully and sadly risen from my quilt – my warm, thick, slightly dirty quilt where I awoke to feel the soft, sweet, silky curve of my kitty China’s body (sheesh – is there some reason for all of that alliteration?), watched some tv, spotted the sky beginning to lighten from across the room and therefore moved to my desk where I could look out across my laptop towards the Lake – and at first saw that the sky was crowned with narrow steel grey clouds floating thinly across its top, over a deep and wide strip of dark orange at the horizon, below which the bright rows of lights in Millennium Park glowed and sparkled out of a dark background – and it felt exciting and calming at one and the same time, but I didn’t feel that I had the strength or the muse to describe it – not this time - so I took out my camera and photographed it , and took photographs maybe 10 minutes apart as the sky lightened, and it remained beautiful for a while, until the day really arrived with its dingy presence.

But now,as I write, it is 7:56 a.m., and up to the left, just at the edge of the Prudential, a yellow glow started shining through the grey………only to be swallowed up again.

I think I’ll walk across the street to get something to eat – my usual excuse to walk out of my lair, and put off starting anything – then I’ll return and perhaps put on some Janis and dance, then read some of the morning’s newspaper, or go upstairs to a treadmill with the Obama book, or go outside with jogging shoes with the Obama book, or maybe just wait till almost 11:00 when I have a work out scheduled with Luis, my trainer, or……………..

It’s an open book, this Sunday, with many blank pages, just a few less than when I started this entry…………..and I haven’t blown it yet………..net yet………………….