writing

This is an article by Steven Pressfield. He is the author of “The War of Art”, which is on my list above, of the books I adore! If you write, or paint, or do anything creative in your life, his book is
Invaluable! I’m not kidding. This article will give you a taste of Steven’s take on Resistance, and how it will do anything to sabotage us from bringing our gifts into the world.
Enjoy and Happy Saturday!

How Resistance Proves the Existence of God
By: Steven Pressfield | Feb 12, 2014 01:52 am
Consider James Rhodes, whose April 26, 2013 article in the Guardian UK I stole for last week’s post:

I didn’t play the piano for 10 years. A decade of slow death by greed working in the City, chasing something that never existed in the first place (security, self-worth, Don Draper albeit a few inches shorter and a few women fewer). And only when the pain of not doing it got greater than the imagined pain of doing it did I somehow find the balls to pursue what I really wanted and had been obsessed by since the age of seven—to be a concert pianist.

Concert pianist James Rhodes, back by popular demand

That’s Resistance. That’s the definition of Resistance. Mr. Rhodes at that point was mired in a shadow career. He was operating as an amateur. Suddenly some force seizes him. He turns pro:
Admittedly I went a little extreme—no income for five years, six hours a day of intense practice, monthly four-day long lessons with a brilliant and psychopathic teacher in Verona, a hunger for something that was so necessary it cost me my marriage, nine months in a mental hospital, most of my dignity and about 35lbs in weight. And the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is not perhaps the Disney ending I’d envisaged as I lay in bed aged 10 listening to Horowitz devouring Rachmaninov at Carnegie Hall.

I love Mr. Rhodes’ testament not just because he’s my kinda guy, because he’s nuts, because he laid it all on the line, etc. etc. But because his story—and yours and mine—proves there is a God.
First given:
Resistance is a universal phenomenon of the human psyche. Everyone experiences it. (Trust me, I know from the thousands of e-mails I’ve gotten on the subject.)
Second given:
Resistance’s sole object is to prevent you and me from becoming concert pianists, writing bestselling novels, founding the follow-on to Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.
In other words, Resistance’s purpose is to prevent good from entering the world.
Ergo:
Resistance is the devil.
Ergo:
If there is a devil, there must be a God.
Was all that work at the piano worth it, Mr. Rhodes?

And yet. The indescribable reward of taking a bunch of ink on paper from the shelf at Chappell of Bond Street. Tubing it home, setting the score, pencil, coffee and ashtray on the piano and emerging a few days, weeks or months later able to perform something that some mad, genius, lunatic of a composer 300 years ago heard in his head while out of his mind with grief or love or syphilis. A piece of music that will always baffle the greatest minds in the world, that simply cannot be made sense of, that is still living and floating in the ether and will do so for yet more centuries to come. That is extraordinary. And I did that. I do it, to my continual astonishment, all the time.

James Rhodes beat the devil. There’s no other way to express it. Something kept him going, just like something kept Rachmaninov going, and something keeps you and me going.
The Muse? The superconscious?
What name would you put to it?

My life involves endless hours of repetitive and frustrating practising, lonely hotel rooms, dodgy pianos, aggressively bitchy reviews, isolation, confusing airline reward programmes, physiotherapy, stretches of nervous boredom (counting ceiling tiles backstage as the house slowly fills up) punctuated by short moments of extreme pressure (playing 120,000 notes from memory in the right order with the right fingers, the right sound, the right pedalling while chatting about the composers and pieces and knowing there are critics, recording devices, my mum, the ghosts of the past, all there watching), and perhaps most crushingly, the realisation that I will never, ever give the perfect recital. It can only ever, with luck, hard work and a hefty dose of self-forgiveness, be “good enough.”

That’s a pro. That’s a man who’s in the trenches, fighting the war every day. That is a man, an artist, whose inner and outer worlds are suffused with grace and beauty and honor and courage—and who by his music and his personal example pass those qualities on to you and me.

So please, critics, spare me the “God is dead” manifesto. Not even the guys who thought that shit up believed it. They were battling Resistance every day, and they were receiving inspiration from the goddess.
I refuse to believe that we humans are alone and bereft in a meaningless cosmos. If we were, there would be no such phenomenon as Resistance. What possible purpose could Resistance serve in a universe devoid of meaning?
Hell exists, yes. But heaven does too.

James Rhodes is my hero because he found himself between the two and he chose the loftier and the nobler.

I salute you, sir. May we all find the grace and strength to follow your example.
Copyright © 2014 Steven Pressfield Online, All rights reserved

On any given day I can come up with 3 or 4 topics to write about.
That doesn’t mean that they will ever amount to anything, and they may never see the light of day, but they are light-bulbs over my head, just the same.

Once in a while a piece will start to display iambic pentameter, and the words will fall into rhyme…so obviously THAT one will be a poem.

It never ceases to amaze me that a poem can fall out of little old 21st century me!
Poets in my mind are wild eyed, chain smoking, anti-social, angst ridden, recluses, that live in 17th century Paris or 1950’s Greenwich Village.
I am none of those things.
I’m white bread, Wonder bread really, what prose can Wonder bread write?

When poetry was given as an assignment in school, I would lobby for my parents to pick up our family and move to somewhere where the teachers were kinder, and realized their student’s limitations.
I’m sure I just over intellectualized everything I wrote, because that was my nature.

And as everyone knows, poetry doesn’t originate in your intellect!
As a matter of fact, your brain has no business, poking its nose into it!
Intellect does not compose good poetry. Intellect composes the essay you write to get into MIT, not poetry.
For that, you need to get to the heart, or better yet, the soul.

Age has helped me there. When you turn 50 you get your AARP card AND, if you’ve worked hard, and asked God really nice, a more direct route to your soul.
You won’t have to walk anymore dark alleys, or navigate a river of tears to get there.
You already have my friends, so…you’re welcome! 

The only thing God, or Source, or the Muse requires is that we share any and all
soul derived art or writing or whatever, with the world.
If you get stingy with your soul gift, it can get revoked. I don’t mean immediately, but the Universe runs a tight ship.
If you don’t suck up your courage and show at least one other person the freakin’
Haiku that you woke up and wrote, well…all bets are off!

That’s why I post a poem when I write it, on this blog.
I just close my eyes and push “post”.
It’s not my USUAL style of writing, (as if I have a “style”, ha!)
But what I’m finding out is I can be quite schizophrenic in my writing styles.
There are a bunch of voices,inmates,trying to break out of the asylum to be heard.
So I’ve decided: Who am I to deny them their long overdue freedom?

Have at it, you wild eyed poet part of me!!
Write your crazy, sometimes really poignant poems!
You know I’ll post them, because you, my creative new friend, I would miss you if you left.

Realization number three in my ongoing unraveling brought on by this 5000 miles in 17 days motorcycle trip!

Really!? MORE?

Yep, it has become the gift that keeps on giving.

It feels like shit at times, but it really is a gift.

Some of you have heard the story of our close call on the plains of Montana and some of you have not.
For those that have…go make yourself a sandwich while I re-tell it.

So…plains of Montana, trying to out run a giant storm that is quickly bearing down on us.
Two squalls of rain ahead, with a space in-between.
My husband yells back at me over the rumbling thunder, “We’re gonna thread the needle”, meaning, try to make it between the squalls.
We are traveling on a two lane highway at 85 mph.

Now I digress, for those of you from the mid west, you are familiar with these storms.
They are an anomaly to me.

I’m from SoCal, when it drizzles there, we go on “Storm Watch”.

There’s immediate and unbelievably loud thunder that accompanies the lightning – ground lightening (what the hell?)

Then there’s rain. heavy, heavy, rain. Giant wet drops the size of quarters.
One minute it’s dry, the next it’s like someone turned a fire hose on us.

Seriously.

And hail.
Machines that rely on the centrifugal force of two six-inch wide spinning rubber discs, don’t play well with hail. Things get real squirrely. It’s like someone upstairs has thrown slippery, wet, marbles on the road in front of you and is having a laugh while you try to stay upright.

As luck would have it, the eye of the needle closes, and the squall moves over us.
Rain so heavy, I can’t see out my visor…at all…even when my hand becomes a windshield wiper.
All I CAN see are the blurry headlights of the cars in the opposite lane.

I digress once again.
Let me explain something here.
My husband is a giant guy.
6’3″. 230 lbs
My seat is a bit higher than his, so I mostly look over his right shoulder.
He does buffer most of the weather and wind, but he also obscures my view of what is directly ahead of us.

Let me also say he is an AMAZING rider.
Over 40 years of riding, he teaches off-road riding with 600 pounds of bike and gear, rides all over the world with me on the back.
Has followed the DAKAR in So America twice, and rode thru
South Africa and the Namibian desert just this year.
He’s not a poser, that weekend rider on a Harley.
He is a certified bad ass.

It is his passion, he is very skilled, and I trust him. 

Okay, back to Montana.
Rain, wind, and as I am straining to see anything.
What I do notice are headlights…in our lane.
A car is passing in the on coming lane, at over 60 m.p.h in a torrential rainstorm.
I tap hubby’s shoulder and point. Are you seeing that?

He nods slowly, staring straight ahead, no break in concentration.

Thank God!
Because what comes next is where I lose my shit.

After that car completes his pass, right behind him, also passing and in our lane, is a pickup truck with a trailer.
There is not enough time or space now for him to pass safely.
He is in our lane, coming at us at 60 m.p.h. – in the rain!

Total loss of control

I’ve never thought I was about to die before.
This is where the screaming came in.
This is where ten thousand bazillion thoughts go through your mind in one second, and the entire scene goes into slow motion.
And this is where another realization came and tapped me on the shoulder.
“NOT NOW! CAN’T YOU SEE IM BUSY!”

I’m standing straight up on the pegs now, which you don’t do, because it destabilizes the whole arrangement we’ve all made, me, my husband, the weather and the bike, and all bets are off.
I’m screaming hysterically,my slasher movie scream, knowing I’m about to become a splat on the windshield of some jerks truck – in the middle of Montana.

I have NO idea how to get out of this!
But my husband does.
I can’t see an escape route, a way out.
He can.
I can’t contain my hysteria, because I’m totally and completely NOT in control

Of-My-Fate.

I’ m going to jump off on the right into a culvert and barbed wire, to try save myself.

It actually seems at the time like a better bet.

My husband, from years of experience, training, skill and guts,
remains completely calm.
Steady and still.

I can’t see from the rain, the speed, and the incredible turbulence as my husband goes around the truck and trailer on the right, on a sliver of asphalt that remains.

I continue screaming as I position myself to jump.
The right side of my body in motion, the left side decides to stay.
We slip beside him with less than two feet to spare.
The turbulence knocks our left hand mirror down, and buffets us for what seems like forever.

Total loss of control

The realization I’ve had is this:
In life, when we don’t have clarity,
Sometimes we’re barreling towards uncertainty,
When we don’t have the facts,
When we can’t see our way clear,
We panic and make decisions based in fear.

We can swerve or slam on the brakes on a slippery surface.

Most likely, to our detriment.

If we surrender to the part of us that does know,
That does have the wisdom, the skill and the steadiness to bring us thru the storm, we may give up control, which is terrifying, but it enables us to come out unscathed on the other side.

*side note
My body is still jacked up, because in every way except the physical
I DID jump off that bike.
The left side which stayed, is in so much pain,
The right side is fine.

I have yet to integrate the two.

Xox