Go all the way

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery-isolation.

Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds.

And it will be better than anything you can imagine.

If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.

It’s the only good fight there is.

Charles Bukowski

I haven’t felt the tips of my left hand fingers for two months, my neck hurts and the RSI in my right wrist is waving a familiar hello. Apparently this litany of complaints is normal for people learning the violin. A musician friend yesterday told me that learning the violin is like playing 4D chess. While I don’t think it’s that hard, it’s certainly not easy learning an instrument for the first time in your 30’s. And it is frustrating when even your cats run away from your violin practice.

Despite my complaints, realising that I have chosen to learn a bloody difficult instruments isn’t enough to make me quit. Why? Because the violin (played expertly) is a beautiful instrument, with a sound that is both haunting and transcendent.

And this leads me to thinking about the price we must pay when we decide we want to enter life fully, whether that be in a traditional artistic sense or simply living authentically.

Living fully always incurs a fee. Sometimes that fee is rather steep. We need only look at ancient mythology to learn the price that must be paid to gain wisdom and favour from the gods. In Norse mythology, Odin sacrificed his eye and hung himself from the Tree of Life for nine days to gain all the wisdom in the world. In shamanic traditions, initiates must abstain from food and water for a number of days in order to gain clarity and vision. Sacrifice and solace are two sides of the same coin.

It as though we have to show that we are determined and committed. We must, as some writers have said, sit in front of a blank sheet of paper and bleed. We must be willing to have our work rejected and rejected and rejected again, and still stand resilient. And sometimes it is about pushing through the nasty voice in your head that tells you that no matter what you do, you will never be good enough. Or the voice that tells you that you’re a fraud.

And it is a hard, uphill battle.

In a world of instant gratification, in a world where patience is no longer virtuous, I don’t think we fear battles, exactly. We fear the prolonged nature of the battle. And we have lost faith in the process of slow art. Years ago I visited St Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, and I remember reading a sign that explained the hundreds of years it took to build the cathedral. Art takes time, and this both exhilarates and terrifies me.

One of my biggest fears as a writer is that ideas will stop coming and that I will die with half written manuscripts lying around. I hate the crisis of faith I feel when I am overwhelmed by intersecting narratives and characters who stop talking to me. I hate the fear that comes from writer’s block and that damn voice in my head that says I should be doing something else with my time.

But I have to remember that all these feelings comprise the price that must be paid. As Charles Bukowski says, “it is the only good fight there is.”