This photo has been the spark of something that I hope will serve me well. I can’t get away from this fact that Jim continues to be a spark of ideas, an impetus…a muse to me.
The latest assignment for uni (yes! Uni talk…but for a change, it’s relevant to the theme of the blog) has us submitting a piece of creative writing prose. We are limited to 900 words and have to incorporate one of three prompts within our writing. I won’t give detail on what the prompts are. All I will say is that I chose to work with one prompt initially and decided what I had written wasn’t really working and decided to try one of the other prompts instead. The other prompt I started to work with had me visualising this photo of Jim with Joe Donnelly in my mind and from there the words came and I wrote what I believe to be a much stronger piece of prose. It is the piece that will form my assignment for uni.
I don’t seem to be able to escape from it! I don’t seem to be able to get away from this … glue, this force that has me artistically transfixed on this man! I wish it didn’t feel so one-sided but…I guess that’s the curse of the muse that has befallen many an artist. There’s a constant kind of unrequitedness that fuels the artist with their muse, it seems. That intangible divide between what we feel and what we project as opposed to the realism of it all.
Maybe it would all lose its spark and impetus if I was actually able to be in contact with Jim? If I was not left to dream up my own conversational exchanges and what not? Perhaps I should be thankful that all I can do is make up the dream scenarios in my head because they are actually the fuel and the spark I seem to need? That if it were otherwise, it would all dry out instead of, what I would hope or believe, that it would only continue to fuel it – perhaps even fan the flames of it? I will probably never know. Sometimes the desire to know makes me ill. Often, I think.
I can’t escape him, it seems. No matter how I try. It makes it sound like madness and it probably is. But if this madness induces creative excellence (perhaps an over-exaggeration? Maybe not? Who knows what I have within me? I am the worst judge of my ability or otherwise) then I don’t want it to stop or go away or abandon me! Is it the price I pay?
Answers on a Sicilian postcard…