...and when i sit down in front of a character sheet, with notes and annotations and bits of habits and desciprtions and powers and sketches and all the fluff that accompies a creation i stare at the whole sheet and just rest my hands, staring ernestly at the paper, picturing the character, name, outfit; moving, breathing acting talking and doing all the things he/she should be doing, and only one word comes to mind;
Live.
As an author, as a creator. As one of the dreamers, the child-people, whom sit in corners all day long and dream of worlds, dream of places never-been, things never-done, people that could have become. As one of the architects of the impossible, I sit here and type. And ponder.
And realise, somehow, that is all we seek to do.
It is like a plague, as Mark Twain indirectly seems to say. One author writes a book, and soon two authors are inspired from it. Those two write two books, and four more arrive. Like rabbits, Romantism spreads. The threat of too much dreaming, of imagining without acting, of words without hand.
Yet without the words, can the plan proceed?
Seers are always called mad, for they are the ones who see what lies not there.
I have within me, worlds. I have within myself the capacity to change these worlds, to move them, to shape them. The characters are mine to control, puppets on a string, yet I wish them to be more than mere puppets, to become more than just clay dolls, baked from Earth. Like Geppetto I seek more than a simple extension of myself. I seek not to wield, but to make a wielder.
For it is both a great and fearful thing, when a story rides the author. When the writer is no longer in control of the beast of which he had wrought, had laid the foundations, the ideas, planted the seeds and shadows of events to come. In one fell swoop he is overtaken by a passion, a fury, a desire to release this caged beast he has bred for so long. And like a torrent it pours, furious and powerful, that the author himself is swept by its might. Such is the power of true prose. And it is prose like this that sweeps the reader as well.
It is prose like this, that holds what each of us now have empty in our hearts.
Life.
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Someday I will write a book. A book about Words. About ideas. About the relationship between Man and his Language. For the first task Adam had, was the Name the animals of Eden. And though Naming they were Tamed, and through language Man did rise, beyond the singular predator, into a society, into a community - into a greater organism, the sum of many parts, words the nervous system, the nexus between.
Someday, when my art is good enough, I will make a comic. About Artists and Art, about stories and characters and ideas. About what happens when such things are lost. About Dreams. All things precious to me. There will be laughter and joy, and jokes and little bits of nonsense, but the comic will be, first and foremost, my views. On what it means to write, to create. On what it means to give life, to fiction and to Man.
Someday, I might think about religion. No, I have already done that. And the comic for it is finished, lying in my head. A simple comic, with simple themes. Yet that is all that needs to be said. For such is Faith, a simple thing - yet one impossible to grasp.
The power of language...in the hands of a skilled master. I have seen and read the works of such masters, and I know for certain - that while in combat the pen is not mightier than the sword, there are many other, subtler ways; by which it can pierce a person's heart.
And write upon his very soul.
2 comments:
In a way, artists have a certain multiplicity about them. Someone did mention somewhere that writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia, though.
And the act of breathing life into characters isn't too far from many creation myths, isn't it?
Somewhat. I was thinking about that when writing it, somehow.
Sometimes the words just build up and you just have to type them out. This post itself is probably a good example.
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