Just Bleed

4/02/2016

George Gordon Lord Byron, English poet

 In a letter dated January 2, 1821, George Gordon Byron wrote "If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad".  For those who are unacquainted with Lord Byron, suffice it to say he was (and in the dusty, back-stacks of  libraries and English Lit classes, still is) considered one of the greatest English poets to have ever bled on paper. Labeled 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' by one of his many lovers, Byron was a slave to his overactive passions for scandal, adventure and word-smithing.
The fascinating life lived by this hostage to the quill, however, is not the basis for this post though I highly recommend delving into it when you need to assuage the occasional human urge for gossip, titillation and old-world, tragic romance(s).  Everyone loves a bad boy, after all, and, at times, Byron was as bad as they come.

Instead, my point of focus is the aforementioned quote. To those outside the world of writing it's funny and wildly melodramatic. For people who dabble in stringing letters into words and words into sentences when the mood strikes, it's cute.  One that teases up grimacing smirks of agreement and happy self-martyrdom.  But to a few, to those held captive by the craft, it's a low moan of desperation.  A deep, guttural whimper laced with near lunacy, self-doubt and subjugation.  And it tastes like blood.

Allow me to elucidate:
 
When a non-writer wakes up, the day is in place and filled with tangibles.  For them there are few launch points from which an abductor can snatch them up and fling them, without warning, into realms of the implausible, the fantastic or run-away thought. All the components of a glass of orange juice, for example, are exactly what they seem to be. A glass of orange juice. Rising from bed, the non-writer stumbles to the kitchen, reaches into the cupboard and grabs the glass.  Setting it on the counter (or perhaps carrying it) they venture across the unnoticed floor to the refrigerator.  Opening it, they grab the carton and return to the glass which is still just a glass. The lid comes off.  The juice goes in.  Lid goes back on.  'Fridge handle, light (if they've replaced the burned out bulb), and - bam -they're standing on cool tiles, scratching their butt, thinking about the day while drinking cold, sweet nectar.

The Bedlam of Creation, 1898 

When a writer wakes up (provided the blessed oblivion of sleep was achieved) they find themselves already committed  They stare up - not into the darkness- but at it.  There are no walls.  No floor.  No bed they are aware of.  Instead, rising to their enslavement, they find a world teaming with ideas and imagery.  Around them is the abyss filled with the souls of the damned.  The void of a voracious black hole sucking stars, cosmos and tiny, silver ships down it's gullet.  It is the Stygian shadows of an evil night through which an assassin creeps stealthily towards a slumbering king.  Or the velvet bower of entwined lovers. Eyes captivated and wide they struggle uselessly against the straps of the over-active drive to create flatly refusing to partner with their need to live anything remotely like a normal life.

When the bleating demands of the body finally become fierce enough to prod through the screams of the dying, the sighs of the loving and the machinations of traitors, the inmate rolls towards the floor.  But it's not a floor.  Its the surging deck of a sailing ship.  It's the lush, dewy grass of a pre-dawn meadow.  It's the hard, icy stone of a dungeon floor.  Across the room the sinister maw of the door waits.  Behind it?  Amazons.  The Inquisition.  Whoville. Who knows?

On to the bathroom; outhouse, privy, the WC, the fullest bush in the forest.  And all the while the mind swirls and swings as the Director slams in and yanks out pieces and parts, plots and twists.  The needs of the physical body addressed, it once more becomes nearly non-existent, a non-thing moving on pure instinct.  There is an animal lunge towards the kitchen in search of sustenance because the victim has not been allowed to recognize the need for food since the day before. Overhead light blooms and it is God speaking.  Or a super-nova.  Or the burning rays of a Machiavellian sun searing the life force from two courageous souls struggling to cross a barren desert. The glass is not a glass. It is a chalice, a tankard, a wooden ladle.  The refrigerator is now a morgue filled with shelves of pale feet adorned with dangling toe-tags.  Or a moss-covered, stone-stacked well, musky with the mingling echo of earth and moisture.  And the orange juice is laced with poison, the Elixir of Life or the yokes of ten-thousand eggs ready to create the world's largest omelet.

Thoughts dragged through hell and yonder, brain forced to fire on more than all pistons, the writer lives tormented, trapped between genre and reality.  Much akin to the lunatics of old they are driven outside of life, made to be little more than trapped, morbid witnesses. Even when allowed to be an actual participant they are mutated into involuntary gawkers and frantic hoarders.  Everything they see, everything they hear, everything they experience lurks in dismantled fragments tossed into piles and cabinets and boxes and chests in the over-packed storehouse lining the parameters of their captivity.

To those wandering through these labyrinthine passages, this endless maze of 'what-ifs' and 'how-abouts' and 'why does Charlie drink the gasoline?' it can be as disheartening as it is consuming.  Comprised of wards promising production they find, more often than not, the dead-ends and locked doors of frustration. And all ruled by a relentless taskmaster driving them onward.  Living at the mercy of this dictator is precarious, a wobbling sway between madness and hope.  It's a nightmare.  An intricate, exacting dance above a crevasse while balanced tenuously on the slippery edge of endless 'maybes'.

The possibility of a day-pass only comes from a thread-like stream of ink. Barely the width of a human hair. But even that is not enough for a reprieve. To fully gain one second of freedom, a moment of self-ownership, one unencumbered breath or focused thought, the ink must bleed well.  The work has to be written plausibly and flow into some undefinable yet instinctively recognized rhythm.  Only then will the gate swing open and perhaps - just maybe - the patient can steal a few, blessed hours in which to sleep, to eat, to do something other than roam demented through the darkness in search of sanity.

'If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad".  Some people get it. They understand exactly what Lord Byron was saying.  They live within it, surrounded as it creates the bars between them and real, living people.  Were they here and coherent, they could probably explain it better than I.  But they're not.  They're off somewhere - a dank, moldy cavern, a swaying, decrepit bell-tower, or roaming one of the levels of Dante's hell because Timmy has fallen in the well, The King is dead (Long live the King), Sir Percival has lost his Faith and Charlie needs someone to call the paramedics.