Whenever I hear Rusted Root’s “Send Me On My Way,” I get chills.
I know, know in my bones, that this song will be the opening credits when my novel comes to life. I close my eyes and it’s like a movie playing behind my eyes. The same thing happens when Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” comes on the radio. That’s the music for the trailer. Mom and Travis roll their eyes because in my best announcer voice, I say things like, “Emma Stone. Jennifer Lawrence. Bradley Cooper. Mother Muse. Coming Summer 20-Blah-Blah-Blah.” Then I turn the song up really loud, roll the windows down and go deeper into the knowing.
I know. I know.
And this knowing is the exact thing a counselor once told me was a sign of mental illness; he called it”delusions of grandeur.” I wonder about this often. Where is the line between confident creativity and madness?
So while some people would hear these songs without listening as they go about other things like driving or folding laundry or whatever it is that people mindlessly do while listening to music, I feel like climbing the walls. My energy goes insane. I must write! I must figure this out! Am I crazy? Is this a real feeling? Can I do this? Yes. I can! But when? Today? No, today feels impossible. But if not today, when?
I don’t think of myself as a novelist. I don’t have aspirations for writing book after book. I don’t want to hang out with other writers, analyzing literature and being very, very intellectual. I am far too immature and goofy to be an intellectual. I hated that most about being an English major; the academic snobbery. Truthfully, I come from poor, country people. Storytellers. My heart is the story and the human need for stories to help us understand ourselves; the writing…well, that’s just the most efficient method of getting the words out.
So, ten years after I graduated with a degree in English and Creative Writing, this is what I know:
I don’t want to be a writer. I want to tell stories. I want what my great-grandmother had; a front porch, a summer breeze and stories. Screw the snobbery of it all. I want to make people feel something. I want to feel something, too.
I look back on the last five years of plugging away at a novel while the kids sleep and I regret ever getting an English degree. Yes, I learned to learn. There is value in the things I learned but I also learned fear. I learned to worry about what literary types would think rather than how stories save us. They make us see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Oh, I do sound crazy. See? There’s that fine line between creative confidence and madness. I guess action is the only thing that keeps you from crossing the line into madness.
What about you? What do you know in your bones that makes you feel like you’re straddling the line between confidence and madness?
One Response
well i get the same feelings from songs. :) and i feel the same about that rusted root song- LOVE! and i don’t think i know what that one thing is for me because it seems to be a compilation of so many creative things. or maybe i am still searching.