Kindness eases change.
Love quiets fear.
And a sweet and powerful
Positive obsession
Blunts pain,
Diverts rage,
And engages each of us
In the greatest,
The most intense
Of our chosen struggles.Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
I was thinking about positive obsession after a recent career counselling session. I’d talked about my love of writing, and this blog and sheepishly mentioned it was about looking at Beauty through the lens of art, philosophy and metaphysics. The counsellor graciously smiled and then asked me how many followers I had. The thing is - I don’t know because I don’t look at the numbers nor do I advertise or promote or push any part of this into the systems and structures that dictate how we’re meant to express ourselves productively. To a degree, I’ve stayed true to my initial intentions here. I needed an area of my life that could house the very best of me, the most uncorrupted parts of my identity, those parts not astringed to an externally defined role. I see this as a distillation, that if my soul has only a limited time here then surely I need to use my creme-de-la-creme to create something truly meaningful. Whether that is to no one or many is kind of irrelevant. (That said I really cherish messages from you guys and that you even read these blows me away!) My career counsellor had a small reaction when I mentioned I probably only have a handful of readers. I get it, we’re meant to have an audience. That’s what society encourages - efficiency, a quantitative value, something that can be measured. All of these things are part of a language that my deepest urges fail to speak.
I'm reminded of a 19th-century Japanese fairytale (which dates back much further - surfacing its archetypes in older texts). It’s about a boy who is obsessed with drawing cats. For as long as he could remember he’d had an urge to paint them first on paper and then onto anything he could get his hands on; the walls, the furniture, his clothes, the floor. One day his exasperated parents decided they could no longer handle it, they weren't equipped to deal with his strange love, their home too small for his infatuation. They sent him to a nearby monastery to put him on the right path. Within days of entering his new lodgings, he was back at painting his cats again. Despite the strictest of schedules, he found the time to succumb to what I would call his positive obsession. (We’ll get to the positive aspect momentarily). When the head monk noticed the cats scrawled across the temple walls he decided the boy couldn’t even be bound by the rigour of spiritual practise. With a sly smile, he told the boy it was time to move on but gave him a piece of advice. “When it is dark, keep to the smallest of spaces”. Eager for adventure the boy didn’t seem to mind his newfound homelessness, after all, he could now draw his cats wherever he pleased. On his very first day he came across a temple on a hill in the far distance. He noticed a trail of beautiful lanterns that led to its front entrance. Little did he know they were there to lure unsuspecting travellers to their demise. Upon inspection, the temple looked abandoned so it wasn’t too long until the boy's obsession started to surface. Felt like a friendly possession, he found his hands reaching for his brushes and his eyes searching for blank spaces to be filled. By nightfall, he had covered the vast inner hall with pictures of giant cats from floor to ceiling. It was only just as he was drifting off into sleep that he remembered the head monk's words. “When it’s dark, keep to the smallest of spaces”. So he did. He crawled into a small cupboard and tucked in for the night. After midnight he was woken by screams and blood-curdling shrieks. The walls rattled like thunder as if the whole building was a shivering husk. But he kept small, his eyes shut tight and stayed in his cupboard till morning. When he finally opened the cupboard door he saw a giant rat lying in a pool of blood in the centre of the floor. This was the Rat God’s temple, home to a being that had terrorised the local village for centuries. As he looked around he noticed that all of the cats he had painted looked slightly different, awkwardly askew. As he peered closer he noticed blood covering their mouths. In the last century, this story has grown to two possible endings. In one, the village, so grateful, gave him the temple where he lived out his days in quiet bliss. In the other, he headed back onto the road and called himself an artist. I’ve always loved this story and it never fails to haunt me. I’d suspected that it was about listening to your elders and the power of art to save us. It was only a few months ago when it occurred to me that it was also about the power of our positive obsessions to save ourselves.
I have a love/hate relationship with the artist/creative aspect of myself. There have been thousands of times when I’ve wanted to give it up and have likened it to a lifelong drug habit. Not only has it kept me from being a productive, successful part of society but it continues to make me broke, beaten down, humiliated and deeply troubled. I say this with cock-eyed glee. I see myself as a veteran of creative demise akin to Winona Rider walking out of that bomb blast in Heathers. My jacket’s on fire, my hair is a smoking mess and I’m sucking a cigar with a cheeseball grin. I feel like I have Bukowski walking right next to me saying, Hey kid. . . “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”. The comparisons hurt, along with the endless rejections and the heartbreaking closed doors but just like Cat Boy I can’t stop. This is what being in relationship to a “positive” obsession can look like.
But.
But . . . with my head shaking and my eyes rolling I also want to give it another name; muse. Elizabeth Gilbert so poignantly described the muse as an overexcited friend who begs you to go on an adventure. You end up pummelling each other in fisty cuffs rolling around in glee until you stumble over a cliff face, roll down a mountain and end up with a dozen broken bones and your face in the dirt. As you lift your bloody head you can see your friend the muse, lying in the distance with a broken tooth and a swashbuckling grin. They wink at you and punch the air, “Let's go again!” The thing is - like any addiction - I’ve fallen down that hill too many times to count. I’ve hated myself black and blue because of the choices I’ve made, namely my decision to keep following that she-devil muse down every damn mountain. Even as I sat opposite the career counsellor, smiling serenely, deciding to be a big girl now, that jacked-up goofball with her helter-skelter ways was still begging me, one more time! But things have changed.
In a recent meditation I saw my mind as a landscape. There were the roads and infrastructure of my everyday routines and habits. I saw chasms of grief and loathing but they definitely didn’t make up the full picture. I saw toppled skyscrapers and temple ruins of dreams lost or sacrificed. I saw forests and beaches and secret gardens where my relationships and experiences played out in all their theatre. I also noticed poems that I’d written curled around the edges of architecture like a moving gargoyle. I saw colours I’d played with bleeding out across more desolate parts. I saw a murmuration of starlings and realised it was made up of the thoughts that go into writing this blog. It was these intricacies, these morphing articulations that gave this landscape both its life and its uniqueness. You can see this so clearly when you pan out into the landscape of human history. The chasms of war and genocide, the mountains of civilisations, the darker rivers of our undoings. You can see the towers and temples at the peak of each cyclic evolution of ourselves as well as the ruins left in their wake. Law and politics carve out grids and boundaries in the same way the infrastructure of our roads do. Scientific insights and inventions firework across the sky lighting a way forward. All beautiful but I can't help but feel that when looking over this landscape and through our collective history it's the art and beautiful thinking that can't help but rise to the top. It is the warmth of our living, breathing history. It’s that timeless part of our experience that lives longer than the facts of the actual events. It’s the words, the thoughts, the images of being human. Whilst society may tell us that numbers, badges and efficiencies are what makes us valuable, a life seen through the eyes of legacy will tell us something very different. Someone said that we are the sum total of our experiences. I think true legacy agrees with this. We are not what we’ve made, we’re not our creations, and that boy is not his cats. He is the experience of drawing those cats, the obsession, the verve, that life force or curiosity. He’s the feeling in his body when his brush touches paper, he is the urge of cats still to come.
I’ve witnessed death up close a few times. What surprised me most was how inwards it felt. Death after all is only a doorway for one. I’ve sat and watched the dying sleep. I saw their muscles twitch and their eyes flicker as if they were dreaming. I tried to picture what they were seeing in their closing world. I imagined a big empty dance floor lit by a single light. They’re on it with their arms in the air as if they’re slow-dancing with an invisible person. Gradually a partner emerges as if from thin air. Their bones are built from their relationships, their flesh made from a surprisingly small selection of moments. But the dance itself, the flourishes, the facial expressions, and the way they skip the light fantastic, this is made from the very best of them. It’s their most articulate thoughts, their feelings and obsessions, their most intimate expressions. It’s the seeds of whatever it was that they created, the strange loves that pulled them out and into the world. Gradually that dance partner grows so fully formed that they can hold up the dying and dance them on through to the other side. I think this is how our positive obsessions save us. Even with an audience of only one.
Things have changed. If I’m honest, there’s an edge of heartbreak when I think about making art for no audience. And here I’m begrudgingly drawn to sit with this but for a moment.
Making art for no audience. Don’t turn away from this.
Don’t turn away from this. While it may initially look and feel like shame, embarrassment, rejection, inferiority - a deep and scalding hurt - if you spend time with this, really sit with it, you’ll find something more.
That strange love, that craziness, that vulnerability. . . it is nothing less than you at the height of your powers. Against the odds, fuelled by your own passions, in spite of the gospel of the masses but sure of it’s own value, when you really look at it you’ll find it nothing less than heroic. For the first time in my life, looking at the strange love of the creative urge doesn’t make me want to run away or berate myself. For the first time, I find it so damn beautiful, so exquisitely human.
Dance with me. (I promise it’s worth it.)
This month, may Beauty find you in the most vulnerable of places. xxx
Improbable Doorways;
A real life Cat Boy. Interestingly he called his exhibition “Goldfish Salvation” (as in he was the one being saved).
Invitations:
You know I’m going to ask. You know it’s there, deep inside. Maybe it’s pretty loud and you’re letting it rollick around, right on through you or maybe it’s hidden and quiet and biding it’s time. Tell me, what’s your positive obsession?
When was the last time you let it save you?
You can find me on instagram at @inez.joakim
If you think someone you know could use a little more Beauty in their life feel free to share.
Would love to know what Beauty is to you or how you’ve experienced it recently. Leave a comment or drop me a line.
You never cease to amaze me. I just love seeing the world through your eyes. xox
This so perfectly describes the creative experience and the pressure that comes along with it. Your writing is so beautiful and powerful- full of life. Thanks for sharing it.