Mulling Over The Times

Lately I've been mulling over the state of things: my own country (USA, election and all), the world (Israel, Hamas), the universe (poor Pluto, you had a good run) and everything else in between. It can be daunting to take a good, hard look--all that seems to be lacking, all that obviously needs to be done.

The mulling over makes me appreciate every story I've read, for it is in stories, poems, the written word that I see, time and time again, the same inexhaustible truth: good triumphs over evil. It just does.

I love that. I need that--as an artist and as a human being. I am grateful for that truth today. It keeps me going. It keeps me coming back around to my writing (which frightens me just as much as the state of the world does). It makes me realize what a blessing it is to be able to communicate in times like these--when information can be shared so quickly, when a wealth of knowledge is literally at the tips of our fingers.

These are hard, unsettling times, but when has the best art been created? It springs from the hard & unsettling, the mess. So here's to the mess, art's inspiration. Where would I be without you?

It's The Ride

The creative process is a roller coaster ride: up, down; over, under. Most of writing is just putting up with the hours of nausea and terror that bookend the few, very brief moments of blind exhilaration.

As I’ve been tossing and turning through the past few months, speeding around sharp bends of self-doubt, I've been fortunate enough to come across literary voices of great comfort and wisdom.

Louisa May Alcott's journals have become a good friend. The gravity in her voice is refreshing: She worried much about money, working hard at menial tasks to earn her living. And she was never quite sure or trusting of her talent, shunning attention and fame even when it would not stop knocking at her door.

Madeline L’Engle's reflections on faith and writing have been another. She touches on being a mother and a wife, on the many facets of life and how each contributes in its own, organic way to creativity. She even willingly admits to getting a book title from a conversation with a family member--the name of a character from the off-hand suggestion of a friend.

Reading these two women, I’m reminded of the dichotomy of art and life, how much they are at odds with one another. I see it in my own day-to-day routine: I awake in the morning to a mountain of a day--students upon students stacked upon papers, more papers stacked upon piles of dishes, loads of laundry. How does one have time to even think about a poem, let alone a book? Yet the artistic animal is always there, scratching at the door of the mundane. And so is the nemesis, barking at the brain, making it too hard to hear what word, which way is wrong or right. 

As I keep reading and writing, as I keep on going, I see how the exhilaration springs from the fear of it all--the struggle between the high contemplative call of the mind and the low primal requirements of the body, the lack of control of artistic inspiration, the steepness of the climb. The occasional, momentary thrills are just the occasional, momentary revelations that the roller-coaster of life and creativity will never truly stop if one has the childlike faith to take everything one baby step at a time.

On Writing, Art & Loneliness

Art is loneliness. I write because there’s no on near to read. It keeps me calm; it keeps me going.

Sometimes the intellectual in me likes to think otherwise. I reason with myself: Writing is a complex form of artistic expression, and therefore an intricate medium, meant to relay a meaningful message or agenda, a genius thought or idea. But it’s not. Writing (the act of art) is simply the breath between swimming strokes, the necessary overflow of silence from the mind, soul.

Art comes easily to man because loneliness comes easily to him (Adam soon lost his rib; even cavemen drew on walls). Writing has always come easily to me because my nature has always strayed away from human contact: I bristled as a child when a parent coddled me. I recoiled as an adolescent when a peer brushed against me. Even now, as an adult, I keep my hands, eyes and ears to myself. But it doesn’t bother me (anymore): I know that one must let the loneliness be. It is the way of art, the climb. No man can completely bear the burden of his brother. Each artist must carry a weight all his own—because that is the nature of this tree called life. It is the unavoidable, undeniable truth (as Yeats so perfectly put it, the perpetual virginity of the soul). 

Loneliness was made for art (why did God create man?). The more tears an artist keeps to himself, the more someone else will not shed alone. The more blood I bleed here, now (in silence, at home), the more I will have to give—on the page, and in life.

I have always kept my loneliness a secret because I have always known it is the one thing I must keep safe. It is the root of the root and the bud of the bud of this thing called writing—because it (loneliness, art) is the one thing each of we humans shares.

James Mcloughlin reads new poem

Just a little video for you to sample at your leisure, trying to improve my reading in front of the camera, feedback welcome :)

Bin The Cliches!

'Good writing is perfect control,' said Ezra Pound, and he was damn right. This control is not slapdash or reliant on feeling, but careful and nuanced. Too often writers end up with a product that is sloppy. The good writer knows the value of returning again and again to the poem, story, article, or chapter. This is the callous truth about good writing - it's a kind of work, requires a mildly obsessive quality, a willingness to look at a paragraph or a stanza over and over again, removing a phrase or re-positioning it. This is quite the opposite to many dreamy notions of writing, the sort that imply writers have a lovely time, work drifting easily from them like autumn leaves falling from the trees.

You can easily spot a writer that hasn't tried hard enough by their use of cliches. I know. I've done it often enough. Get rid of any dark clouds or doornails that are dead. They are useless. Instead, reach for original expressions - if you're not sure, reach for a volume of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage or Sharon Olds. But resist, at all costs, the cliches. Instead, aim for writing that is fresh and alive. Go back to the work. Try again. Repeat the process. Put it aside for a while and then come back again. This is where a good writer succeeds, despite the small pain. It hurts. But not like hell.

First Sight

I was eleven years old when I first knew. My sixth grade teacher assigned me the task of writing an original screenplay of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex in September. By the time it was due in October, I was head over heels.

It was love at first read, love at first write. I stalked Sophocles—got my hands on any and all translations, researched his biography, studied his contemporaries. I wrote and wrote and wrote—in the morning, at night, during lunch, after class. No one needed to tell me that I had found it. I knew because I knew.

Perhaps it was the language that did it, the perfect blend of poetry and plot. Perhaps it was the characters, the depth of Oedipus’ psychological destruction. Whatever it was, this thing—this thing that made me invincible, able to bend and manipulate meanings, metaphors and my own imagination—had me at hello. For the first time in my life I felt what it was like to salivate at the beauty that is a line of epic poetry. For the first time in my life I became deaf to the annoying humdrum of suburban civilization, of my constant anxiety; and I heard only music—sweet music.

It is one thing to fall in love with a man or woman, but it is another thing entirely to fall for a vocation—and one so elusive as the written word. If I knew what I know now, I would have taken one look at Sophocles and run in the opposite direction. I would have put my pen and that blank of piece of paper down and tried my hand at other things—softball, maybe, or flute. But there is no going back. Writing will forever be my first love. For better or for worse, Sophocles still makes me drool.

Cora Charis is a writer from the United States who is currently finishing her first book of expiremental poetry while teaching English as a Second Language to refugees in Tucson, AZ.