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The other day, someone at work asked me who my favorite writer was. I stopped and thought about it. Which writer had the most influence on me? Which writer really got me going, and really inspired me, made me think about things and really made me want to create?
I had only one answer. My mother.
Not everyone can say that their parent(s) ended up inspiring them to create. I suppose that makes me one of the lucky ones.
When I was a kid I remember my mother sitting at the kitchen table writing in one of those wireless notebooks that were popular in the 90’s. She would write until about 3am and then crash on the couch, drained.
When I was 12, she let me read some of her writing, and I was entranced at her command of the words she used. She cut to the depth of whatever it was she was trying to explore, which more often than not, was love and the more romantic aspects of humanity. She wasn’t using wordplay to add layers on to the things she saw, she was using wordplay to strip everything to its essence, the very rivers of thought itself were made as streams, and the oceans of depth were brought to the shallows.
She opened up her guts, spread them on the table and wrote down what she saw. It was fearless and vulnerable, and it was a side of my mother I think she should have shared with the world. I still think she should.
She never approached or intimated to me that she ever thought of sharing her writing with the world. This bothered me then, and still kind of bothers me now. I think she should. I think the world would be a better place if everyone started going on every impulse to bring something real into this world.
If it is aberrant and true, then the fact that it would deviate from the norm is irrelevant. Beauty is found everywhere, especially in the pages of a torn journal sitting under a bed of a young mother desperately trying to make heads or tails of the life she chose.
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Ironically, it’s one of the things that made me fall in love with my wife. My wife is an amazing novelist (check out “More Than Life Itself” at http://www.lulu.com/shop/nunu-hales/more-than-life-itself/paperback/product-22132270.html) and poet who writes with a disarming quality that reminds me of my mother. Just open and vulnerable, guarded but completely fearless.
I sat there on the steps watching her pull her hair, cry and stare into the overhead light until her eyes would light up and she’d start writing furiously.
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When I first met my wife, we hung out as friends and little did I know that she was writing poetry about me and things she thought about regarding our adventures (and there were many). She showed them to me at one point and I sat there reading for the better part of an hour.
What I read astounded me. She was describing dreams, things she wanted to do, things that had happened that I never thought about, describing her excitement when I recalled three months after the fact, an off handed comment about how pistachio pudding was her favorite. It was my Nunu, spread out on paper, guts and all.
From time to time, I have my wife critique my writing and the notes she gives me back are sometimes a bit more in depth and critical than I would like, but she helps me grow as a writer every day. I’m quite aware that I’m abrasive and rough, and she sees her job as helping me smooth out the edges.
Funny thing, is that the things she criticizes about my work, are the things I admire about both her work, and the work of my mother’s.
My mother explores the depth of her soul, my wife explores the depth of her desires, and I explore the depth of my mind. Suffice to say, if my mother did not have these ideas of valuing the emotional and the fleshy over the rational and logical, I probably never would have developed the values that now label my wife to me as one of the sexiest, down to earth, and most real person I know. That kind of sounds weird to me, but weird enough to be true, at least.
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Back to my mother. Above all I remember coming downstairs to get a glimpse of my mother writing, because it was the only time I ever saw her create. She caught me once. I literally crept down the steps, because I heard music in the kitchen. She was a fan of playing Heart’s “Brigade” album when she was writing. I sat there on the steps watching her pull her hair, cry and stare into the overhead light until her eyes would light up and she’d start writing furiously.
Then at one point she looked up toward the window and turned her head to the right, and stared right at me. All she did was smile, and go back to writing. I went back to bed.
It was a glorious moment, one that I never did get a chance to thank her for, because that moment changed my very essence.
Every now and then I turn on that same album when writing. It doesn’t help me, but it does get me into a very specific state of mind. It brings me to the point where I start thinking about my childhood and adolescence, a not entirely happy point in my life. My parents are not aware of it, but almost that entire time, I was suicidal. My friends didn’t know, and nor did my family. Shit, my girlfriend didn’t even know (when I was old enough to date). But, a lot of amazing creative work came out of me during that period. Most of it, I still have yet to let anyone hear, or read.
I watched the agony of creation and its payoff; peace of mind.
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While I’m not dead yet, I am still suicidal. I’ve kind of accepted it as a state of affairs because it literally has freed me from giving a shit, and the most amazing work I’ll never share has come out of it.
I became a very big fan of keeping most of my writing for myself, as my mother did (and does). For every article I get published, I literally have about 20 that I have sitting there waiting to be read. I have no intention of publishing them, they were written for myself.
My mother has a unique voice that I have found inspired me in my early years. She was the yearning and its physical symptom. She was the bell and the ringing. She was equal parts fury, energy and sensuality. When I write, I feel closer to her, regardless of the words that are on the page.
In my own way, I’m continuing the work she started, but instead of keeping it all for myself, I share some of it with the small audience I’ve been lucky enough to acquire over the years. I’m aware that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. I’m abrasive, use a lot of profanity and generally act like a raging dickhead. I’m not this way in real life (for the most part), but if I didn’t have this outlet, I probably would be.
A lot of that comes from her too. When she writes, she doesn’t censor herself, doesn’t act like she’s ashamed of the rougher parts of her nature. She used to use writing as a kind of scream therapy to deal with her life. I use it to get rid of the negativity and the darker side of my nature. I’m not ashamed of my nature, it’s just not kosher for public consumption, you know?
Everything I know how to do started from those wee hours in the early morning when I was watching her rant and rail, albeit silently. I watched the agony of creation and its payoff; peace of mind. When I act pissy, it’s generally because I haven’t written in a few days. She was the same way. There’s something therapeutic about writing for yourself that you can’t get from writing for an audience.
She was, and is, the reason I am who I am today, for better or for worse. She was the most inspiring person I had ever had the privilege of being around. She showed me how to create worlds in my mind, and showed me that everything that is noble came from three places; family, love and the human ability to create.
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