Category: Okategoriserade

A few meters ahead, I see a significant set of hurdles along my writing path.

At this moment, I am engaged in a new short story of about four pages. I am determined to continue this story. It is easy for me to deliver written words. Me continuing the story is another cup of tea.

I seem to provide myself at least a million paths of distraction. Thinking out this status report and delivering it to you is just one of them. Longing for an old-time red mechanical typewriter is another. I mean one of those rare units having no connection to the Internet nor to electricity.

The fact that I deliver words easily, is another and major distractive element. Often, I slide off into other writing challenges. I even read and listen to any of these numerous suggestions of ”how-to-do-it”. I have to sharpen up! I must do it now and down to my very roots! Dear Alter Ego: “Avoid trying to be funny and continue writing this. Avoid using your creativity in distracting yourself.”

Today, I had an intense chat
With a friend living not too far away
We use the net at our advantage.

We spoke about something
of key importance to us.
I forgot what it was.

I got far more than I gave
For once it was all right.
I´ll pay back some other time.

Anonymity worked to our advantage.
We were able to withdraw
at any moment of our choice,
avoiding vulnerability if needed.

Awakening
Flat on the stomach,
far out on a field,
recently ploughed
It is dark.

See nothing
Know nothing
Why here?
Only cold wet clay
at a naked chin.

Slowly raising the head
Allow the eyes to see
over the nearby ridge of soil.
Do not see anything,
nothing what so ever.

Detecting slowly
Field disappearing into darkness

Far away
the edge of a forest
Black silhouettes of pine
hardly discernible
from a dark blue sky.
Soon night will enfold us.

To me, the issue of being a creative individual must have something to do with sensing a void inside your soul. Specifically for me i is about allowing me to sense it. But, I tend to use a series of strategies to assure I avoid staying near to this void.
One strategy is to assure I always have things to do. Ways to get there is to pick up what I had done before or followed what others do. I assume diffuse emotions show up in me when I am near to such a void. My impulse is to void the feelings and I use whatever I can to escape. What I use is not essential as long as it has the effect of silencing those feelings. The aim and consequences of my actions have no other meaning.
People have described me as creative, but I doubt their judgments. They seem to base their decisions on the number of ideas I produce. Or thoughts, associations, and reflections. The ideas do give me some limited joy, but they do not add up. I feel staying at a standstill. And that is the core of my present problem in writing.
This way, an new idea arises. How about exposing myself and my flow of ideas to some rules and regulations? To make my ideas and thoughts operating I will need to learn to work against a distinct frame. A first step will be to set up that frame and train me in respecting it.
Otherwise, the outcome of my flow of ideas will strangle me by distraction. Eventually, my creativity will dry up.

Göran

He rents a flat in central Stockholm and loves to sit down and write. For most of his lifetime, he did not write much. Only when those financing his work demanded. This occurred once a year. He wrote when he needed to report result. A couple of times each year he needed to apply for money. That pushed him to write some more. In general he wrote technical stuff using a descriptive language avoiding individuality and speculations.
After a large number of years in that bin, he felt there was something essential missing. He could not define what it was and began to look for it. He abandoned that container and whatever identity he managed to build using those tools.
While in this new bin, he searched his income as a ghostwriter and dialogue coach. He managed. Although selling himself was not his cup of tea. Present container, number four, he names retirement. He wants to let himself go in writing prose and poetry.
But, he experience handicaps when using words. Too many years in an academic and technical environment have had a severe impact. For him, the writing quality called ”show don’t tell” was a significant hurdle.

This morning he avoided his usual working place. He suspected that a specific environment might have an effect on how he wrote. At his ”office desk” he tended to do office work, that is to administrate, edit and correct. In short, an early version of his personality takes over and assure being in control. Working with a keyboard and a computer display does influence him in the same direction.
He was lucky having found a more playful part of himself writing elsewhere. It happened at another place and with another set of tools. Sitting sipping a cup of coffee at a coffee shop did do the job. He loved writing in an inexpensive spiral notebook. But, he always used his expensive fountain pen and black ink.
At the present moment, he stays in bed. He had never used this location when writing. What sorts of writing will emerge?

Neurons in the brain rattle
gives a carpet of notions.
Some of them life changing
others a distracting everyday noise
Impossible to judge beforehand.

An icy solitude
not to be anyone withdraws.
So even the grinding impulse
to be someone by being the best.

Now life is a brittle stream
of minor events.
Easy to destroy
by listening to what others say
how things ought to be.

This way life became real
and the flame of life brittle and panting.

Göran Stille April 2019

I have a pair of earphones. They cover my ears. They operate on batteries and blue-tooth. They are manufactured in China. My mobile brings down music form the internet and deliver it to the phones. I dress in them comfortably as long as I stay at home.

In a few minutes I should go outside to help my wife bringing stuff home from her gallery. Should I continue wearing these phones downtown? Do I dare to introduce myself into this huge crowd of youngsters? All demonstrating their individuality in the same fashion? After all, I am not young any more. This coming summer I will celebrate 77.

On the other side and at my age I do not need to bother.

This is probably the most difficult writing task I’ve ever approached. Will I be able to get my writing in line with me on this subject? Will I make my writing understandable and some reader curious and interested? But on the other hand, the task is in line with where I am this chilly morning in mid-March 2019.

My life strategy has been to put on an intellectual cover as soon as any emotional roller coaster is in approach. It is an impulse from I do not know where. I call it ”primitive”. I have lived this way all my life. The strategy has become well known to me. In the absence of other things, I call it an element of my personal identity. But, after years of mental and emotional turbulence, it starts to crack.

I feel happy. At last, I live. I seem to have risen from the somewhat tedious role of being a responsible, orderly, reliable and predictable man. In one sense I have no experience of this roller coaster concept but to avoid it at all cost.

You told me something
Warmth and happiness showed up
Thoughts whirled around upstairs.
Did forget what you said
Received the undertone you gave
Will remember the event
until dementia sweeps my attic clean.

My pen follows me. Better, what my pen writes, I obey. That’s good. With words, I adjure everyday life. It has no color other than grey. Open a gap in time against what is now.

From the good old days, the castle in Åkeshov donates to the everyday life and monotony of the metro. Further out at Ängby, the platform is still icy. I find no peace until the sun rises, and the clouds have escaped.

The free will is discussed by those who believe their thinking have sharpness enough for the task. They forget that free will is not there for everyone, and always. Maybe just for a few and once. It is no point to anyone to discuss whether man has a free will or not.

I claim I am seeking the meaning of life. As if I forgot or did not understand that I already own it. Once the routines were a threat. They tore me away from what I thought carried value. Now and on the street outside my window, it gives me peace, something to return to. No matter what my imagination offers.

Once, and for a minute, among the houses at Nockeby, I realized what was important to me, a goal. The path to get there was long and tricky. Full of torment. I’m there now, almost thirty years later.