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Sweet potatoes are the best. \u00a0And they are best described in Ralph Ellison\u2019s story of a black man coming to terms with his identity entitled \u201cInvisible Man,\u201d in which he has always avoided eating his favorite childhood food, hot buttered yams sold by street vendors, so he would not be stereotyped, as he now works in an office in a suit.\u00a0 At the end of the book he finally accepts his true love of the food, stops by a vendor, puts down his briefcase and eats the wonderful sweet salty treat with abandon, proclaiming in his mind, “I yam what I yam.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Personally, in 7th grade art class, we were given an assignment to bring in pictures to illustrate how to show distance. \u00a0One techniques was loss of detail. \u00a0I brought in a picture from Mad Magazine where a little boy had just cut off the tail of a cat with a pair of scissors and labelled it \u201cLoss of De Tail.\u201d \u00a0He looked at it for a moment and said, \u201cYou want to add this to the other examples in your portfolio?\u201d \u00a0Man had no sense of humor. \u00a0He lost it by\u00a0living a life as someone he wasn’t.<\/span><\/p>\n In each of the two narratives above, one fictional and one a true story, two different people for completely different reasons had stepped away from who they really were to fashion lives that didn’t reflect them at all. \u00a0They felt justified in doing this when it started because they never imagined the path would lead them to where they ended up.<\/p>\n It starts with a single compromise to oneself – doing a job you hate to achieve something you want or putting your own art on hold to pay the bills. \u00a0But to maintain that compromise, you need to make another, and another in support of it until you’ve built up a whole network of interconnected dependencies that form the bars of a framework behind which you are self-imprisoned.<\/p>\n You’ve put so much effort into building this thing called “your life” that you can’t bear to let it go – like a cancerous tumor you’ve become really attached to, to the point you won’t let anyone remove it from you for fear of the consequences.<\/p>\n Captain Kirk said, “I need my pain,” when he was offered the chance to become “magically” angst-free in one of the movies. \u00a0Our angst is the scar we wear, the badge of honor for all the suffering we endured on the way to the life we have fashioned for ourselves that we never really wanted. \u00a0It defines our struggle, so it defines us, or at least who we have become.<\/p>\n But is that who we really “are” much less who we would want to be? \u00a0Of course not. \u00a0But are we willing to change? \u00a0Hell, no! \u00a0We’d not only be risking everything and everyone we have, but would then have to face that fact that some of those aren’t the things and people we really desire. \u00a0And then there’s the kids, and all those who depend upon us, and our responsibility to future generations….<\/p>\n Shakespeare said,<\/p>\n Who would fardels bear, But in this case, it is not the after-life we fear, but life itself. \u00a0Can we really face having to acknowledge we’ve spent years of our lives weaving a fabric with a horrible pattern that doesn’t reflect us at all? \u00a0And wouldn’t THAT be dandy, to not only have to face such knowledge, but then to crash it all down in order to be ourselves so all we end up with is lost time and nothing at all to show for it? \u00a0Gambler’s syndrome – if I spend a little bit more I’ll eventually score big enough to cover all of my loses and still come home a winner.<\/p>\n No, it’s not an easy place to go. \u00a0But as artists, we head right for that place like lemmings, subjugating our Muse “until later” or because we need to be “responsible.” \u00a0Seriously? \u00a0What kinds of lame excuses are these?<\/p>\n Don’t lie to yourself that it will happen someday, because it never will – not on its own. \u00a0It will only happen someday if you make it happen. \u00a0And there’s no time like the present. \u00a0Yeah, sure, okay, \u00a0you’re not going to abandon your family and head off to another continent to rediscover your Muse (though some have done just that). \u00a0But you probably won’t. \u00a0I never have, but then I’m no example of much of anything, ‘cept to myself, of course.<\/p>\n No, you’ll probably want to write the great American (or some other nationality) Novel or Screenplay, and you’ll “grunt and sweat under a weary life.” to try to make that happen while still trying to maintain everything else. \u00a0After all, J. K. Rowling did just that, didn’t she?<\/p>\n But honestly, how many J. K. Rowlings are in the world? \u00a0One, of course, \u00a0So give up the dream of writing what you want and expecting it also to make mega bucks. \u00a0Could happen, but you’ll probably have better odds with the Lotto. \u00a0Besides, as soon as cold, hard cash enters the picture, your Muse seizes up in a mental charlie horse, all twisted up and contorted into a Gordian knot of creative deadlock. \u00a0Oh, yeah. That’s fun.<\/p>\n Listen my friends (I can call you my friends, can’t I?) if you want to be happy in writing, just write whatever you freaking want. \u00a0And write it how you want. \u00a0And tell it the way you want it told. \u00a0And never sell out your Muse for security – oh, no…<\/p>\n Sure, take words-for-pay job on the side but realize it has nothing to do with your creative self. \u00a0Be truthful, it’s just for the money. \u00a0Differentiate between your worker-bee self and your inventive spirit self, and don’t ever, not now, never, under any circumstances lock the two together or they will both go down into the deep and you along with them, waving to you like Ahab on the whale of reality as your inspiration sinks below the waves leaving no one to tell the tale because the writer in you just drowned in self-pity and was never heard from again (though some mindless husk continues to crank out text under the same name).<\/p>\n You yam what you yam. \u00a0Eat it.<\/p>\n Melanie Anne Phillips
\nTo grunt and sweat under a weary life,
\nBut that the dread of something after death,
\nThe undiscovered country from whose bourn
\nNo traveler returns, puzzles the will
\nAnd makes us rather bear those ills we have
\nThan fly to others that we know not of?<\/p>\n
\nCreator, StoryWeaver<\/a>
\nCo-creator, Dramatica<\/a><\/p>\n
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