Your art matters.

Just watched the first couple episodes of One Tree Hill’s fifth season. It’s strange, characters that I’m familiar with, and feel for, thrust into a completely different world from which we left (four years ago in TV land). I find I somehow still relate. I care for these characters, and I’d like to see them a little happier. But like life, nothing is perfect, even in TV land.

There’s a quiet frustration implicit; the kind of frustration that happens when you don’t quite fulfill your dreams. When things out of your control happen, and your life changes. Sometimes it’s circumstances, other times it’s you.

I’ve found myself unable to write anything, even though I know there’s a story in my head. I’ve found myself being completely stuck. Emotionally, spiritually, creatively. It’s like a little pit of unachievement and discarded hopes, the ‘I want’ versus the ‘should be’ and the ‘reality’.

And into that mess there’s a little line that’s drawn all the way from the first season and repeated now.

“Your art matters, it’s what got me here.”

It’s funny sometimes. But in a way, Char is my muse, my inspiration. Her art matters to me, her life matters to me, and it makes me want to step up my game.

I guess I feel that sting of disappointment at not making it into Masters just a little more keenly because of that. Or the fact that despite trying, I still haven’t gotten a job offer, much less a rejection letter. I know I want to provide for her in whatever way I can, to the best of my meager ability. I guess I want to make her happy.

Somehow that unsticks me a bit. The words flow a little better. The heart is a little more open. But therein is the danger that I might lose myself too deeply into that. For me the creative process is a process of feeling, of turning that churning deep feeling in my chest (it’s almost a physical feeling) into a well from which I can draw from. It’s not negative emotion, it’s not disappointment, it just is… something.

And I realise one thing. Your art matters; your love matters. It’s what got me here; and it’s what’s going to carry me where we’re going.