Waiting for our own hour
 There
was a distant figure pacing towards me. I knew him by sight - my ageing
writer pal.
"You don't get it all the time."
Something wasn't quite right, but it was interesting enough to strike
up a conversation. My silence bid him carry on.
"It's like this. When you are a writer, you are supposed to do it all
the time. And now I feel all my energy is drained down." Typical 'pity
me'!
 I
threw him a quizzical look.
"I thought old age accelerates creativity with maturity."
"I cannot say that's incorrect, but still it's not all about old-age,
you see."
Then my friend spelled out the whole thing. Maturity aside, you are
too feeble to put your ideas into paper. Your eyesight thins out, your
hands are not sinewy anymore, mouth goes frail to dictate, and to tell
the truth, you are ready to drop.
That may be so, but still there is another option to weigh. I didn't
want to let my friend have the floor.
Old age steps in with all that inconvenience, accepted. All the same
the young cannot go for straight As, come on. It's a lot more
challenging for the young, because they do mess up too.
Everyone cannot try hands on writing or any other creative tool. It
comes in specks, in a good deal, and for some creativity comes just
awesome. And when you have it, it stays frozen at times. The moment it
melts down will be, or may be, quite unexpected.
The famous poet doesn't always compose good and proper. Just the same
for other artistes and artists. This is fateful when it comes to
professional artistes. They have to survive thanks to their creativity,
which is something that doesn't stay faithful all along.
"How do you know when it goes wrong?"
"Well, if you assess yourself frankly, then you know it's not a good
piece, forget about masterpiece."
Charles Dickens' all novels are not that good. Tissa Abeysekara's all
screenplays are not masterpieces. Parakrama Kodituwakku's every poem
doesn't count so. So it's obvious, there is bad stuff in Shakespeare's
plays too.
And besides, most of the creative artistes have depression, though it
may not be a psychological condition in the standard sense. Sure that
helps their creative writing, but not all the time. They feel down and
sometimes they cannot overcome it, another sure thing. Their souls get
injured and it takes time to heal.
There is another aspect to that," said my friend.
"No publisher accepted my first novel. I was still determined and
went on writing, because I knew I had that capacity. I knew I had that
talent hidden within me. Then I was lucky that my third novel was
accepted for publication."
"What have you done to your first novel?"
"You know after I managed to draw some recognition, I used it to get
my first and second novels published. But that's not the case."
"Then?"
"It's just that I am not happy with some of my later works."
"May be you don't get enough time?"
"That's not the case either. You may have your own time, but it's
something to do with your concentration and mood. Let's say I have this
hour completely to myself, but I cannot call up creativity. Creativity
is not at your beck and call, got it?"
"Yes. So how do you manage?"
"That's the thing. Sometimes it comes quite unexpectedly when you are
walking, or in the middle of a meeting. But it may hardly come when you
are alone in a solitary wilderness."
"But they say wilderness provokes thoughts."
"True, you get some pleasant feelings. But the more you get along
with people, more you sniff around for more plots and ideas.
They prop up a good backstory, but even then you have to shape them
into plots. That's when your mind goes bland at times."
"Okay," I said, "I would love to say the solution is out in the open,
but honestly I have no clue."
My friend's senile smile was an unmistakable sign of sympathy.
"You are mistaken young man," he threw on a serious tone, "anyway,
like I said, every one of us has our own mood. We cannot do anything
against it. Our only option is to wait for our own hour. "
Now in all goodness, isn't this thoughtful? I was truly sold on it:
wait for our own hour!
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