Life's Moments

Kinship Of Word And Spirit

23 Mar 2012 7 Comments

by AcousticEnergy in AcousticEnergy, James Olmos, Opinions Tags: AcousticEnergy, Art, artistic, body, creativity, Free verse, freedom, independence, James Olmos, kinship, life, Literature, Online Writing, Poetry, soul, spirit, Word

I step back from time to time, back to when my pencil first echoed my soul on paper.  I would surrender words, unashamed and transparent; abandoned to no one; yet offered to everything outside of my skin.  I forced myself to never use my eraser.  I simply wanted the words to lay unshattered.  I would either draw a line through the word or let it live.  There’s a “connectedness” or kinship between word and spirit.

I would sit and wait for the next word to come.  I would literally wait for “one” word, the next word of the poem or lyric to come to my mind.  I would not write until it had passed through my heart and soul and onto the paper.  To this day I never rewrite anything.  If the next word does not come then I simply pause or stop writing.

I usually write songs in a single, forty-five minute period.  Writing poems can take days or even months; mainly because I shove them aside and forget about them.  Life does not give me the opportunity to wait long enough.  My poetry runs deeper through me than my lyrics; yet, I write them both with intention.  Writing poetry exhausts me and I rarely share my poems.

Why do I share this?  I share this to remind myself that I don’t require approval.  Your judgment only imprison’s you.  Sadly, as I get older I find myself “erasing” words to make them “fit” into the world’s square round hole.  A heaviness comes over me as I acknowledge this yielding surrender to the common.

I’ll be forty-five this year.  I’m halfway there and I’m tired.  I don’t want to sing anymore.  I want to breathe through the song; live and die in the song.  Anyone can sing a song; I want to surrender to the song.

What’s interesting to me, as I read back through this, is that I live and speak in the same manner.  I rarely rush my words or thoughts.  I’ll take as long as I need to process feelings or decisions, even at the expense of other’s anticipation.  Which is completely opposite to my “business” world.  At work I make decisions immediately.  Apparently my artistic side is different.  I won’t share beyond the moment of my heart.

But i will share this . . . I cut myself the other day.  I watched my blood run from my finger and drip to the floor.  Nothing stopped it.  Society can’t teach me how to bleed.  I write and sing because . . . I write and sing.