Dear Charles Bukowski...

I was browsing the old web, looking for articles and blogs to read, when I stumbled across this little gem of a poem by Charles Bukowski, read by Tom O'Bedlam. As well as being enamoured by the complete syrupy goodness of Tom's voice, it got me thinking about why people write, or really why they do anything.

For me, writing isn't something I've always wanted to do. In fact, writing wasn't something I fully considered at all, until somebody complimented me on "the way I put words together" and it was never something I'd paid particular attention to, until it became essential for my exams for me to be slightly eloquent. From that moment, the more I studied words and thesauruses and literature, the more I realised how beautiful language is, and how well (and indeed how poorly) it can be used to inspire emotion. 

Words can move people to tears, can calm them, can provoke them to anger, can conjure colourful images from black and white text. Yet when used impersonally these very same words can be considered nothing more than shapes on a page. The first time I completed The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, I immediately turned back to the front page and underlined all the sentences that made me feel something. The book ended up being full of scribblings and underlining and notes, because Wilde has such a way with words that every sentence feels crafted. This lead to me having pages and pages in my journal full of words I adore, and me pausing the teacher in class every time I heard a new word -"Sorry, can you repeat that word? Nomenclature? How do you spell that?"

After my year-long awakening on the beauty of writing, I realised that this is how other people feel about their passions. If I'm impassioned by the interiors at Versailles, how much more must artists feel towards them? If I find beauty in harmonies and suspensions when listening to Shostakovich, or Eric Whitacre, how much more must these composers affect musicians? Everyone has something that their passionate about - something they could talk about for hours. For some, it's birds or trains or football, for others it's bands or paintings or golf. No matter what it is, to them it's beautiful and exciting and important.  

This brings me back to Mr Bukowski, and I would like to take this time to say that I respectfully disagree with what he's saying here. There are times where your passion is difficult; even George Orwell compared writing a novel to a great incurable pain. Alex Turner muses that he doesn't understand people who scribble lyrics on napkins, because it takes him hours to find the exact wording before he's happy with a song. Each person has a different approach to creativity, and none of them are wrong. Who cares if your writing doesn't change the world? Who cares if the only person who ever sees your paintings is you? If you love something, no matter how brilliant or terrible you are, I implore you to do it.

Ignore everything Charles Bukowski says, and do it.

Have a great weekend, see you soon!