The Thursday! Newsletter 2-21: Purpose like a Cornfield
Volume 2, Issue 21
Let's begin this week with a quote from one of my favorite poets, Billy Collins. This comes from an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997 and it cuts all the way to the heart of art's purpose.
Poetry is my cheap means of transportation. By the end of the poem the reader should be in a different place from where he started. I would like him to be slightly disoriented at the end, like I drove him outside of town at night and dropped him off in a cornfield.
When I discovered that quote last week, I thought, "There it is. That's what I want out of my poems." You don't have to read too many of my poems to know I like to take folks on a little journey, often to a destination none of us expect. I like to point out some cool part of the world and say, "Let me tell you a little story about that" and off we go. The story doesn't have to be long and it certainly doesn't have to be great but it does have to go somewhere interesting. Or silly. Silly is a good place to go as well.
That's me, though. How about you? Each of us create our art for some purpose, whether we can define that purpose well or not. Instead of wracking your brain for a fancy mission statement or a lofty noble purpose, though, what if you create your art as a map? What if you create your art as a means of mental or emotional transportation? What if you create your art as a way to make sense of the world around you and folks can come along and maybe find some some of that sensibility as well?
You ought to know why you create what you create. That doesn't mean you have to make it a solemn quest, gather up a Fellowship, and trudge off toward Mount Serious Purpose but it does mean you have to have a standard by which you can measure what you do when you're done with it. You have to have something against which you can put your art an, examine it, and say "Yep. That does what I want."
My purpose is pretty simple. I want to point out cool things I see in the world and tell a cool story about it. Maybe the story is true. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's a little true and a little fantastic and a little weird. Probably it'll be a little weird. What matters is that I get to show you something that you might not have noticed if I hadn't pointed it out. That's fun. That's worth struggling over a blank piece of paper for hours. That's worth wondering whether I'm any good and learning that, once in a while, I might be a little better than I think. My art is about coolness and wonder.
What's your art about? What brings you back to it when you swore just the day before that you sucked at it and would never even try it again? What gives you a wicked laugh when you finish it because you know it is exactly what you wanted when you started it? What makes you feel nine feet tall and strong as a legion? What makes you feel like strutting, just a little bit, down the hallway?
It's not just your art. It's not just the thing. It's the why, the that's it, the "leaving the reader in a cornfield far from home at night with a scarecrow in the distance and a silver moon giving just enough light to walk but not enough light to see what might be ten feet away".
Okay, maybe not the last one, though who am I to say no? Find your purpose, noble or not. Don't agonize over it, though. Please. Find what suits you right now, right here and run with it. You can find another purpose later if the one you choose today doesn't suit you. This is your art. Make it for your reason and your purposes. Let that reason and purpose bring you back to it day after day. Let it bring joy or resolve or catharsis or revolution or whatever else you want.
Let's go on a trip, okay? I want to take you somewhere. Don't worry about where. There might be corn.
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What I Wrote Last Week
"Morning Summons", a Friday Fiction Story
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