In Love with Everything

“To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories—science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”--Ray Bradbury

I've been thinking about this quote a lot this Valentine's season, and about love itself. Last week, I wrote about regret as a major motivation for my writing, specifically regret over miscommunication. It's become so clear over the past couple years that this is true. Almost everything I want to do with my life, from directing films to loving someone, requires being an exceptional communicator. So far, I've made incredible improvements in my ability to lead and interact with people effectively, making my thoughts known in a clear, firm manner while also respecting theirs--last year, I managed to produce a documentary that was broadcast to millions of homes, and this year my freelance career is quickly taking off. However, I've also made painful mistakes along the way, some of which have already cost me at least one relationship. 

But Ray Bradbury's blessing for writers, blazing with his usual vitality, reminds me of an even more powerful motivation for making art: being in love with everything, all the time. For a perfect description of this feeling, read Billy Collins' poem "Aimless Love." I know I've felt it before, and I wonder how many other writers and artists have too. It's a blessing to be so easily enamored with everyday things in that you seldom run out of creative material, but it can also be a curse in a number of ways. One is constant distraction--I've lost track of conversations because I was busy observing the movements of a person's eyes, the interesting shape of their nose, or a striking cloud formation behind them. Last night, I sat in a sports bar with over a dozen glaring TV screens, but the pretty swooping motion of car lights through the windows behind them was enough to distract me from whatever game was happening.

Perhaps another problem with being constantly in love with everything is that it makes finding romantic love more difficult. With your love spread over so many things, it makes sense that a person would have to be exceedingly incredible in order to stand out enough to catch your wayward attention. It's harder to find someone who shares what C.S. Lewis called "the same secret road" when your road is narrow and twists in all different directions.

This Valentine's Day, I spent the evening with friends and had a good time, but toward the end of the night, I couldn't help but notice the visual bitterness of my surroundings. I felt like I'd been dropped into a scene from a story someone had written after a breakup. I sat with my companions at an outdoor table with a bulging ash tray (the "butt table," as we fittingly called it), drinking whiskey and pulling my hood up against the cold and wind. Couples walked hand-in-hand to the steakhouse next door, men wearing sport coats and women balancing on spiky heels, the antithesis of my muddy sneakers.

Fortunately, life is starting to look a lot better than a pair of muddy sneakers, slowly but surely. I'm moving into a lovely, quiet new home next weekend with roommates who like Jefferson Airplane and seem to get upset only when they miss King of the Hill. I also just wrapped shooting on my first independently produced NC Weekend feature at the wonderful Fair Game Beverage Company, though much of the credit goes to a great videographer and production assistant. But perhaps most importantly, I'm writing more than I have in months. It feels like pushing a crank wheel on an old machine and watching the rust and dirt flake off. I still haven't had any new publications yet, but for now, it just feels good to be pushing.