[Jim Moonan]

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I am in constant conflict with my interior creative life. I wish it were different, but am more certain than ever it will remain that way no matter how much I want to make it bend to be a more hospitable, permeable place to reside.

Here is a good representation of that interior world as expressed in a Q&A forum Red Hand Files of Nick Cave. I thought others here could relate.

I'd like to know what others think. It's an intensely personal space, interior life, and a vulnerable space. Are we alone together in this shed? I believe his answer is true.

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[Julie Steiner]

I hear you, Jim.

Oddly, I tend to be far more productive as a writer during periods of my life when there are a lot of other demands competing for my time and attention—perhaps because I better appreciate then what precious, limited commodities my time and attention really are. I don't want to squander those when I'm busy.

When I'm not busy, and have lots of time to write, if I so choose...I rarely so choose.

I guess my muse is Something Else I Should Be Doing.

[Nick McRae]

I'm also an unusual case in that my life didn't get busy until my mid-thirties. Up until that point I'd already been writing poetry steadily for eight years, and other forms of writing for longer. So with such a long runway in the beginning I feel like I've already satisfied my creative urge.

I still enjoy writing but for me it's now a luxury rather than a necessity. When the time arises and inspiration strikes, but those two things don't come together that often anymore. And I have a hard time forcing it when the inspiration isn't there.

[Hilary Biehl]

I think prioritizing human beings over art is of course the right answer, theoretically, but what does that mean in practice? Do you always prioritize the people and responsibilities in your life - and if you do, do you ever get any time to create? Or do you have to be "selfish" sometimes?

While a fair amount of writing can be done here and there whenever there's a moment, I find that I do have to prioritize it at times. I don't isolate myself in a shed, but maybe dinner is late or the place isn't as clean as it should be. There's always going to be a sacrifice somewhere.

[R. Nemo Hill]

It's a tough nut to crack, Jim, and both the design of the crack and the nut-meat inside varies for everyone. Personally, in my past, I have always taken a religious view of art, and the religious life demands that you leave worldly matters behind, that you shed even family bonds, that you become monk-like in your devotion to your art. Hence, I have never established a lot of those bonds, in my personal life, or in my vocational life. I have evaded responsibilities before the fact, as it were, arranging my life to minimize attachments outside of my artistic work, supplying myself with only the minimum needed to survive, and valuing time freed from obligation as my true wages. Paradoxically, I am busier now than I've been at any other time in my life—I am married, I own my own home and, though almost 70, I am still working since I did not make many provisions for an old age of leisure. The bank account?—well, it is always in danger of emptying at any given moment. Yet I have grown used to the precariousness of security, and have learned to thrive in the realm of uncertainty.

At the same time, long practice has bequeathed me a certain facility of expression, and so I no longer need to shut myself off from the din and welter of life in order to concentrate—my inner vitality is stronger than ever, and I am able to partake in many of the byzantine facts of living that others take for granted without losing my creative balance. The Hindus divide life into stages, with the monk-like state of withdrawal coming at the end, but I seem to have reversed their order somewhat, living as an art-monk early on, and becoming a busy ‘householder’ for a finale. Like I said, the cracked nut varies both in its shell and in its inner core. One thing: I do not have children, that is a major factor, and I guess I view my words as my children in that they may (or may not) continue on after me. And to be truthful, my temperament is as much responsible for my lifestyle as any conscious design—I simply could not have lived as a solid citizen, I would not have survived, I probably would have off-ed myself had I to maintain a job imposed upon me by anyone but my own soul. As it is I have managed to earn a living in ways that I could make compatible with my own views of self-expression, and I have worked hard, maybe a lot harder than a lot of others, though for limited remuneration. But, as the song says, “I did it my way”.

It all sounds rather heroic. But one of the major pitfalls of the Myth of the Hero is vanity, and I have done my best to fight against that sort of inflation. I’ve been accused of exalting the idea of the artist, of indulging in it as a luxury. If it is a luxury to remain true to the murmur of poetry, then I am guilty as charged. Yet apart from a few quickly passing fantasies of artistic fame and fortune in my youth, I have preferred to remain working in solitude and expecting nothing in return other than the reward of the work itself.

Really all I want to do for the rest of my life is write and garden, ha! And all those things I do in between, well, I enjoy them, but they are viewed, ultimately, only in the perspective gained by my inner work—work which many of those I am surrounded by have no idea is going on. Responsibilities are a potent issue—once you take them on you must fulfill them—but for most of my life I did not take them on, so I am perhaps much freer than most. But with that freedom comes a groundlessness which others may not have a taste for the endurance of. In my own way, I guess I am addicted, not to security, but to the shifting of all foundation. But that is just me. Above all, I have learned, that each of us is an individual, on an individually blazed trail or crafted path.

There is more than one way to build one's shed.

Nemo

[Rick Mullin]

The conflict described is a good thing, though. Comparable to the paradox of constraint and the feeling every time I pick up a pen, palette knife, baseball bat, or cooking utensil that I am punching above my weight. I dread that feeling ever going away. If the life of the interior were unrestrained by the incursion of real world banalities, I believe there would be a lull in creativity. Perhaps believing this without understanding it (I also take a religious view of things) is how I manage to get up in the morning.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill

Personally, in my past, I have always taken a religious view of art, and the religious life demands that you leave worldly matters behind, that you shed even family bonds, that you become monk-like in your devotion to your art.

This is an interesting point to reflect on. It has me wondering whether I was ever really creating art in the beginning, or if I was more interested in poetry as a tool of expression. I don't believe I ever consciously thought of what I was doing as artistic until I spent a few years at this forum. What fascinated me at the outset was poetry as a form to express inexpressible things, and to play with language in unusual ways. I had fun writing it, and that's all that mattered to me.

The corollary of the above, however, is that after spending over a decade engaging with poetry this way I started running out of things I wanted to say with the form. So I guess for me making art has never been the primary motivation.

This reminds me of an essay by Wallace Stevens where he mentions something along the lines of poetry having no true objective definition or purpose, because every poet has a different conception of what poetry is.

Anyway, to tie this all back to the thread topic I suppose poetry has largely been a hobby, not vocation, for me. It's something to do that I enjoy, but I don't burn with desire to do it. So once my boys showed up it naturally took a back seat to parenting which I find infinitely rewarding. And it also sits in a group of other hobbies that I enjoy just as much.

[Hilary Biehl]

I read this from Seamus Heaney last night and it seemed relevant to this conversation:

"It is a tension to which all artists are susceptible, just as the children of temperamentally opposed parents are susceptible. The child in this case is the poet, and the parents are called Art And Life. Both Art and Life have had a hand in the formation of the poet, and both are to be loved, honored, and obeyed. Yet both are often perceived to be in conflict and that conflict is constantly and sympathetically suffered by the poet. He or she begins to feel that a choice between the two, a once-and-for-all option, would simplify things. Deep down, of course, there is the sure awareness that no simple solution or dissolution is possible, but the waking mind desires constantly some clarified allegiance, without complication or ambivalence."

I agree with Rick that the conflict is ultimately fruitful.

[Nick McRae]

Life experience and struggles inform our art, there isn't really one without the other. Or at least our art can only be as rich as our life experience.

It reminds me of a graphic that had been floating around on linkedin about having AI 'do our laundry so we can focus on our art'. I hazard that many of the people agreeing with this sentiment aren't artists. Without life experience where does the raw material for our writing come from?

[Hilary Biehl]

Originally Posted by Nick McRae

Without life experience where does the raw material for our writing come from?

Depends on how you define life experience, I guess. Some excellent poets have had pretty quiet lives outwardly - inwardly is another story.