"No place for self-pity ... no room for fear"

Toni Morrison is right again. Time to get to work.

Of course there’s a Toni Morrison devotion candle on my mantle. And a gnome.

“There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

– Toni Morrison

I hate to hear it … but I get this is the time.

• The time to write

• The time to compose

• The time to make art

To draw — to paint — to sculpt— to frame your image — to do anything and everything creative because this is what artists do. (Paid and unpaid: money has never been the true determinant of worth!)

We look at our world and show it to people.

We lead in dark times.

Hard times.

Times of stifled spirits and downcast eyes.

Despair is something familiar to every one of us who has ever picked up a pen or a brush or an instrument. A camera. Anything that helps us to share our vision of the interior and exterior world. (Like I once wrote: all of art is someone saying, “God help me, am I the only one who ever felt this way?”)

Very few of us create from happiness (Read “Things They Won’t Tell You About Being a Writer”). Happiness is death for creativity. It’s like a big, comfy office with everything you need and all the time in the world.

Blech. Nothing good will ever be created here.

That’s not where the good words come. Or when. Or how.

The best words and poems and songs come when we are broken and bruised. Uncomfortable. Likely sitting on a hard wooden bench in the wind, fighting back tears. Alone. We have learned something so true that we are almost scared to speak it. Scared … but also unwilling to be alone in our fright, in our sadness, in our despair. We want to connect but in the best, most honest way we know. And even connection unearthed by tumult and terror is still connection.

This is how we live. How we breathe. How we go forward. How we go on. And if we can go on? Then someone else can, too.