epiphany on the road to oblivion

Since my last post, I've had a revelation. It came to me in the middle of the night probably because I'm currently reading a semi-biographical novel titled "Austerlitz" written by W.G. Sebald. It perhaps kindled a dream, although I can't remember what about, yet I know I read a phrase which must have triggered something in me.

Background to this post: I once tried to learn to play the alto saxophone. After two years I still produced what sounded like distant mournful echoes of how Charlie Parker might have sounded on the very day he first put the reed to his lips as a child. That discouraged me because I twigged that after over 104 weeks of learning I'd never play like Shafi Hadi or Art Pepper, so I abandoned my dream of becoming a jazz musician and sold the saxophone.

The same with writing. All my life I've written. No day goes by without me putting pen to paper, or latterly tapping on a key-board. I've had a dozen or so articles published in magazines and a few short stories printed as a result of competitions going back to 1990 and much later, but I've never felt myself to be a writer. I was no more than a publican who writes, primarily because what I write is crap, or at best is mediocrity personified. My reasoning has always been that whereas I enjoy writing (just as I enjoyed playing the saxophone) the world is too crowded with sunlight to permit the shade of mediocrity. We desire genius; we need brilliance and if I was unable to achieve it, my writings should not see daylight except perhaps in ramblings under a pseudonym. So in comparing my stuff with the likes of Sebald, Woolf, Morton and other luminaries, I found it painfully wanting and tucked it away in disbelief that I could ever have considered myself capable of good, never mind genius. What use does this world have for more of the mediocre?

Now for the epiphany sparked (I think) by Austerlitz. We can view all the art we can reach, we can read edifying and inspirational writing, we can listen to the best of music be it Dexter Gordon or Mozart - but when we dare to balance our own personal aspirations and needs against pleasures of the external, nothing is quite like producing our own. Even though I can't match the dazzling beauty of maestros of the craft, or the thought-provoking elite at their art, what I have created is mine, my original work, and nobody else can claim it. Anyone can take their art vicariously, in galleries, libraries and concert halls, and rightly be awed by the senses evoked, but what beats that thrill of finishing your own painting, writing your own story or blowing sounds which link together to make music? Nothing! Slap your hand on your thigh and repeat aloud - NOTHING.

Maybe what I do is not very good. But I do it, all on my own, and it's mine, including intellectual rights, copyright, ownership and pride. That's a cause for celebration and for making renewed efforts to improve. Because once I've learned that my writing and craft has incontrovertible value if only for me then I can start to accept that I can effect improvements, even at my late stage in life, and that I'm able to match and surpass what I've done in the past and can better it, thereby hiking me up a rung or two on the ladder of personal satisfaction and pride in achievement.

I suppose the coda is this: I take immense pleasure from what I do, and if it's not good enough for the proverbial you, I don't give a fuck. I've done something; I've produced. And that's an achievement. Slap hand on thigh and repeat aloud: ACHIEVEMENT!

Of course, nobody writes like Sebald.