Rambles...why I write?

Ok, so since for the past six months or so I've basically been living and breathing poetry on a daily (or semi-daily...weekly....you know) basis, thoughts about poetry and creative pursuits have become a large part of my consciousness, more so than they had at times when I wasn't writing as much. And thus, I've decided that I'm justified (justified? This is my blog, I don't have to be justified; I can put anything I damn please in it) in putting things in this blog that aren't poems themselves, but thoughts I have regarding the writing of poetry or creative processes, which I like to write down because when I have something a-brewin' in the old noggin it can be as creatively cathartic to put it into words as writing a poem can be.

Now then. Not to come off too poofy or grandoise or anything (to put it nicely), here's some thoughts I've been thinking about that come from a combination of watching a lot of things related to David Simon recently, and to listening to Curtis Mayfield all morning. I think all the David Simon watching has been really inspiring to me lately, even though it hasn't resulted in any direct works inspired by it, but has really been making me feel very deeply about the things I see in the pieces of work that have come from his writing and from his reporting. Even though he writes things that are very very different from the kinds of things I write, as with most of the things I find inspiring, they become a part of my sponge-like absorbent creative consciousness, and make me think a lot about the possibilities of writing (most specifically, as it relates to me) and art and expression in general because it presents me with yet another possibility, in yet another format and in yet another set of words and images and through yet another set of eyes, of what we as people are capable of producing.

The way I felt at the end of the final episode of "The Wire" or the end of "The Corner," or even especially striking parts of "Homicide," reminded me a lot of the first time I heard Ray Charles singing "Yesterday" (you know, the Beatles' "Yesterday"). I remember I heard it the day Ray Charles died, on the radio while I was driving, and I pulled the car over. I just sat there listening to it with my car idling on the side of the road, being more touched my it than I had anything I'd heard in my life up to that point. And I remember it giving me the same thought that I had at the end of "The Corner," "The Wire," etc- that even though it was a piece of art full of misery and sorrow, it made me glad to be alive in a world where the courses of our lives can produce something like THAT. That we have the ability to turn our lives, and other people's lives, into channels of expression. And by doing so, we give our lives a dimension of perfection, or maybe divinity, by turning them into channels of expression. I'm not sure if I can express this very well. But by turning aspects of our lives- our loves, or our sorrows, our decisions and triumphs and mistakes and all the things we've done in the years we've spent that have resulted in all the things they've resulted in- into art, into forms of expression that allow other people to become involved in them and to feel or think in ways because of them, we give them a sort of divinity, or place them in a realm slightly above day to day living, where they aren't muddled by judgement of good or bad, or judged by virtue of degree at all. They simply are, and they are no more or less than what they are, and are not judged in terms of whether they should be, or should be that way, or not- they simply are, and are felt. In that way, all the flaws and ugliness and grief that may exist in ourselves and in the world become an affirmation, to some extent.

That's not to say that all art makes everything that is negative into a positive, but that....I don't know, I guess that it allows us to look with some degree of tenderness or understanding, beyond a judgement, on something's impact, and take that for what it is and how it makes us understand the human condition of living a little more or in a certain way, and recognize that there is some beauty in that always, no matter what form it takes or where it comes from.

And after seeing what a keen eye for understanding or wanting to understand the conditions of other people's living, every decision and circumstance that led to certain outcomes in people's lives, can produce as its end product (as in the kinds of things David Simon has produced over the course of his career), it gave me that same feeling I had when hearing Ray Charles, or hearing Curtis Mayfield for the first time years ago singing "People Get Ready". Even though these things are very different things, I'm sure, than anything I'll end up producing in my lifetime, from very different vantage points and using very different means, it's just affirmed my suspicion even more that this kind of thing (what I just described above, about the results of expression) is something I want to result from my life, and that if the course of my life can produce something that has the same sort of impact as that, even if it's just on myself, then....well, then, I'll be satisfied.

It reminds me a little of something I read by Albert Camus like a million years ago, that said something to the effect of- "If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one."