While listening to my latest CD from the library the other day, I came across the following, and it sort of jumped off the page at me. I felt that, given different circumstances, I easily could have written the same words. They resonated with my own experience in creative endeavors. Musing on the creative process in his current stage of life, the author wrote:
"Shouldn't I have reached the place where I can enjoy the fruits of my labor and be sated with accomplishment? In fact, for me the opposite is true. [ ... ] the experience of creation has yet to become easy. In truth I'm as hungry as I ever was: the 'emptiness deep inside me' aches even more. [Creating] is my life, the one constant I can't live without. It's more than a desire or yearning: it's a necessity.
"The compulsion to create overwhelms from the moment you take that leap. It's irresistible AND terrifying. The undertaking consumes your mind, body and spirit. [...] You're in your own womb-like world. All you can hear clearly is whatever is going on in your mind and the pounding of your own heart. You're removed from what's going on around you, you're holding your breath and your mind is preoccupied in a primal way with the fear of drowning. I am filled with the fear of failure, the fear of not coming up with the goods. [...] This isolation caused a deep uneasiness which I carried around with me every day that I spent writing..."
----- Neil Diamond in his liner notes to "Home Before Dark".
Yeah, man. Me, too. :)
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