I got a very important text today. It was from a thread I was having with a close friend of mine, and we were discussing different avenues and perspectives for Do Art. After a bit of morning motivational back and forth, they send me:
“I’m telling you man, when you came back from Mexico and switched up your perspective it influenced everyone around you. *thumbs up emoji*”
An electricity coursed through me, and my eyes widened ever so slightly. It was as if in the burst of a moment I felt connected to everything, and everything felt connected to me. A feeling of: my existence is making a difference. The feeling of a flower releasing pollen into a gust of wind, or even rainwater being absorbed up into the roots of a garden. A feeling that I could describe as ‘up-beat peace.’ A sort of high energetic calm. It is always a peak experience to me to find myself being attributed to a positive change in someone’s life. Simply Magic…
The Feeling of an Experience
When writing this, I found myself describing, once again, a feeling as some sort of self contained epic experience. This is essentially what makes up all my writing. So much so, that I often forget to describe what is actually happening outside of the characters in the story, or even myself in a story. I’ve always found myself intrigued by the poetic magic of both positive and negative feelings. Especially those heightened by plot, environment, or circumstance.
I am a bit proud of this. I do think that there needs to be more focus on the ‘feeling of an experience’ instead of the tangible consequences of it. Admittedly, this is, obviously, not an original thought. Of course, the act of epically describing the feeling of an experience isn’t new, and anyone even a bit religious, or has read ANY poetry knows this.
That being said, I have by no means found it plentiful in real life, or even slightly common in my interaction with people. I honestly believe that we oversimplify our emotions, labeling them as their most relatable genre and then celebrating, or in most cases, wallowing in them. Even considering how to describe my emotions and experiences forces me to dissect them in ways that words can’t alone, and naturally require symbols and symbolic imagery. I blame Jack Kerouac.
Jack Kerouac and the “Feeling” of Desolation Peak
Kerouac wrote about his life, about his road trips, about his friends, his family, his deep inner wrestling with good and bad, as well as catholicism and buddhism. I didn’t travel to Desolation Peak because of how he described it. I went because of his description about how it made him FEEL. About how it made him create. Kerouac pumped his feelings and experiences as pure as he could transcribe them into that typewriter of his. In doing so he had to dissect them. In dissecting them he had to magnify them. In magnifying them he had to locate the magic behind them that made them GO.
There is something to learn here. More of us should do this more often, and by this, I mean describe and become aware of our revelating experiences and feelings as moments that are holy. Moments to be cherished and magnified to appreciating magnitudes. If we can be more aware of their occurrence, we can show more appreciation for their consequences.
This morning I received a very important text. It made me feel as if everything that I had done up until that moment in life was meant to happen exactly how it did. I am very grateful for that feeling. A thank you to them, and a thank you to Jack Kerouac.
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