The following, and perhaps anything I write subsequent to this, is an absolute act of defiance! Of what, you might say? I'm glad you asked, I will lay it out for you. To write, to call myself a writer - If my hands could choke, they'd being doing just that, pertaining to the last proclamation; to sit down face a blank page and proceed to engage with it, in the face of my own bellowing self-doubt, scathing self-criticism and an occasional smouldering self-loathing; that I haven't managed to entirely extinguish, is defiance of the highest order. I write without any assurance of readership, without fame, fortune or credential. I have no editor, publisher, contract or commission and yet I write. I'm not a household word anywhere but my own household, and even there, seldom is my name uttered. I live alone, there is no one to offer praise, consolation, or consternation, though I personally, have the condemnation angle, completely sewed up!
There will be no royalty check, no movie deal, no late night talk show circuit - still I insist, I will write. Would it make any difference if I went unheard and unexpressed - I'm damned if I know! But I'm led to believe mine is a unique world view, life experience and perspective. I have been bestowed a particular set of gifts and talents, not just for my amusement or dismissal; but because there are those, that are to be served, by whatever it is I'm meant to dish up. So though there are forces within me, that wake me regularly in the middle of the night, just so I can hear the cacophony of my own thoughts, among them voices that conspire to stifle my voice. To discredit it, devalue it, dismiss it and assure me I will suffer a most abysmal humiliation if I dare utter a word. "You're washed up, a has been - without ever having been, who the fuck do you think you are - nobody that's who!! And nobody is going to listen to "Nobody.." However, there are also those forces that have me relentlessly seeking the spiritual answer having long since been convinced the accumulation of stuff is pointless - I just haven't mustered the focus, backbone and a shovel to dig myself out yet.
My response - I don't just utter a word, I spew them by the dozens and dozens and dozens. I defy the afore mentioned inner "committee of assholes" - I have nothing to lose, I have known utter shame, isolation, rejection & abuse; I don't bid them welcome - but neither do I cower in fear of their arrival.
I defy a need to matter, relevance - mass approval, I can no longer, enslave myself to these dictates. I'm closer to the age my "society," would have me put out to pasture. To that notion I say, fuck that! To all those seniors retirement living corporations, spreading across the landscape like a plague, lying in wait to drain life savings, of all that walk through their doors, guess what - no life savings, I'm not knocking myself out to feather any corporate coffers. So while my well-heeled contemporaries are sitting around the fire, sipping imported brandy and regaling each other, with stories of their lives, I suppose, I will be God knows where, still writing the story of mine.
I'll be the first one to admit, my rebelliousness hasn't always paved me a smooth path. This defiance now is a different animal. It has been forged over a life time - it knows the taste of kissing ass, and has found, the results leave, much to be defied! It is sick and tired of serving everything except, what its God given soul, was created for. "Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir......" - how about, have a nice tall steaming cup of, "please sir, how about, fuck you and the horse you rode into town on! See that's the energy I need to direct into creative pursuits - it's not as though I envision running around the rest of my life, being belligerent (except on those occasions when the need arises to emphasize a point)
It takes no integrity or fortitude to follow the crowd - I should know, I followed enough of them trying to have them bestow, what was never theirs to give in the first place. It takes massive energy and guts to raise something out of nothing - in the face of all those bleating naysayers.
I don't write to gather an audience (well at least not anymore) I don't even insist I have something that anyone else needs to hear. But I know with ever cell and fibre in my body, that I pay dearly for my silence. I defy anyone, especially me to muzzle me any further. It is a divine defiance I court - I know not where it's heading - though me thinkst that it shan't be dull.
R. O'Neill (January 04, 2021)
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