coffee with henry

Thoughts from Henry Miller:

A writer shouldn’t think much.

Nothing freezes the imagination and creativity than the thought of censorship.

And in a Paris Review interview, he says of “cadenzas”-

The passages I refer to are tumultuous, the words fall over one another. I could go on indefinitely. Of course I think that is the way one should write all the time. You see here the whole difference, the great difference, between Western and Eastern thinking and behavior and discipline. If, say, a Zen artist is going to do something, he’s had a long preparation of discipline and meditation, deep quiet thought about it and then no thought, silence, emptiness and so on—it might be for months, it might be for years. Then, when he begins, it’s like lightning, just what he wants – it’s perfect. Well, this is the way all art should be done. But who does it? We all lead lives that are contrary to our profession.

Just how many lives have I missed out on? If within ourselves is a space as infinite as the universe, as Zen teachings tell us, then have I only just begun to chip at my layers?

I call myself a writer but of late, I’m beginning to feel like such a poser. My work hasn’t been published, I don’t write for a living. Labeling myself as one seems so pretentious. I cannot even bring myself to think of it.

Sometimes I would think I had a lot to say, but the pages are still empty. Or they’d be littered, peppered with strings of words that do not make sense.

As I sat there, waiting for inspiration to strike- I had a sense that once I touched the keyboards, my fingers would, it seem, know their way around, as if they have found their way home. As a child, I had wanted to learn how to play the piano. My parents wanted me to learn violin- I thought then it was way too baduy, a childhood judgment of cool which I regret now. So there was no compromise, and I am left with no musical talent to speak of. Back to the flitting of my fingers on the keyboards. There is a sense of accomplishment every time a word finds its way to the page, every time a sentence is formed, every errant thought that somehow makes sense when put together. Write with the heart, edit with the mind. Best damn piece of advice I have ever gotten.

This much I know. I may not make a living of writing, but I believe that I live to write. It is my peace, my therapy. That act of stringing words together, of “words falling over one another” makes me feel deliciously alive. It brings me to my truths, painful and yet necessary. It forces me to confront, and sometimes, to consort with my demons, as Erica Jong mentions in her autobiography.

So at times, I do everything except actually sitting down and start. It is so difficult to just start. There are so many things and yet nothing.

Ah, so there it is then. “We all lead lives that are contrary to our profession.” I am a corporate whore (to borrow the term from a friend), a struggling entrepreneur. But in my heart, I will allow that I am a writer, and that keeps me alive. It defines me; it is my essence.