I was invited to take part in this year’s Booklover’s Festival, which was hosted by Yarra Plenty Regional Libraries. I was asked to write and create a reading on the festival’s theme – creative resilience. Below is my piece ‘Begging Bowl’ which is about the turbulence of creative life and the drive to sustain creativity. Hope you enjoy it!
Begging Bowl
A pandemic is not an excuse to stop your craft and wallow in despair, although it is tempting to mourn what was – what must be rebuilt, what cannot be replaced. The world still needs stories and songs, a soothing balm for the masses. No one is expecting the next King Lear to emerge from lock-down, but it just might. Who is to say it can’t?
Homes are fortresses even if sometimes they feel like prisons. Drown out the minutia, do not crawl up the walls. Watching the news and the calendar makes it all worse. Breathe! The page is blank and full of promise, waiting. It replaces visitors, hugs, crowds. The blank page is a constant in a turbulent world. The blank page is an invitation, a dare.
Stories. Stories need to be written, although our begging bowls are empty and a pittance is hard to come by. Arts do not need saving, say men in ties. Men who watch the country burn and shrug. But an empty begging bowl and silence is better than the alternative, the full lazarettos. How many stories have been snuffed out prematurely? How many houses are in mourning?
Embracing creative malaise is not an option, if you’ve chosen to travel down the road of an artist. Did you choose it or did it choose you? Regardless, do the work. It’s easy to complain and rage and want sympathy, but do not wallow in victimhood. Nothing grows in victimhood. Victimhood grows stale. Rise and dust off your doubt, if you are brave enough. Skin must be as tough as dragon scale, hardened by impersonal rejection and ambivalence. The bold and persistent do not bow out, they challenge themselves and try, again and again.
Ashes are a fertile ground for creation, you’ve tasted their bitterness and disappointment. Projects have been farewelled and locked away; new ones have been birthed. New ones will always be born if you welcome them, if you beguile and beckon them. Leave them treats like an open mind, let them tiptoe in. Stand on your proverbial platform, there are still expectant ears and welcoming eyes, you will find them.
Dig deep, befriend the silence.
Let that special magic pour out, it will dance and spool and find its home. Watch the blank page fill and multiply.
An empty begging bowl, but a full cup of galaxies.
Maggie Jankuloska 