Being more vulnerable...

I have decided to be more vulnerable in my life and in my work. Which is hard for me because I am a control freak. But recent events have shown me that I need to open up even more.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to accomplish creatively and who I am as a person and an artist. I have been very introspective in the past few days, because I’m about to have a tremendous change in my life, and honestly, I’m not ready. I might put my favorite cat to sleep on Friday. I have an appointment ready to go. He really seemed to slip away last week. But as of the past few days, he has bounced back and seems more lively and is eating and drinking a lot again. Really not sure what is the right thing to do. I am leaning towards keeping the appointment, but I really want to call the vet and cancel. But Ivan is ancient, at least 21 years old, and I think he is on the verge of suffering. I’m beyond devastated, and I am having trouble processing this happening, even though I know logically this happens to every living being.

I know some people would say it’s just a cat, but to me, he is more than this. He is one of the loves of my life. I would say I have two people and one cat who fill this place in my heart. I love all my cats (I have 4!) but there is something unique about Ivan. We have had a deep connection since the moment we met. He is so intelligent he will carry on conversations with you, and he has literally wiped away my tears with his tears. No, really, I’m not exaggerating. This happened more than once. So I know you are asking what my cat dying has to do with creativity, the writing I do, and the art I make. I guess the answer to that is, that I’m trying to frame Ivan’s life and upcoming death as an event I can draw power and inspiration from.

This week I watched a video of a Nine Inch Nails concert. Near the end of the concert, Trent Reznor talked a little about the process of making the song he was about to play, La Mer. This is what he said:

“Can you hear me? About 10 years ago or so, I locked myself away in a house on the ocean, and I tried to… I said I was trying to write music. Some of which wound up on The Fragile. But what I was really doing was trying to kill myself. And the whole time I was away by myself, I managed to write one song, which is this song. So when I play it, I feel pretty weird about it, because it takes me back to a pretty dark and awful time in my life. It’s weird to think how different things are now: I’m still alive, I haven’t died yet. And I’m afraid to go back to that place because it feels kind of haunted to me, but I’m going to go back. I’m going to get married there.”

And it to me struck a chord. It made me realize that everything we put into our art matters so much to the people who consume it. It doesn’t matter if it is only a couple of people, or millions, these emotions, even the terrible and upsetting ones, have a purpose. I thought about how I knew such intense love for Ivan and now I feel my heart shattering at the realization that it was coming time to say goodbye. But that I can send the energy and passion of these two diametrically opposed emotions back out as art. I even wondered if my sadness and love might actually be two sides to the same coin.

It's easy for me to claim that I infuse my writing with powerful emotions, especially in my poetry and short stories. I know I do, especially with some subjects that I cover in my work. But I have always been a little insecure about it at the same time. When I heard Trent get so vulnerable about what he had been through, it almost surprised me. When I was young and even now, La Mer is a song that brings me great comfort. It’s a chill and daydreaming song for me. I knew Trent Reznor had struggled with depression and drug and alcohol abuse, but I never felt those dark emotions from the song La Mer. Some of the other angrier songs, sure, but not La Mer. It just goes to show that you don’t have to match your emotions to an obvious output in your art. I really liked that idea.

I have always been a little embarrassed to be too vulnerable in longer forms of writing. I really don’t enjoy being vulnerable in general. I had worried that if I put too much of my past, which is very chaotic at best and frightening at worst, into my writing maybe it would scare people away. I often get nervous letting the dark parts of my experience guide me. I could write about other people having issues or troubles, but my own were off-limits. (At least off-limits in the way that I don’t directly talk about them in my writing, except through abstract poems. When I do art like painting a little more comes through sometimes, but even then it’s highly controlled.) When I was younger and writing I feared being seen as some “angry goth overly dramatic teenager”. Of course, I write about myself and my experience, but I often dress it up, hide it in allegory, or behind symbols or characters. Masks and self-made fables make it easy to hide oneself. My writing doesn't exactly mirror my current life recently, but Trent Reznor's ability to turn his pain into something meaningful inspired me to do the same. I asked myself, could my emotions do the same for someone else?

So how does my cat passing away and pumping all emotions into writing come together? Why am I writing this? Well, I’m actually in the middle of a final-ish draft of a story that’s highly personal and important to me. It is not the best thing I have ever written technically, but it’s a story I have wanted to tell for a long time. It is a lightly fictionalized series of events that take place in the years 2004 to 2006. Ironically, this past week, I have come to the part of the story where I met and adopted Ivan on that snowy Valentine’s Day so long ago. I started writing it and I just kept crying every time I began because of the current state that Ivan is in. I considered giving up the story for the time being. It felt too raw. I didn’t want to think of the beginning when it was so close to the end for my sweet boy. But after I heard Trent talk about this, I knew I had to use my emotions for something that even sadness could guide me. Through tears, I wrote a simple explanation of Ivan’s adoption. After writing, I felt drained in a way but also better. Channeling my sadness was also channeling my love and I felt proud of that. I also wrote this post as well. I was initially thinking I would stay semi-private about how badly I’m taking this whole situation with my best friend. But now I know this sadness is beautiful in its own way. I am lucky to have had something so precious that losing it is almost killing me. The intensity is beautiful even while it hurts.

This leads me back to my book. I worried it would be dull to anyone but me, or it was too melodramatic. I felt embarrassed by it. But now I wonder, what if there is someone who needs to read this story? Maybe not many people, but someone? What if this story helps someone else to not make the same mistakes I do in this story? I wonder if someone can overlook the admittedly slow pacing and teen angst, and see themselves in the main character, and somehow it could touch them. To step away from an abusive relationship, like I do in this story? To stop self-harming or hurting themselves? To adopt a wonderful black cat, like Ivan, because I pumped so much love and sadness into my stories of him being a perfect little gumdrop? If someone reading this could feel less alone or validated in any aspect of their experience, that would surpass my greatest hopes for this story. I’m sure Trent Reznor had no idea his song would comfort a random person in Ohio as he was struggling to create anything. He was just trying to do something with what he was feeling. He also took a place of pain and turned it into a place of love, by getting married in the same place he almost died in. There is something romantic and lovely about that. So I want the same for this book, I want to take the ugliness it was spawned from, and make it bloom, make it as intense and beautiful as I am able to.

The thing is, I don’t know who or how someone else could consume this story, and I need to have the courage to let it go out into the world. This story is a kind of cringe, but that’s OK. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written, but I put my soul, my experience, and my sadness and joy into it. This incident with Ivan is just one instance recently where I have let myself just create, just fucking write, I know creativity has always kept me afloat in the past, and it will help this time too. I am trying to be less of a control freak and trust the process, trust where my emotions and memories take me. I know I shouldn’t even worry about any potential or hypothetical “reader” but I tell stories because I want to entertain or inform people. It’s my love language, making things for others to consume. I’m a little curmudgeonly and have stains of misanthropy all over my skin, but in the end, I want to entertain and please people, just in my own way. So I’m going to do that, and let myself get even more vulnerable, to let go of the control. I’m going to release a book people won’t like. I’m going to fucking go insane for a week because my love, my baby, Ivan will be gone soon. I’m crying, but it’s OK. I don’t think all feelings have to be useful, but I think I could and should use more of mine in my writing, music, and art than I already do.