artists and damages

A doctor handed me a bottle of pills once. Well did not “hand” them to me. Prescribed them. I was in a pretty bad place. They were supposed to fix my head. That bottle was full of pills too.

I didn’t take them.

I sat on them for three months. Then I flushed them.

Later someone told me that bottle of pills was worth a lot of money on the street and I should have sold them. I guess I flushed $1,000 street value in pills.

I didn’t care. I cared that I didn’t take them.

I cared that my head worked. Or didn’t — but in ways I understood.

 

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If you’re an artist, if you’re a creative, you fear the fuck out of anything changing the stream in your head. You can’t afford to fix anything because it might break what matters.

 

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Doctors thought I was dying. They handed me a bottle of pills. Okay, not “handed,” prescribed.

They said, “You must take these.” I said, “Do they effect your head? Your thoughts?” They said, “Sure, they’ll totally fuck up your head, but you’ll be alive.”

I said, “I have to finish a script, I’m not taking your head poison.”

I didn’t take those pills. I flushed them too.

 

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See a pattern?

 

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There are a lot of stories about writers who break. Or maybe not break. Maybe they were broken going in. But who… collapse under the damage.

I know why.

Writers fear being “fixed.”

“Fixing” a writer might mean breaking what is important and matters. That ability to reach into the ether and touch and bring back a piece of God.

We do that.

We reach into the ether and touch and bring back a piece of God.

 

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Writers don’t know how or why we have that gift. But we are scared as hell changing anything about us will take that away.

That’s why there are so many broken writers.

We are afraid to fix anything. That might break our bridge to God.