Having long subscribed to the idea that life experience is crucial to creativity, and that sometimes I’ve needed to fall apart in order to put myself back together in another way, this quote here unsurprisingly really floats my boat.
“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken” William Stafford
And this is how poetry can reach inside of us and pull something out in a different way.
Much of the time I have thought about my past as somewhat shameful and derisive. And surely, to some, it has been that way.
Amidst the shame and guilt around things I could have done better, there is also an awareness of my own responsibility for the way things have been. My history, though at times shady, has given me a unique and shiny attitude to how things are now.
I vividly recall making a deal with the devil and inviting difficult and dark experiences into my life with full awareness of the risk because (somewhat naively) I was ambitious, wanted to be an artist or a writer, and felt that my middle class upbringing was not interesting enough to fuel this ambition.
Growing up I read biographies and followed life stories. Those of the people I really admired universally involved some kind of deep and soulful suffering or tragedy: think Virginia Woolf (depressed and suicidal), Nelson Mandela (imprisoned for most of his life), William Burroughs (shot his own wife, addicted), River Phoenix (addicted, died on the street outside the Viper Room).
Ok so River was just gorgeous actually, but you get my point.
From this haphazard research I concluded that unless you can make yourself a ‘parachute out of everything broken’ as William Stafford so eloquently suggested, you will surely fall to your death with or without leaving something inspirational and beautiful behind you.
So I’m weaving my little heart out – I’m threading my bad behaviour to my guilt, and I’m sewing a patch of selfishness onto my scrap of fear. It’s really coming along nicely.
And it’s going to be one hell of a parachute.
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