My friend who asked me yesterday how I continue to write in the face of indifference emailed to clarify what he actually meant, a much worse question, to wit:

I meant, how do you maintain the focus and motivation to write, given the discouraging features of your life in general as you’ve described them to me over the last few months?

And my answer to this more pointed question remains basically the same as yesterday’s. 

The moment of grace, musical in a way, the tap of the keys clacking, a bit hypnotic, reminds me of the best of myself, no matter what discouragements lurk.  It is a relief to see my thoughts making themselves plain in black on this white screen.

His clarification does remind me of something though.  I had a dear old friend, very old, she died at almost 93 a year ago next week, who loved my project, the student-run animation workshop.  She had good reason to love it, she was the inspiration for it.  After the death of her youngest daughter on an icy road in Vermont she heeded the advice of good friends and opened the Elinor Beth Music and Art Workshop for local children.   I was one of the workers in this shop, though, as it was spring and we were kids, we spent more time in the backyard kicking a ball around among the budding trees and shrubs than we did at the easels painting.   

The inspirational thing about Florence was how much she loved to be on hand quietly encouraging us to be creative.  I’d ask her to show me things, she always told me she loved my way of doing them better than the ‘academic’ way she’d learned to do it.  She assured me there’d be time to learn whatever I wanted to about technique and the “correct” way to do things but that the most important thing now was to love what I was doing for its own sake.  And to keep doing it, in the way only a creative kid could.  I’d go back to the easel, slap another painting up there, hang it on clothes pins to dry, grab some cookies, suck down a little apple juice and dash back into the intoxicating back yard.

Florence and I remained lifelong friends.  At one point, two or three years ago, telling her about the great potential and probable impossibility of actually accomplishing what I’d devoted my life to– getting the animation workshop up and running–  she told me she didn’t know how I could sleep at night.  She said it was a great idea, but how I could face the discouraging obstacles I was facing was beyond her powers, seemed superhuman.  “I love what you’re doing and it’s a fantastic idea.  I just don’t know how you can sleep at night,” she said with characteristic love and concern.  

I laughed, brushing her worry aside with bravado.  “I don’t know either, but I sleep fine.  Don’t worry about me,” I told her.

Not long after that I began to have trouble sleeping.

So if this blahg goes suddenly silent, you’ll understand what happened.