Drawing out the Darkness

I wrote, recently, about waking up my muse: "My muse (we all have one) is a rather lazy young man who drinks to much and doesn't like to socialize. He sits in the dark and reads, he is fond of the darker authors and books on my list and others I haven't mentioned. My muse is hard to motivate, hard to communicate with, and won't work for too long. I've let him go to seed, bye and large, let him off the hook for too long. I can feel him becoming a bit more active in this process of blogging. The thing about my muse is that when i call on him he has to reply, he has no choice, he's mine. He grumbles and comes to work slowly and with a bad attitude but he works when i insist and when i insist writing happens." My blog has become this process of waking my muse and also finding my voice. A friend pointed the searching for voice out, recently, in an email, and he was spot on. Re-finding my voice.

It seems silly to have lost it, but as he said, often our voice is used just to fill the silence around, and i will take that a step further and say we talk when there is no need to talk, afraid of the silence, and fail to listen. There is a lot to be heard in the silence. Books to be read, poems to write, worlds to create within our minds and with our pens. In the silence, we can cultivate our voices and learn to speak out when it really matters. In the silence we can listen for God's still small voice in our hearts and allow him to speak and fill the void. I have become afraid of silence. And within this fear i have lost my voice and sent my muse into a deep sleep.

At the heart of this silence is my fear of the darkness it brings. I have been looking at writing, writers i admire, and my own tendencies towards good writing and realize that there is an element of darkness within. As i wake my muse and he begins to speak out with my voice, this darkness is beginning to surface and i have to face it and harness it and use it and allow it to inform my writing. There is no story without conflict and the conflict i face is fear. I am afraid of the darker side of my heart and subconscious and once i truly release it i fear not being able to contain to writing. Truly i am an eternal optimist and generally i see the better in people and situations, this optimism covers for me, for at heart i am dark.

I remember a writing class in which my instructor asked us to read Valencia Street by Michelle Tea i believe. A short work of fiction based on her life as lesbian in San Francisco. I found this book to be a horrible example of self absorbed literature and a complete waste of my time. My instructor saw it as a way to inspire us to take risks with out writing. The exercise has stuck and i have never been able to complete it. I can not take risks, it involves releasing something within me i am afraid of. This darkness that, as i write (as i wrote regularly in writing classes), hovers so close to the surface.

My muse is the embodiment of my inner darkness, i have given it form.

My voice gives it life.

My writing draws it out.