Last night I woke at 4am wondering if i had hit the mid point in the two stage cycles of sleep (since I've been reading the Head Trip). I was woken by a particularly vivid dream - that my publicist Angela was performing a surgical operation - cutting off my hands and then my feet and sowing them back on again, a little shorter. I was allowing her to do this. In fact, I was absolutely going with it. The hands came off quite painlessly. The foot though, was something else. Before she cut into my leg above my ankle I asked her if it would be painful, and she winced sympathetically - yes, it's a bit harder, but it doesn't last long. You can make noise. As she cut into the leg I started to holler and scream to distract myself from the horrifying feeling. But then it was done, and she had stitched them back on again. Then I was driving down a very steep road in some kind of car, with my new tenderised, shorter legs - wobbling and sore on their stitches, cautious not to break them off. There was antagonism on the road, pushy people.
I woke up alert in the middle of the night and with a feeling of absolute certainty about what this meant. The feeling reminded me exactly of the sense I had when going along with the PR for the launch of my book. The willing victim, eager even, ready to undergo LEG SHORTENING for god's sake! not for god but for my product...for the sake of the product, my book. I felt the force of this lie, a product becoming a person, a person making a product. I saw that I have gladly been a prostitute for it; and I could feel the damage in my body, the literal physical ache - not only the memory of my fragile bone and muscle being cut and separated but my jaw aching mysteriously in the middle of the night (it still does now, 10 hours later). I lay there and let it sink in and felt with certainty that I had to remove the book photo from my profile in facebook, fast. I was in danger of becoming my creation, of disappearing into the lie for good.
No wonder I haven't been feeling motivated. No wonder I've been sitting in a funk each morning trying to figure out what to do. I'm unwilling to do anything - there's this rebellion going on inside me. I CAN'T SEE THE POINT OF DOING ANYTHING. And I see now it's true - there is no point. 'Point' = product = something that will make me feel good tomorrow = a lie. not a reason to do anything, not a genuine creative spirit, not a motivating genius, not a being in action. Not... anything.
And it doesn't mean I don't want to create, but this is it - the biggest block between me and creating anything. Sitting in a cafe yesterday I could feel the fog starting to clear - and this was before the dream - I had been in this cloud for three days - three weeks maybe, maybe thirty years - and I thought to myself - "what if the purpose of life is to waste time?" What if my aim is to be the opposite of productive? What if productivity is not the aim, but in fact the opposite...
The distortions it creates... always thinking "what should I be doing now?" Am I doing enough? Doing the right thing? how do I use all this time? To make myself better, to be happy, to survive, to get ahead, to get fitter, to make money, to meet someone, to be someone, to write a book, to get enlightened, to .. to.. to...? I want my reward - for all the work - I keep wanting my reward. Because I've been slaving. So I want the slave's reward. And then the next one and the next, because it's not ever enough, because I keep going back to my slaving. That's why I'm always checking my email, glancing at my phone - where's the next piece of action, the next treat? where's my reward?
So my resolution is this: no productivity. Productivity over. Productivity to be banned. Creation only by accident. Work only for fun. Breaking free. Not as a cute idea for a book or a film or a new quest to save the world. Not as a piece of wisdom to make me a guru or to write down in my next book. No thinking about cute ideas for books or films or saving the world - ENOUGH! they are just more products. Produce, produce. See what I've done! Tell me I'm ok! Give me money so that I can be ok! It's alienation - the very heart of alienation. And if I waste time enough (and energy) then maybe I will understand one day that time cannot be wasted. Maybe I'll just wake up one day and be an actual human being.
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Hey Laurence,
ReplyDeleteThank you for a delightfully unusual pov.
You are a gifted writer. The Ant is a work of inspiration in a Wilde-ish sense - life is too important to be taken seriously.
At least you can dream, I have not had a dream in five years, the last one was the same as the one before, I was standing on top of a burning Empire State Building, like I was waiting for King Kong to swing by and save me. He never showed up. My teeth fell out of my head and the fire caught up to me,
and I burned, not to death, but prayed for it. I woke up to the horror of being on fire, all sensory burning pain from a disease that put me a role that I hadn't tried out for.
My dreams used to tell me the future or at least give me pieces of my present. I have been known to guess at a situation and be right, not always a pleasant experience.
I too am a writer, at least at heart. And an optimist.
Thank you for these posts, I laughed so hard, it brought tears - the kind of belly laugh that heals,. My partner had to come in to join me.
Keep up the writing, I will come back.
May God shine his face upon you and bring you joy, may you not find peace until your work is done, not for money, but for the only real reason to do anything, to bring a little something to others, it enriches the soul and leads you to something new, beyond what the world offers.