The artist’s moratorium; the Human’s moratorium

We want to be brave.

We want to face the fear and not run for once. We want that when the convulsions start, despite them we will be able to press on into life and living whatever each would demand.

While our minds explain to us that the peace and tranquility we long for so acutely might never be realised in our lifetimes for more than brief moments at a time if at all, we wish our hearts were forebearing enough for the love of ourselves to understand and accept it all. We wish there was hope that saves, near and inside us and most of all that we believed so.

We want our subconsciouses to work in synchronisation with our consciouses so that they don’t become the alter ego taking over us subtly and eventually with the panic disorder, the OCD and the BiPolar. We want this. We wish this and so much more. The thing is, wanting and wishing never did a thing for any one, especially not me.

I once believed in the strength of my mind to do and be anything. As I grew, I knew ultimate strength was a mastery of the mind, the acquisition of knowledge and the ability to apply it in wisdom, the determination of principle and the clarity of objectivity to wade through the waters of every situation however deep, guided by such vision. I could do whatever I put my mind to, and for a while I did, willing and wishing harder and harder than the last time I willed and wished something to be for myself.

In my teens I met the strength of the heart though. It shook the fortresses of the mind in passionate feeling and gushed drowning it in overwhelment all the darn time. It was like this big giant baby you had inside you secretly that made you act like a big giant baby too. I knew nothing about how to control it, how to make it happy and most importantly bend it to the direction my mind decided was the best of us.

The pleasure of meeting its acquaintance happened as I hit the ground running with the reconstruction, redefinition and rediscovery of myself. The expression of those processes became my introduction to art and my dependence on it to have life laid and mapped out in ways my mind could follow the intricacies of my heart that did whatever it did. For the years that followed, the mind learnt how to lead the heart and the heart was trained to follow.

There was a harmonious co-existence somedays being better than others. That was until the next phase of reconstruction, redefinition and need for the rediscovery of myself chimed. The battle of the heart and mind in one body was internal armaggedon. Till this day, they are afraid of the strength and gift of each other; too scared to want to work together. So they don’t.

My heart destroyed everything. My mind shut down in defeat and for a while I was lost and when I wasn’t too overwhelmed by feeling and emotions to function as the human being I needed to my mind back had its back up back on line. The internal dissension and entropy remained perpetuating and intact due to the fact that the external conditions that affected the inner scope remained perpetuating and intact too. So my mind, one day after finding the strength to usurp the big giant baby heart, reasoned in one show of force decision to shut her down. She would be hardened and her receptors that carried emotion and feeling all over the inner city would be seared into numbness; no more earth quakes. No more Tsunamis. Her activity had entered against it a moratorium.

There I was living but with no life and getting used to it day by day- the human moratorium sustained by the sedations of our millennial generation. You know the drill. Fake it until you make it. So I did. I have in most ways.
I functioned. I did what I was supposed to do and in essence was who I was expected to be.

The imposed moratorium on the reality of human existence of feeling restrained and dissipated my abilities to perceive as well as sublimated the cutting edge influence of perception. Even without my heart I could whip life up together. Everything was fine.
Until the human totally wasn’t. There it was so clear to me. Nothing was real. Everything was real too. I was becoming an emotional Skitso. I was dividing myself into factions in my mind. I was this person here and their diametrically opposed opposite one hour later. Something and infact maybe everything wasnt real anymore. So nothing was wrong and nothing was right. It was being out in the ocean without a radar in bewildering darkness. Anything could happen.

The thing is I had for so long depended on the sedation. It was too painful not to pretend. I was completely fine with admitting to being the coward and remaining so because the memory of burning lungs seared with the boiling salty blood I was drowning it, that my mind gurgled and spat out distastefully was still fresh in both our minds.

When the heart feels, it feels too much. It can’t control how it feels. So how about hardening it because life is life. Blow after blow is swang at you unrelentingly, you numb yourself t o reduce your obsolesence as life’s puching bag because you seem to be a favourite. The thing is the deeper you go and the longer it takes, the more all you feel is nothing and the more you feel nothing the faster you veer into monstrosity.

Most days you wake up and you cant recognise yourself in the mirror. It scares you so much you decide mirrors are not your thing. Stupid. Dangerous. Very and absurdly so.
To be human is to feel.
To be human is to feel.
To be human is to feel.
To be human is to feel.
I couldn’t be brave about that. I couldn’t face that fear and not run for once. When the convulsions started from all the withdrawal, a week away from the sedation, I couldn’t press on into life and living. I didn’t want to. I didn’t know how anymore. My frail and fearful mind reminded me that the peace and tranquility I long for so accutely might never be realised in my lifetimes for more than brief moments at a time if at all, and in that moment I knew my heart wasnt as forebearing as it needed to be.

I didn’t even love myself enough for my heart to understand and accept it all. I wasnt even wishing for hope because to me hope didn’t exist. Let the alter ego be created and mess up the whole system so much I dont know what I am. Atleast I wouldn’t be in pain and in fear of pain. After all wanting never did a thing for me.
Then HIM.
Then this.
He was hope, possibility, help strength and indescribable love. A love that wasn’t selfish, not from a fractured mind, unselfish, kind. It didn’t come in pieces. It made me whole. If I was in the darkest most wayward part of my life, then the black had never looked so beautiful. If it was the end, then it was the best I ever could.
This was the need to express the knowledge and experience of him. I had to feel to love him; to know the love so freely and truly he offered completely. This had to be from feeling. True real unencumbered and capitulating feeling.

The artist would be free, if I freed the human comprising both heart and mind unshakled and true, too.

To be human is to feel. To be an artist is to be human. To be whole, human and artist, I have to feel it all.
So I closed my eyes.
Took and deep breath.
And said Amen.
I opened my mouth to sing.
God was not mocked.
You reap what you sow.
The heart reaps what the flesh sows.
Yes.

Let Justice be done, though the Heavens fall.