Genius and Daemon

Where do the words go? Do the ideas come before the words or do the words give birth to ideas? Whatever the case may be, I can not find either one of them. I have looked everywhere. Under my couch, bed, pillow, stove and refrigerator. I have looked on top of my bookshelves, behind them and even within the dust ridden pages that sit patiently on my bookshelf awaiting a time when they will once again corrupt my mind. I have cleaned out the insides of my car but still found nothing. This is as frustrating for me as when I loose my car keys and have no idea where I put them. I can remember the last time I held them in my hand but I have no idea where they are. It feels like yesterday that I just misplaced my words and ideas, but the irony of my search is that the more I look the harder they are to find.

It is true that the creative process is irrational. There is no sense to it only because the recipient of creativity can not depend upon it being there when he or she awakens in the morning. I remember a time, not to long ago, when words and ideas for stories would come to me as if brought by a divine delivery service. I would be out walking, working in the fields or sitting at a restaurant and I could hear and feel words and ideas for stories coming at me like a thunderous train of air. The ground beneath my feet would begin to shake when the train was not far away and I would run from wherever I was to find paper and a pen so that I could collect the delivery before it passed away. As I grew older and wiser I began carrying paper and pen with me wherever I went so that I would be better equipped to catch the ideas and words before they could escape and fall into the lap of the next available Writer. As some of you may know, the divine delivery service is impatient and does not care if you are in the middle of dinner with friends, on a nice leisurely walk or riding your bike along a tall cliff. You are a slave to its delivery times, and for someone like myself- the packages where coming quite frequently. I look back on this period of my life with fondness and realize that as an aspiring Writer this was my golden age, and age that seems to now be hiding from the sun.

The Greeks and Romans believed that creativity was a divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant unknowable source for some distant and unknowable reasons. Greeks called these divine attendant spirits of creativity Daemons. Socrates believed that he had a Daemon that spoke wisdom to him from afar. Romans referred to this disembodied creative spirit as a Genius. They believed that a Genius was a magical divine entity that literally lived in the walls of an artists studio and came out to help the artist shape the final art work. In our contemporary time we seem to put the emphasis of creativity all upon the artist (rather than see them as merely a vessel, a cup if you will) and rarely think of the artist as a normal individual with aches and pains just like all others. The only difference between the artist and everyone else, is that the artist receives deliveries from these divine attendant spirits. This may be why we look upon artists as depressive, struggling, idealists who drink too much and live not long enough- we fail to realize how much grief is caused when the delivery service stops showing up and they become normal human mortals again.

It is true, for months I have felt lighter, as if a part of my soul or spirit has stepped out for a stroll. I am not drinking more or becoming more self deprecating because of my loss, but I find myself searching a lot more than I did before. It is almost as if I lost something but I do not know what. Could it be that I am missing my Daemon or my Genius? Have my divine attendant spirits left me for another? This is another one of life’s big questions that I have no answer to, but I do know that I have spent days listening for that thunderous train of air. I will go for long walks or bike rides with my pen and paper in hand, awaiting the sensation of the ground shaking beneath my eager feet. I will sit in restaurants with friends trying to get lost in conversation, or deliberately put myself into preoccupying situations so that I can be surprised by the furious rumble that always used to unleash a tidal wave of words and ideas upon my soul- but I am always waiting in vain. Like a lover who waits everyday for the mail so as to know that their beloved is still alive, I dangle the pen in my hand, flip through the blank pages in my notebook and anticipate what seems to no longer be coming.

Some say that absence makes the heart grow fonder but I say that it can also make the mind mad. I am cleaning my house twice a day and checking spaces that I have checked numerous times before. I have starting talking to myself in public and wherever I am, I look around hoping that I will find something that no one else can see. I travel to the strangest places in my mind and spend hours driving around in my car like a man looking for a run away pet. Maybe the words and ideas that I have lost will come to me in the least expected of places, I tell myself as I search. My wife once told me when I was searching for a wallet that I could not find, you can never look to hard for something that you desperately want to find, and so with the determination of a man who believes that the best years of his writing career are still in front of him, everywhere I go I am searching for those words and ideas that once roamed so freely in the sanctity of my creative mind.

I have started an altar in the corner of my room. On it is an orange and a banana and the words Genius and Daemon writing in black ink and stuck in two small frames. Every morning when I wake up without my creativity I light a candle and sit in front of the altar. I say a few prayers, I make the offering of fruit and then I start to beg. I beg for Genius and/or Daemon to return to me. I beg for them not to leave me alone as an ordinary mortal in this world of mediocrity and nine to five work sentences. I make pledges that I will commit myself to my writing so that I can write books that will enlighten hundreds of thousands of minds. No longer will I neglect writing for days. No longer will I say that I am a Writer when I never re-write. I confess all of my writing sins and with my hands held in-between the palms of my hands, I cry a little and ask for forgiveness. When I am done with my holly supplications I blow out the candle, thank Genius and Daemon for their time and then shower and dress for the long day in-front of me. My hope is that today I will find a word or idea that will get a story rolling. Even better, I hope that I will hear that thunderous train of words and ideas approaching when I least expect it. If hope is what keeps a man alive than I will continue to hope and pray that today will be the day that my search will end and I can sit down and write the stories I was born to tell.