Artlessly sad

"The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art."

E. M. Forster

As I put thought to writing this post I'm listening to the "Les Miserables" soundtrack. It is a piece of musical art that entwines love, life, sadness and anger into a poignant piece of musical mastery.

I've been sad this week. It is a private thing that required a measure of privacy to express itself fully. I haven't been creating much this week because of that sadness. Nothing seemed worthy of writing about, or fighting about because I was wandering in my own personal blight. 

I find Sadness tends to be a thing experienced through short bursts of silent solitude. It isn't a spectator sport and I find it difficult to share my sadness with others. 

There are those who consider sadness to be a genesis of great art and listening to the music beating from Mac's speakers certainly suggests that artfully expressing unrequited love can be achingly beautiful. 

But to turn sadness into creative impulse seems to defy the feeling for me. Sadness is low and it lacks the oxygen and combustible material that create the fiery energy I need to heat the material of art. 

For me, anger has the incandescent energy I need to create Art. I can tap into that raging reservoir of raw power to temper words and ways into waves of super heated work and end the process by finding myself the owner of otherness. 

But my sadness is most often silent, cold to the touch and it seems bleached of the vital colors of life. How does one beat beauty out of such a darkly cold material? I think it may be the deep mine where I source the lumps of unformed material that I then feed into the raw, red maw of my anger. 

So I've been mostly sad this week when I've been permitted the luxury of privacy. It has produced a paucity of words, but it will probably mean a rush of witticisms and waves of words in the weeks to come. For I've been mining in the deep places this week and hopefully I'll come back into the sparkling daylight with a surplus of cold dark metal to pound into shiny shapes shorn of the dull depth that was their genesis.  

I've been deeply sad this week and perhaps the fact that I'm writing this post means I've already begun the long ride back into the daylight of being fully among others again. And while it will be a relief to see the sunny side of life again I confess there is something profound about the deep places of life. I'm glad to discover I can manage to live as fully in the dark as I do in the daylight...