Your Immortality

Mik Everett nailed it. She wrote a blog about falling in love with a writer and what happens when a writer falls in love with you. (Check Snopes. This was not Tupac, Drake or Mustafa The Poet.) What a person who falls in love with a writer has to put up with is funny to me, especially knowing my own idiosyncrasies and what I'm capable of. When we writers fall in love with you, you have to put up with even more from us, because we strive to be creative in showing our love and we try just as hard to be creative when we are not (I'm almost sorry for that part).

It isn't just about romantic love relationships, though. It happens in love, friendship, and every variation of connection in between. When you affect us in any way, you put the metaphorical ink in the pen.

We each touch the lives of everyone around us. Whether we know it or not, we all leave a kind of residual fingerprint behind on everyone we come in contact with. The contact could have been as brief as a moment, as prolonged as a lifetime, or any amount of time in between and the circumstances could have been good, bad, or neutral; it wouldn’t matter, you were there. Sometimes the impact is great enough to affect the actions of another, to influence decisions, to color perspectives, both for better and for worse.

When you enter the life of a writer, storyteller, poet, songwriter, musician, artist, photographer, or any other creative your impact goes beyond the one person and into everything he or she creates in black and white, in color, in written word, on film, in marble, in paint, in music, etc. Once it’s put out there for anyone to see, your impact goes even further and the myriad of ways that creation can reach other people ensures your immortality.

Think about it; every single story you’ve read, song you’ve heard, piece of art you’ve seen was a combined result of the direct impulse of the artist and the influence of everyone around the artist (some influences more significant than others).

It’s true. As a writer, I know what inspires me to write – usually the moment it happens and it can be anything, even what seems to be random everyday-ness. Yes, sometimes I see or hear something that causes an emotional reaction, and I use my words as a rebuttal, agreement, or just a means of working through the emotions. And sometimes, I can create something pretty (although that is not always the case).

My stories come from things that I’ve seen and experienced and things that I want to experience. If reality is an illusion, then I’m taking full advantage to write the story I want. If I lost something, I can write about the loss to help me work through it and I can write the story about not losing it and in some way experience ‘what I wanted to happen’.

Whatever the inspiration or the product I’ve made with it, pretty or pathetic, I have everyone around me to thank. Our connections provide the subject, the words, and the colors I use.

There are people out there who say they are not creative. I disagree; we all are, but we all create different things. Some of us create experiences, some of us record it. All artists are record-keepers; we preserve moments in time. Those of you that feel you aren’t creative are the contributors to what is preserved, you are what is saved and commemorated.

I can reread things I’ve written and pick out who was ‘there with me’ even without a direct subject.

Because of you all here, gone, invisible, past, present, and future, I am able to express myself. Thank you for the inspiration, and welcome to your immortality.