The Curious Soul (Week 1)

Application of David Whyte's, The Heart Aroused

****Potential trigger warning: this post includes a photo of me with a mummified cat.****

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In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.

Dante, Commedia

Welcome to my unwrapping and application of David Whyte’s, The Heart Aroused; Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. Buckle up, or grab a pillow, because I will start things off by sharing a bit of my story.

How did I get here?

When I was a teenager, I was sure my life would unfold a certain way, namely through the life of a musician. Music was my world. Between learning songs on my guitar, banging on my drums, writing my songs (the title of my first song was He’ll Save You, an evangelizing tune that would’ve saved your soul if would’ve heard it), creating my multitrack recording system, illustrating fake album covers for bands that didn’t exist, I dreamed of being a full-time musician. Or, instead, a rock star.

In my senior year in high school, I finally gained some social currency by sharing my musical talent with classmates. I did this in the not-so-subtle way of standing on the lunchroom table and singing a song called Covergirl¹ about a girl named Sarah who broke my heart. Long story short, I went to Sarah’s house one evening, and we watched the film Newsies, and I even touched her leg, but the next night she had another dude over. I thought we had a special Newsies connection. I was wrong. This lunchroom table moment felt good because I felt seen for what had been stirring deep in my soul, and I felt appreciated. People who had never talked to me before invited me to parties. My classmates nominated me for Spring Fling King. I sang at our graduation. I smoked pot for the first time. I had a sip of beer.² I truly peaked at 18. Bruce Springsteen says it well in his song Glory Days.

This attention sparked something in me. I wanted more of it.

A longing, a wound, a maze, a shadow.

As a child, this feeling of belonging, of feeling like I had a voice worth listening to, was overshadowed by supporting the dreams of a dad who was middle-aged and feeling that he had abandoned his calling to be a famous musician as well. But now, I was getting mine.³

College was much of the same. I picked a major I could float through because I would be making my music soon anyways. What did school matter? (Picture The Fonz here). I immediately gained some attention at college because I repeated what worked back in high school. I was that guy. Yikes. I am a living, breathing cliche, thank you very much. My ego was taking over, and I felt owed something. I took my talent for granted, my time for granted, and my people for granted. I wasn’t teachable, nor was I present. The creative well felt dry. I had nothing to say. This is when you’d typically play the hits, but I had no hits. But let me tell you, I had a shitty attitude, and what’s more rock and roll than that?

After college, I stayed in the college town I had called home for four years and got a job at a funeral home as the in-house musician, sound tech, and video producer. I think I was a part of 700 funerals over two years. I got the job because I can play the piano by ear, which is helpful when a loved one of the deceased asks if you can accompany them on His Eye Is On The Sparrow ten minutes before the service begins. I flubbed this many times. One time, someone asked me to play organ tunes in the style of Schubert. I had never heard any Schubert, so I punched out some organ tunes that seemed Shubert-esque. It either came across like Phantom of the Opera or like something you’d hear at the roller rink. I have no clue. Also, every piano tune sounded like the Peanuts Christmas song, Christmas Time Is Here. Don’t believe me? Someday I’ll play you Amazing Grace in the style of Vince Guaraldi. It is truly jazzy.

I also lived in the funeral home.⁴ Had I been good with money, I’d have had a sweet retirement by now. Instead, I had a chip on my shoulder because this job was below me, so I spent money on booze, eating out, and God knows what. Someday I’d be famous, right? Sure, I was playing piano, working the soundboard, and making Ken Burns-style memorial videos, but it wasn’t really creating.

The only thing that saved my soul during this period was when I bought my first audio recording equipment and challenged myself to write and record a new song every week for ten weeks. This was pure joy. Why? Because I was creating just for the sake of creating. With the time constraint of writing and recording a finished song every seven days, I had to release judgment, settle in, and open myself up to possibility.

The constraints forced me to forget about the outcome and focus more on allowing something to come out. I experienced the push and pull of responsibility and creative urge, allowing them to play off each other. It was truly a happy period for me.

I went to work daily, had friends, watched movies, and enjoyed life. I was posting songs to MySpace (remember MySpace?) and playing at a local bar called Beatnik’s, but that was it. I compiled these songs in a collection called 10 Weeks ’Til Spring. I think I still have a few of those recordings somewhere.

Here’s one called Green Bridges.

The following year I did something similar and recorded a set of songs at home called Ole Dominion (as in Old Dominion, as in my home state of Virginia’s nickname). Then I set up a recording session with a legitimate artist/producer in Boston, put up a down payment, and made a plan. All of that was done without a single song for the project, but again, the constraints forced me to open up and show up to meet the muse. The experience was one I’ll never forget.

That project ended up being my last. It was called Cold Houses⁵, and listening to it now, I hear a 28-year-old kid who had a deep wound and knew nothing about love. I pressed 250 records and still have 230 of them. (Hit me up if you want one). Even though I didn’t sell many records, land a record deal, or score a spot on MTV’s TRL, I consider it a success because it was an enriching experience. I can’t say I felt that way at the time. Failure doesn’t align with a neat and tidy life.

Shortly after that, I packed up all my guitars in my parents’ Honda and said goodbye. Again, that guy had a wound he did not know how to heal. Music hadn’t been the healing balm I had hoped for, nor did the little bit of attention I received. It was a disappointment. Therefore, I was too.

Creativity didn’t make me feel the way I thought I deserved to feel. So, screw you, creativity. Right?

Boohoo. Get on with it.

I’ve now spent the last 10+ years as a carpenter, with a brief stint helping out in a recording studio, mixing and mastering songs, owning my analog tape recording set up, and going to “tape camp” in Nashville to learn the ins and outs of recording music to tape. (Analog snobbery has entered the chat).

Carpentry allows for creativity, but the chip was still on my shoulder. I was always planning on doing something else that was more for me. My heart was detached from my day-to-day labors, and I was waiting for something to land in my lap. When would the world see my talent and my worth? Perhaps I was waiting for that attention and affection that I had received once before. That 18-year-old punk who embarrassed a sweet girl named Sarah by peacocking on the lunch tables one day was mad because he wasn’t receiving the recognition he deserved (read, craved).

I was showing up to job sites, tearing out old kitchens, framing garages, installing cabinets, etc. The tasks felt below me and my creativity. (God, what an ego). I believed I could do so much more with it. I was distracted at work because I wanted to be somewhere else, doing something else. I lost a lot of time thinking that way. Ultimately, I ended up starting a custom furniture business⁶, which I enjoy. Whether or not it’s fine furniture is irrelevant, I suppose. But I also work about 20 hours a week on a job site, moving boards, messing with gutters, cleaning up messes, being someone’s helper, and doing seemingly mundane tasks. And you know what? I love it. I’ll explain why as this study continues.

You know what else? I still play music, but now it’s just in my house, goofing off and playing for the love of it. I play the song Hallelujah almost every night for my little girl, Simone, and it’s one of the most beautiful things I get to do. (If you want me to join your band, I know how to be a good hang. That was the first thing I learned in the recording studio).

How did I get here?

I’m 38 years old, in the middle of the road, and my path has faded away. I have memories and visceral feelings from that journey, but from this dark wood where I have finally woken up, a new path is presenting itself.

The Heart Aroused

We have to fulfill honestly and irreproachably the work destined for us. It does not matter whether we hope that we will become angels someday, or believe that we have originated from slugs.

John Ruskin⁷

I was wrestling and waffling with my creative desire all those years, and I felt I was owed something. I don’t know who I felt owed it to me, but it seemed like something was missing. I had a huge hole that couldn’t be filled, no matter how many songs I wrote or shows I played. Maybe I thought God or a god owed me something. In theory, they gave me these gifts. Why don’t they deliver on the rest of it? Maybe I wanted people to see my worth, or I wanted people to tell me what I was worth. I felt like a fake. I was still that bland boy in a polo and khakis, grinning and putting on the show. Inauthentic, one-dimensional.

Give me meaning! Give me approval!

I don’t think that anything is wrong with desiring success. Creative work can stir revolution, bring about change, speak the truth, and open up new pathways. It can also bring about a quiet and secret delight for no one but yourself. But what’s the fun in that?

I believed I was made to win a Grammy (kidding, sort of).⁸ What I was doing for work to put food on the table, and beer in the fridge, felt like a significant split from the urge to express myself and be heard. It was painful, and I couldn’t accept it as a beautiful oneness, but I could only see it as an either/or that made my hair fall out at a young age. David Whyte would say that,

The split between what is nourishing at work and what is agonizing is the very chasm from which our personal destiny emerges. Accepting the presence of this chasm we can begin to deal, one step at a time, with the continually hidden, underground forces that shape our lives, often against our will.⁹

What does this mean? Why must there be any agony at all? What chasm? Why must I be shaped against my will? Just let me make mind-blowing, world-changing, money-making art, sit back, and enjoy as the awards roll in, podcast interview requests pop up in my email, and so on.

That kind of success is the equivalent of the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids and minivan, as Whyte might say. This is why we create, right?¹⁰

This is some severe ducks in a row, Apollonian thinking.¹¹ We do need this energy, this mindset. It’s one of the faces in a drama. Everything is in its place. Order. Management, etc.

For me, creativity didn’t have room for that way of thinking. We’re supposed to be the alcoholics that are irrational and Dionysian, never sleeping, sleeping around, and brooding in coffee shops. I did this (minus sleeping around). It sucks.

You can also look at the Dionysian force as the unpredictability of all things, and Whyte does as well. Sure, I might be invited to a podcast, an awards show, or sell some records and books. The next thing you know, my dark history surfaces, and my true nature and shit-bag behaviors tarnish my image. A hurricane can wipe everything out in no time.¹²

Boom, you’re done.

Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it; who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, trans. Peter Levi¹³

It’s like the Jason Lee quote in Vanilla Sky where he says, “The sweet is never as sweet without the sour….”¹⁴

Whyte argues that this sourness, this lamenting, this “fist-shaking at the sky” is the energy we need to bring to our workdays. It’s a bit of the darkness, the Dionysian flair needed in the Apollonian corporate cubicle world. We need that energy.

I had that longing when I sat behind a computer creating slideshows for funerals. I had it when I stacked boards for framing a house. I had it as a kid when I had to get up on stage with my sisters, pretend to be happy, and sing Christian songs.¹⁵

Apollonian light and perfection. It’s tidy. It is a polo shirt and khakis. (A gross generalization, but hang with me).

The Dionysian, creative energy was when I wore baggie Dickies, spent hours playing guitar, experimenting with recording to tape, expressed heartache, and tried to heal the wound, but wounded myself more.

The trick, according to Whyte, is to accept this dichotomy as grist for the mill. Yes, heartache has been keeping mills in business for ages, but so can your quirky office mate, a podcast you hear on your commute, or the dead cat you found mummified underneath a deck you were razing.

What was I thinking when I took this photo? I don’t know. Sorry.

Anyways…

It’s a whirlwind of mythopoetic beauty, nuance, and sorrow. Longing and levity make us the unique, emotional creatures we are. Both and. Not either/or. Yes?

Have I lost the thread?

Do you ever think about poetry? Do you like to read poetry? At one time, I thought of poetry as high art, reserved for high-minded, ivory tower intellectual types. I don’t think I’m unique in that. I think what helped reshape that opinion was two-fold: first, it was Mary Oliver. Enough said. Second, I read a book called The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser. I can’t cite this quote, but simply put, he states that the poet is the person who can see the most mundane thing, like a raindrop resting on the edge of a leaf, dangling and just about to fall off, and the poet will find beauty and meaning in that. I loved that explanation. I could connect with that.

All it takes is to open your eyes to the order and the chaos of things and to allow your experience to bring meaning to it. Not Mary Oliver’s. Not Ted Kooser’s. Not Ezra Pound’s. Not David Whyte’s. Not mine.

Yours.

Destiny, And Let’s Wrap This Up

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations.

How does this relate to you and your life? Perhaps I wandered a bit, and maybe Mr. Whyte would say, What the hell does this have to do with my book? Well, I can only say that this book got me thinking through my story and wondering where I’m going next. What is my destiny? At the back of the book, he asks,

How do you grant magnificence to your own journey?

When you think about what is neat in your life, the ducks you have in a row (or want to have in a row), your Apollonian mask, and then the emotional, colorful, intoxicating, irrational Dynosian sense that wants to bust out the drum set or oil paints or note pad, can you see how those feed each other?

Nietzsche says that both energies must be present to make for a good story.¹⁶ You need conflict. It’s the thing that every creative writing craft book states.

I think for me, I was fighting the two for a long time, pinning them against each other. I anticipated outcomes and lived in duality rather than letting map and mystery lead the way together.

What have your own Apollonian and Dionysian storylines been? I’d love to hear.

I’ll unpack this more, and then next week, we will dive even deeper into the mythopoetic and talk about Beowulf. It’s a fantastic chapter, and I hope you’ll come back.

Please consider subscribing and sharing this with someone you think would enjoy it. And I’d love to hear from you. Please shoot me a message on here anytime.

1. It was an original based on the Ben Jonson poem, Still To Be Neat, but also based on this heartbreak.

2. Foster’s, “Australian for beer.”

3. The saga of ProVision Family Ministries is worthy of its own post.

4. I have ghost stories. Also, I watched The Exorcist in the chapel one night with friends, which scared the shit out of me.

5. Produced by TW Walsh of The Soft Drugs and Pedro the Lion.

6. HomerBryan//DesignBuild

7. Tolstoy’s Calendar of Wisdom

8. My senior superlative was “Most Musical,” but some other kid got “Most Likely to Win a Grammy.”

9. THA, pg. 5

10. Is my sarcasm coming in clear?

11. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

12. Whyte’s analogy

13. THA, pg. 15

14. Someone once told me I look like Jason Lee, but I had this confused with Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza on Seinfeld. I was hurt and confused until they caught on to my error. Phew. No disrespect to Mr. Costanza. We just look nothing alike.

15. We had some killer three-part harmonies.

16. The Birth of Tragedy