The potential to have talent or “An Epiphany”

I’m going to give you a short essay I wrote during the “Bowling Alley” era, as well as a current poem I posted on Facebook, because I think they work well together.  Be aware that when I use ignorant I use it in the dictionary and not derogatory sense. It is a person who lacks a certain knowledge.

An Epiphany

There seem to be three types of people in the writing/reading world.  Those with Talent, those with potential and those who’re ignorant.  This fact causes great distraction and great despair.  I think I could be a good if not a great writer, I think I could have talent, but there is something in my brain which seems to block that switch.  I merely have potential.

It’s such a difficult process and yet for so many people it just flows…as if their body were an extension of their mind and their fingers were a conduit for their art.  They are the talented.  They can sit and let the vision flow through them for hours on end.  They see the course in front of them and they don’t think twice about it; they just go.

I have potential.  The majority of the populace has potential.  This is the ability to see something, to want to create something, but to lack the necessary drive, or vision.  This is the collection of people who like to write, like to paint, like to create with their hands, but employ their creativity as a hobby for all the aforementioned reasons.

Then there are those who have no potential.  The ignorant.  The people who read a piece of literature and don’t understand it; who see a work of art and see it as colors on canvas.  There are the people who just don’t care.  The reasons are irrelevant, schooling, culture, drive, class, it ultimately comes down to what is the interest.  These people would much rather catch a midnight matinee of the new Michael Bay movie.  Why would this be?  How can anyone look at a piece of art and not enjoy it?  Because it’s work.

I study art, but I’m no artist.  I contemplate it.  I assimilate it.  I gorge on it, then I fake it.  To people with talent it’s a drive.  It’s ever present and forceful.  It becomes deleterious to them in it’s absence.  The ignorant don’t understand at all.  They need to be told what the meaning is, it needs to be spelled out.  They don’t want to exert or do the necessary work.

But I have potential.  I love art in all it’s forms.  I see it, I study it, I embrace it, but I’m not artistically inclined.  I don’t have talent, I have potential.  I have become a student, I love the idea so much that i want to become it.  I crave talent, but it’s work.  It’s hard and it takes major effort, but there is a voice somewhere deep down that knows that talent is something you’re born with, it isn’t something you can develop.  So I keep telling myself to work harder, to try harder.  I have potential, I tell myself.

So I drive and hope people will mistake me for what I truly am.  I am a person with potential and I’m a fanatic and I’m trying to fool people into believing that I have talent; that I know what I’m doing.  But I’m still learning.  I’m still pushing myself forward, forcing the creative side to mesh with the analytic side and create something beautiful.  I have potential, but If I work hard enough I hope to fool the world.

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And here’s a brand new poem that I think goes fairly well with the essay.  I’ve been having some writer’s block while working on my novel and have made very little progress in the last two months.  Then one day I sat down and for some reason the creative juices were just there and this poem was the result.  I’m still struggling a little, but at least there is some work happening now…

The Drifter

My fingers tell the story, of the broken trumped up glory
when my mind refused to listen, drowned out by broken pistons
the silence beating louder than my heart…

The darkened frozen night glows, and the turgid sky just bellows
of my time examining seams, on the boulevard of broken dreams
as words flow down as kindling for my hearth…

But through those wounds of empty pages, who speak louder than the ages
as the clock runs down to zero, I’m not a battered, broken hero,
just a man who wont give up until he wins…