The Next Chapter - Preface

So, starting back to school to further my career in the music industry has really motivated me to push my songwriting to be a priority. I have been playing for more than 20 years but never written a complete song with my own lyrics. My problem is not composing the music, but writing the lyrics and putting them to the music I compose. So therefore, as the growth process evolves I have decided to start sharing my lyrics and poetry to the rest of the world that might be interested in reading it. Since I am not fishing for compliments from random people on facebook that couldn't care less about poetry, I will be sharing my work here on my blog, found  - http://bigwillgibson.blogspot.com/

Before we dive in, I do want to preface with this - Publishing my lyrics and poetry is possibly one of the most terrifying things I have ever done. Whenever you are reading someone's poetry, before you criticize the content, consider this - Any poetry composed purely for self-expression is different than the little superficial glimpses we each allow others to see on a regular basis. The author is stripping down all outer protection, removing our masks and costumes that we all wear and bearing his/her soul to the audience, allowing the entire world without limit or control to peer deeply into their innermost being. This process of self revelation, something that for an individual in, for example, a private therapeutic environment, can often take years before reaching a "breakthrough" in which the deepest parts of a person's own self are finally vocalized and shared with not only the therapist, but also revealed to oneself. And even this example takes place behind a locked door where judgment and criticism are withheld, even more so, actually forbidden, and confidentiality is legally guaranteed. Even among your friends and lovers, those people that you trust the most, consider how long it takes you to open yourself in trust to each person. Many of us like to think we are completely open and transparent to others, but realistically, rarely, (I would suggest never) is a person really an "open book" to the world in their everyday affairs and private thought-life. We reveal only as much of ourselves as we need to and in each situation do so differently according to how we believe it will best suit our immediate needs.

Think about that for a second. We actually guard our innermost being with such vigor and passion that we don't even like to reveal those parts to our own conscious thought and recognition. We don't even like to know ourselves, much less let someone else inside! We as human beings are all born with a true individuality, a unique real hidden self of which we alone maintain 100% of the control over what the outside world is allowed to see or not see. Of course, this individuality has inherent limits. Though we may live and thrive in community, ultimately we are each bound in isolation, inherently unable to fully reveal every part of our personal experience to another person, even if we truly wanted to do so - it is simply not possible to do it completely. In his classic work, "The Doors of Perception," Aldous Huxley so much more eloquently described this universal element of the human condition -

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."

But Huxley's somewhat depressing observation fails to take into account the most powerful ripper of holes into the armor protecting our private selves, and that hole puncher is actually individual creative expression.  Humans possess an ability unique to other creatures -  artistic expression (such as painting, sculpting, musical composition and performance, poetry, creative writing and so forth). The artist bears his soul to the entire world, letting go of that one thing that all humans possess and guard with such tenacity - that one and only very fragile and vulnerable piece of us that is the only element of human existence that is  kept completely private, that is, our own private experiences and the emotions and feelings around them.

And so it is with the artist. The artist abandons that guard on the only thing that he alone has completely under his dominion and instead chooses to share it with the rest of the world, never to return to the realm of personal private secrecy. Therefore, when you read the writings of another, listen to music, or consider a painting or sculpture, remember that art is not created to be critiqued. It is created to express the inexpressible and to share the incommunicable. Together we may share in a common experience, applying our own individual experiences to which a new interpretation and experience can be born.

Thanks for checking out my blog. I hope you enjoy it.