“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
If you get as excited about a blank piece of paper, as Michaelangelo did over the magic of a marble block, you’re the kind of writer we’ve been looking for. Just as marble turned light into the dark unexplored corners of Buonarroti’s mind, opening him up to the seeds of new conceptions, your paper waits with the shining potential of a note yet to be written, or an idea to come to life.
“The best artist has no conception that a marble block does not contain within itself.”
The words are within you. All you have to do is write them out. Do not let anything or anyone confine you. Free thinking might not save the world, but it will give you free rein to saddle up and ride wherever the wind of inspiration blows. William Blake put it perfectly in Auguries of Innocence – “To see a world in a grain of sand. And a heaven in a wildflower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand. And eternity in an hour.” Oh, the possibilities.
Have you found your happy place yet?
Michelangelo found it standing over his marble when the fingers of dawn came over the hills. As though translucent, his eyes could pierce through the built-up layers of crystals compounded within its structural unity. To finally find no crack or hollow, no discoloration, but the crystals nickering brilliantly on its surface. (There was a reason why the word "marble" was derived from the Greek word meaning "shining stone.")
“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”
As Irving Stone imagines the young sculptor: He had lived with this block for several months now, studied it in every light, from every angle, in every degree of heat and cold. He had slowly come to understand its nature, not by cutting into it with a chisel but by force of perception, until he believed he knew every layer, every crystal, and precisely how the marble could be persuaded to yield the forms he needed.
To a writer, this is what the beauty of preparation and research means. A glimpse of the wonderful things to come – by knowing your subject, intimately.
Immortality comes at a price: It is not how brightly the candle burns, but for how long.
An artist does because he must, not because he can. How soon the talent fizzles out without purpose and practice. If you have a talent for writing, keep at it. You can vent it out as Michaelangelo did though. His complaints about the physical strain of the Sistine Chapel started with “I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture,” to “my stomach’s squashed under my chin,” and continued with “my face makes a fine floor for droppings, my skin hangs loose below me, and my spine’s all knotted from folding myself over.”
While he did go on to complete the chapel – making it a Renaissance icon, he had to paint over 5,000 square feet of frescoes and the paintings took four years to finish. He did this by working in buon fresco, a method normally reserved for true masters, and learning new ways to paint figures on curved surfaces that appear in the correct perspective when viewed from 60 feet below.
So, cribby misgivings aside, it is the constant practice and yearning to learn more about your craft that will keep you in good stead. Friedrich Nietzsche got it right when he said "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
If your audience isn't scandalized, you're doing something wrong.
Michaelangelo had popes, kings, and fellow artists pooh-poohing the nude figures of the Sistine Chapel. Today, we stare in awe at the inherent musculature beneath the anatomically-correct figures, and ever-present chubby cherubs.
For those who worship the morbid, he achieved this through illicit autopsies to learn more about the movement of the human body. How else would he have gotten the anxious expression, the casual stance, or the perfect details of the hands, on his larger-than-life sculpture of David?
The stodgy thinking of the 16th century was no different from the self-righteous old boys (and girls) of today. Take Pollock’s drippy, paint-slashed chaos and compare it with a delicate Degas ballerina. Or, Basquiat's notorious graffiti portrayal of royalty, heroism, and the streets with the Bauhaus movement. The point is, be true to what you stand for, even if it shakes up the hoi polloi.
You could also find a co-conspirator like the Medici family (the scandalous power-brokers of their time) who commissions you to do what you do best - revolutionize the world. But that’s a story of political intrigue and gilded Machiavellian schemes for another time!
Not inspired yet?
If this does not fire up the pen-pusher within you, I suggest you take the path angels fear to tread. One that Alan Moore (author of Watchmen) will happily lead you on:
“As I see it, a successful story of any kind should be almost like hypnosis: You fascinate the reader with your first sentence, draw them in further with your second sentence and have them in a mild trance by the third. Then, being careful not to wake them, you carry them away up the back alleys of your narrative and when they are hopelessly lost within the story, having surrendered themselves to it, you do them terrible violence with a softball bat and then lead them whimpering to the exit on the last page. Believe me, they'll thank you for it.”
You’re welcome! Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows to you too.
