Sheri R. Watson: The Dance Between Creativity and Self-destruction

I have a friend, well, not exactly a “friend,” but somewhere between my-friend’s-friend-I-am-acquainted-with to someone who might call me if he needs a sounding board “friend,” who really is one of the best writers I know. However, he writes projects so personally and philosophically referential that he misses one of the main points of writing, which is to connect with the “human condition.” In truth, he is trying to die, and that is reflected in his dissociation with even lofty goals of appealing to someone, anyone, at all, somewhere on the planet.

He reminds me of the backgrounds I have read or heard of, of so many writers. Plath, Sexton, Hemingway...who struggled with the strain of the art form and production in some tremendous way. Yet there is a difference. He could have the world by its feet and the tiger by the tail when it comes to coping in normal ways with his incredible mind and beautiful command and power of the written word. The options today are quite different than what were available at the time of even Plath and Sexton. Yet, he refuses to envision some sort of peace within and without himself, preferring to ruin what he so proudly cultivates in real and imminent destruction.

It’s not that he just drinks; he drinks to die. He works fiercely and ferociously on writing projects that are in the throes of massive imbibing of beer and tequila when conceived and carried out. He is in one of the saddest human conditions there is, the kind where he knows better and knows his options, and refuses to change. It’s not like people who are born into no hope, such as in Africa for example, and have no control over outside circumstances. It is a world and projection where what he prizes most is executed every night by the dark, dark Executioner of—himself. What gives him incredibly warped salvation is his curse, because in some odd way he really does care about leaving a legacy to the world, yet he cannot grasp the human connection of it to touch someone else, even himself, and thus it creates a horrible monster of expression that will isolate him even further, though he is so proud of it.

My mother pushed me for years to go into writing, some kind of written art, as a profession. I knew the realities of venturing into such a career, and made up my mind not to lose the pure pleasure of writing in the pursuit of “fame” and money. I read years later biographical information on Sexton and Plath, and knew, from my own fragile mental health, that the strain of such, even if I were talented enough to make it, an obsessively lived life, would kill me much as it did them.

My “friend,” M, chooses a path I dare not take, wouldn’t want to take even if it suited me. I may not be a famous, wealthy or prolific writer, but I am grounded, healthy and happy, and love to write when I want, about what I want and how I want, with clarity and focus and most of all true, uncolored, untainted joy. I can only wonder what “M” might have accomplished, whom he would have connected with and how if only he did not live in an altered world.

You can find Sheri R. Watson's work "Canvasback Ducks" in Cosmopsis Quarterly 2.