Note: This is the fifth installment in a weeklong intensive, with one or two exercises per day (which are bolded). Please, if you follow this series in full or part, share your valuable experience and reaction to the enemy. And of course, good luck!
It’s the very cliché of hypnotism. It might as well be swinging a stopwatch in front of my face. It might as well have a mustache with curled up ends.
“You are getting very sleepy”, it whispers. “The sky is gray. The insides of your eyes are also going gray. Noise from the room is seeping in, inside your skull. Inside and outside jumble together. You are crumpled and soft. I am the only voice you can distinguish.”
I sink into the red pleather couch.
“You are listening very close to me. I have something important to tell you, something true.”
Dramatic pause. I’m fully collapsed.
“This thing you are writing sucks”, it announces. “It sucks for many reasons. Give up now. Drink more coffee or whatever. Anything. Just stop.”
Shut up, I write. I’m f*&%ing writing right now.
As artists, one of our fundamental aims is to counter the enemy’s agenda. And of course, we are the enemy. We’re here to stay and so is it and so we must learn to defend ourselves against it.
I open my notebook to two adjacent blank pages. I dedicate one page to the enemy. I dedicate the next to my own defense. Both pages, as well as the very act of writing, will be threaded through with observation. I write an attack. Underneath it, I note how that feels. I write a defense. Underneath it, I write how that feels. I fill the front of the two pages. Then I look them over. I notice that my defenses consist of explanations. I notice I don’t like it. Why should I explain myself to the enemy?
I open my notebook to a fresh page. I write down a concise message from the enemy. Underneath it I write defenses that aren’t explanations. They are short things, things like “Stop!” “I don’t need you!” “F*&% off!” I fill a page. That feels better.