The Wheel of Fortune
A few years ago, when I was going through some rough personal stuff amidst the changing economy, I kept drawing the Wheel of Fortune as a card for daily meditation. At the time I looked upon it as a challenge to remember my center amidst the huge forces constantly swirling around me.
What I think I was missing at the time was to look at my own experience within the wider context. All I could see was my failure, my inadequacy, my lack of a "great job." Intellectually I understood the whole country was going through a major economic retraction, and people far more established and far more needy than I were losing their jobs, their mortgages were going underwater, and more. These cycles are larger than simply one person's choices, though I still want to believe I can choose how to respond to what's happening.
The Wheel has been coming up again, and I'm back to thinking of myself. Having finally published a novel, even self-published as an eBook, I've accomplished a dream I've had for twenty-one years, and it feels satisfying and scary. And I wonder whether it matters. A hard thing for me is to believe my work is ever perfect enough to be sent out into the scrutiny of the world. Perhaps harder is to accept that not everyone will like it, and others might point out very useful critiques, but believing in myself means still talking it up, sharing it with the world.
When I was younger, I was praised for my writing fairly often, which was wonderful and yet seemed unconnected to effort. I had an innate talent, it seemed, one that I did not have to practice or struggle with to achieve. But something given so easily, I thought, might disappear just as readily. I have a fear that my talent might have been overpraised in my youth and has now spoiled, or might have simply disappeared in the meantime. So who am I fooling, other than myself? Moreover, the kind of stories I want to tell, the way in which I want to tell them, seem so odd and eccentric. I have these constant worries that no one is really interested in the things I want to talk about, so why even try? Perhaps that's why my blog posts feel so self-indulgent to me. I'm avoiding writing about risky things by talking about something safe: me.
This weekend, I heard an interview with an independent singer and writer, Alina Simone, who talked about having a very small, dedicated fan base. She acknowledges that her art is not palatable to a wide, mainstream artist, though she is quite talented. Her artistic interests are simply not in line with pop culture at the moment. She contrasted herself with JK Rowling, who happened to want to tell a story that millions of people happened to want to hear.
In reading old Poetry magazines, I think about the vagaries of history, taste, and culture. Poets who are popular now may be forgotten in twenty years, whereas poets who labored under near-invisibility years ago are now considered cornerstones of American poetry. Which is to say, I have little to no control over the larger cultural cycles. The best thing I can do is show up, say what I want to say, and offer it to others to hear. It's the quality I admire so much in others.