Dear loved ones,
This week I am sending you a poem I wrote earlier this year called “Castle.” It is a poem about success.
I have spent a lot of my time thinking about “success” this year; how I define success, what I am willing to give for it and how to get it. I have had some successes this year, of which I am proud. They have come at a price, of course, a topic on which I will write more in 2025.
My greatest success this year by far has been honing my ability to enjoy the labour of creating art more than the fruit. I have found that the greatest joy in making art is in sharing it with others, either during the process or when you are showcasing the final piece.
It is not fashionable in creative circles at the moment to say that you write or create for other people, and we are always told to create what we, as artists, want first before anyone else.
Of course, I always write and create what I want to read, hear, feel & express. But there is always a part of me that imagines I am baking something sweet for people I love or have yet to meet. Poems and songs are given to me as gifts and I like to pass them on as such.
Some years ago, when Love Story was just a word file, I spent a long time trying to figure out how to fall in love with the process of bringing it into the world as a work of art, rather than just being attached to any accolades that might come from publishing a poetry book. I first learned this idea from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, a book I re-read once a year, and find in each revisiting a new way of understanding the poet’s words.
On work he writes:
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
I don’t always manage this. Often I want the fruit too, taking a little too much pleasure in a compliment or whatever bounty I might harvest from a poem. But overall, I remember that without my colleagues, creative fellows, mentors and of course an audience, there is no show!
The best thing about creating anything, is flinging open the door and saying “come see what we have made, the world is a little richer for it.”
And so here is my reply to Gibran’s lesson on work. This is ‘Castle.’
Do not build your castle around you.
Build your castle by all means, build it.
Then go out into the garden and greet the ones you love as they go in
and marvel at the palace walls.
Sit outside your castle,
or those walls become your prison.
Lay instead on the grass.
Let the wind carry the sky across your skin.
We are so eager to make our mark on
the world. So few are brave enough to let the world mark them.
For my readers in Oslo (and those of you that fancy a trip to Norway’s magical capital): my musical cabaret Love Story is now showing at the magnificent Sommerro Hotel.
The next show is January 14th at 19.00, and you can reserve your seats here:
https://www.sommerrohouse.com/en/events/love-story/
Don’t miss out! 💋
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