THE GHOST MISTRESS (Notes on Being A Writer)
Jann Burner
March 03, 2007
Once you've been in the room within your imagination where the creative machinery lives--once you've seen the creation of color and smelled the spiritual smoke given off by the wheel of life then you'll never be the same. Your life will be transformed from that moment on. If you are lucky enough to enter this room with your work clothes on and dirt under your nails, then you will emerge an artist from that point forward and you will see the world through marvelous fresh eyes.
If you are a writer, sometime before the age of twelve the "Ghost Mistress" comes by and whispers in your ear. I think that it happens once, at a specific time and in a specific place. Every writer who has been seduced by the Ghost Mistress can point to a particular place and time. I remember the afternoon she came for me. It was in the woods out back of La Honda, California and I was twelve years old. It was like a divine inoculation. From that moment forward my life became an artistic track of discovery. It was as if, with that divine whisper, some mysterious genetic threads began to unwind within me revealing the most fascinating patterns....
Society has been programming itself for a few thousand years so as to counter just this impulse to transformation (as if it were afraid such a thing could spread...). The hive tries to distract, foil or harden the creative impulse somewhere along the path and make use of it for its own gain. You must remember here that we are speaking of a reflective consciousness mirrored over and over again (billions of times!).
A photographer sees potential photographs, a capitalist sees potential laborers and markets, a laborer sees potential rest and reward and a writer...well a writer sees it all. This is a threat to the hive.
In the military they have a rule when it comes to "SECRETS" and clearances for those to know those secrets. It is a rule not based on rank or wealth; it is a rule based simply on what they call--the need to know. The writer wants to know it all and yet he has no apparent need to know.
A retired Colonel in the Marine Corps, once told me that you don't try to unwrap the package after you are seventeen--at least not in polite society. Of course in War it's very different. Then everyone throws off their wrappings and pulls out their packing and suddenly it's a surprise package! What is really in there? If you are an American, then of course the idea is that you find a fine little jewel of moral consciousness and honor. And if you are The Enemy...then you find a piece of coal or a small ball of lint and you're in trouble and you lose and then everybody wraps up their package again and goes home for twenty-years. Until the desire to peak inside once again becomes so overwhelming that the next generation throws a War, and some discover that they are made of much finer stuff than they ever suspected and others discover…something else.
So what is the writer's game? The writer lives to unwrap "the package". This is a profoundly disturbing question that the hive cannot fathom. Even the writer most of the time doesn't know why. It is as if the actual writing, the stories that have come down through the pen, through the generations; published and never published and never read, are nothing in themselves; they are like so much temple chanting. The important thing is that they stand as a sign; the light is on...someone is at home! No matter how banal the historical moment might seem, no matter how many millions are being slaughtered in what-ever part of the world, the emergent work of the writer tells us that The Source is here..watching. "The Ghost Mistress" and her earthly lover--the writer--are on the set and snapping pictures.
If you are a writer, sometime before the age of twelve the "Ghost Mistress" comes by and whispers in your ear. I think that it happens once, at a specific time and in a specific place. Every writer who has been seduced by the Ghost Mistress can point to a particular place and time. I remember the afternoon she came for me. It was in the woods out back of La Honda, California and I was twelve years old. It was like a divine inoculation. From that moment forward my life became an artistic track of discovery. It was as if, with that divine whisper, some mysterious genetic threads began to unwind within me revealing the most fascinating patterns....
Society has been programming itself for a few thousand years so as to counter just this impulse to transformation (as if it were afraid such a thing could spread...). The hive tries to distract, foil or harden the creative impulse somewhere along the path and make use of it for its own gain. You must remember here that we are speaking of a reflective consciousness mirrored over and over again (billions of times!).
A photographer sees potential photographs, a capitalist sees potential laborers and markets, a laborer sees potential rest and reward and a writer...well a writer sees it all. This is a threat to the hive.
In the military they have a rule when it comes to "SECRETS" and clearances for those to know those secrets. It is a rule not based on rank or wealth; it is a rule based simply on what they call--the need to know. The writer wants to know it all and yet he has no apparent need to know.
A retired Colonel in the Marine Corps, once told me that you don't try to unwrap the package after you are seventeen--at least not in polite society. Of course in War it's very different. Then everyone throws off their wrappings and pulls out their packing and suddenly it's a surprise package! What is really in there? If you are an American, then of course the idea is that you find a fine little jewel of moral consciousness and honor. And if you are The Enemy...then you find a piece of coal or a small ball of lint and you're in trouble and you lose and then everybody wraps up their package again and goes home for twenty-years. Until the desire to peak inside once again becomes so overwhelming that the next generation throws a War, and some discover that they are made of much finer stuff than they ever suspected and others discover…something else.
So what is the writer's game? The writer lives to unwrap "the package". This is a profoundly disturbing question that the hive cannot fathom. Even the writer most of the time doesn't know why. It is as if the actual writing, the stories that have come down through the pen, through the generations; published and never published and never read, are nothing in themselves; they are like so much temple chanting. The important thing is that they stand as a sign; the light is on...someone is at home! No matter how banal the historical moment might seem, no matter how many millions are being slaughtered in what-ever part of the world, the emergent work of the writer tells us that The Source is here..watching. "The Ghost Mistress" and her earthly lover--the writer--are on the set and snapping pictures.
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