Notes in The Night

Whenever a thought occurred to me that I didn’t want to lose, whenever I had what you might call an inspiration, I used to jot whatever it was down on a bit of paper. Particularly in the middle of the night. I would switch on the light and scribble whatever it was, hoping I could decipher my handwriting the following day, using whatever piece of paper I might have at hand. Some of these thoughts would later be transferred to my computer to be re-exhumed at some later date and used when I felt in need of inspiration.

In 1957 (how many years ago is that?) for some reason or other I had found myself musing on a box of crayons. It was certainly past midnight and the moon was illuminating the landscape. A box of crayons. Wax crayons, or maybe chalk. Each stick, it occurred to me, contains all the masterpieces of its medium, all the scribblings of a child. A box waiting to be opened, to unloose its Pandora gifts. Raphael, Rembrandt, Michelangelo. Each stick holds the germ of a drawing that will make men dream.…

Yes, I think now. But a spark needs to be fanned into a fire. The initial idea has to be given a chance to develop. To grow. An artist will take an idea as a starting point, whether it is a drawing or a written text. By itself a drawing isn’t enough. How many ideas these artists had and then let them drop. A simple line that had as yet no meaning. A word waiting to be rescued from anonymity.

After that initial intimation, how many paintings were never put down on canvas or paper. How many unwritten poems and novels never saw the light. Sometimes if shared, a nascent idea will take shape, that spark will glow more brightly and turn into a flame.

Lately, James L, a former student with whom I often exchange emails, writes that he has been trying to accept himself. To believe in the present. “Things like the past,” he writes, “and thoughts of the future are all really just moments in the present. Of course, for it is in the present that they surface and we try to make use of them.”

“Can we change the past? Can we make the future? What good does it do to ruminate on the past as opposed to taking what it has given us and using it here in the present, letting it tell us its tale. If we accept what “living in the present” means, there is nothing to go back to / everything you have,” he tells me, “is with you right now. All of the art you created in the past, all your beautiful drawings and writings are really part of the present even if they are also part of the past. So, start now, in the present, don’t try to go back with regrets or losses. You haven’t lost anything!”

True, we don’t lose whatever we thought in the past. I may be trying to catch a mood or feeling, or crystallize a moment and can turn to those notes dashed off at night, written only for myself. Notes which I can then take and weave into a coherent fabric to be shared with others. These notes, these random thoughts, are the threads and will eventually form a complete tapestry. A tapestry of a single day in my life.

How about diaries you ask. A diary isn’t necessarily creative but simply tells you what you did on a certain day in a certain year. It may also be a transcript of your thoughts for the day. It may contain your notes, might serve as a reminder or even include a philosophical thought.

And how about letters? Generally addressed to a specific person, a letter is revealing of the writer, it tells the person addressed what you believe they want to know, what they would be interested in. It is a conversation.

I answer James and tell him that frequently I am writing to myself in these night-time notes. Often if I don’t jot down that fleeting inspiration, I won’t remember what it was when day dawns.

Transferred to a letter, it can be something more than of the moment. A letter, or a note, may, as another friend so felicitously stated, touch on the deep past, the recent past and eternity in the present. A word, once said, takes on a life of its own. It is who we are in the eyes of others.

Is a sketch, or a word, meant for others, or is it just a reminder to ourselves? A way to stop the onslaught of time. For all we truly possess is the moment.

The past of course is memory. The future is that great unknown. All we truly possess is the moment and that is our greatest treasure. But that moment lasts but a heartbeat before it in turn becomes past.