On Being Moved to Stillness; A Narccisistic Review of a Sublime Piece of Art. Poetry.

_{by @hiddenblade}

_{How is it, shadows, that I know ye not?--John Keats, Ode on Indolence.}

First time I came across this photo my eyes got heavy. It was on my phone and my hands shook as I stared at its screen. I was still. In awe. I spent minutes this way, and after a short while I shed a few drop of tears.

I wiped them off instantly.

I had felt that way before. Mostly when I read something unfathomably sublime. For example Ode on Indolence by John Keats. But this was the first time in a really long time I'd felt that way. Fixated. Still. Moved but unmoving.

Its always how I strive to feel with anything--that fixation. you would agree the paradox in itself is sublime. To be moved to stillness. With this photo I felt just that, and it was beautiful. I felt--poetic.

A while back I got an email that made me reconsider how I evaluate myself as a writer. Ever since then I've had a "block" so to speak. I still wrote, don't get me wrong, I wrote things, but never anything good. Never anything that spurred me to that stillness.

To be honest I've never been able to write anything like that. Even back when I felt I was at the height of my writing. But I was always so close, and always felt it was only a matter of time. Then came the mail. Then came the infinite regress.

And since then I could never write decent, or read decent. But it all changed that night, when I came in contact with that photo. I became still again and I felt an overwhelming urge to write. But not prose, poetry. I felt an overwhelming urge to write a poem.

I've never been a good poet. I've never even been a decent one. I've had poems published in a couple of lesser-known literary magazines/journals, but I never get carried away with the fact that I'm not a poet. My poems tend to come really abstract. This is, of course, a fault.

I could try to become a good poet. I may succeed, I may fail, but that is beside the point. And the point is, back then when I considered myself a terrific writer--of prose--, I never had to try. Just, stillness!

Having regained that stillness with @hiddenblade's picture, I started to pour out all the pieces of emotion that ran through me. From stillness to motion. And finally I wrote a poem.

It should be noted that this is not an ekphrastic poem; in as much as the poem is not about the art in itself, but the emotions that the art elicited in me. It could get unclear, seeing as these two things are very similar. What I felt was simply confounded by the image.

I didn't ask @hiddenblade about the concept, mainly because I knew a bit about it, and there was, of course, that beautiful prerogative of giving art our own meaning.

The photo is a nightmare. She said so herself. For me, hoewever, the beauty of it is that this art is not just the artist's nightmare, but my own as well.

I feel betrayed by myself. I wrote a pretty long post about my battle for identity that I'll post soon. Perhaps to an extent, like the artist, I don't feel safe anywhere, with anyone, perhaps not even with myself. But no, this is not my nightmare. This is not what brought me to stillness. This is not what prompted me to run and find a sheet of paper--any sheet for that matter--upon which to collect my thoughts and emotions as a poem. No.

To be confounded. To be utterly and profoundly inarticulate. To be unmoving. To be--still. That is my worst nightmare. And yet that was the exact feeling this art had on me. And that is the feeling that any High Art is supposed to have.

_{The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.
--James Joyce, APOTAAAYM.}

Poetic, isn't it, that liberation should lie in chains. Which is why when I started to cry, I wiped it off as fast as I could.

Again I only speak of the effect this image had on me. Not the image itself. I do not say, for example, that the art is meant to convey that feeling of confoundedness and helplessness. It probably is, but that is beside the point. Yes, the focus is on me. Not the art. Downvote me for aggrandizement.

As I was saying, what I felt from this piece, was darkness. Confusion. Inarticulateness. Dumbness. Silence. And this where the irony comes into place. In the art the demon--i call it demon--is teasing the subject; tormenting her.

For me, however, I felt confounded, helpless, not because I have a demon teasing me or screaming into my ear, but for the exact opposite. I have no demon to tease me. To whisper things in my ears.

Or worse, just as it happened when I came across this art: the fear that I know and hear and I'm tortured by the demon, but I'm incapable of injecting its screams into my writing.

So I clamored for a piece of paper and a pen. And I wrote.

_{In the moment it took
the tear to fall
the demon approached,
begged the darkness
to become his light.
it obliged,
led him to the mirror,
said look, look,
and even though it was dark,
he saw.}

_{"My demon is pretty
to you."
"How do I have her?"
"You must trick your own self
into bringing you to the other side."}

_{So Faust was Mephistopheles
before
Mephistopheles was ever Faust.
Realizing this,
he shattered the mirror,
fell apart in the dark room,
trickled into himself.
he never stopped crying,
he faced them, used them,
rose from Lethe with the vigor of his tears}

It was a valiant effort. But only just. I wasn't anywhere near completely healed yet, but thanks to a sublime piece of art from a remarkable artist, I was well on my way.

---

I wasn't supposed to post this but recent event forced my hands. sad emoji :-(

p.s i still hate writing poetry.