Externalization

Recently, in between glorious summer spare time spent strawberry-picking and rock-climbing, I've been working through The Personal MBA, a fantastic intro-to-business book by Josh Kaufman.  In it, not only does Kaufman include the basics of how companies work (e.g. finances, systems, service delivery, etc.), but he also devotes several chapters to learning how to work best as an individual and with others.

In one of these chapters, Kaufman discusses Externalization, which he describes as "the process of transforming our thoughts into some sort of external form, typically by writing or speaking."  Rather than only speaking to other humans or keeping a thought journal, though, Kaufman also suggests that those in extremely complicated dilemmas draw pictures of what they envision or converse to inanimate objects when fellow conversationalists are too apathetic or scarce.

Personally, because I'm the kind of person who could make a billion bucks a day if given a penny for each of my thoughts (i.e. my brain is seriously energetic, complex, and volatile), I made externalizing a habit out of necessity before I even knew what externalization was: sketching dreams and visions for the future and talking to myself alone on my bedroom floor since I was five.

However, there are certain feelings, series of events, and predicaments that life throws at you that can't be handled even with a lengthy discussion with loved ones or with a detailed drawing.  Sometimes, you've just got to recreate the whole situation and pour your life-blood into characters like you: channeling anger into a reckless, dispassionate street racer, welding spontaneity into a witty assassin, or draining the nerve-killing experience of depression into a hopeless antihero.

As best put by Robert Penn Warren, "Real writers are those who want to write, who need to write, who have to write."

~ ~ ~

Bloody Poetry by Grieves - Live at Audiotree

"I guess it started when the lights went out.

Everybody started running round in circles, trying to figure it out,

and I could feel it.

Wedged in my ribs, it felt freezing.

My cold air blew out.

Dance through the evening - paranormal -

slowly being called to the green

where the ghosts gather nightly and sell the devil their dreams.

I observe hails from the other side of the curb,

hold the concrete notepad,

scribble down my words in the limelight.

This is what it's like to bleed ink:

put your fingers in it, paint me a picture of what you think.

Make it beautiful

and make it look like love.

Make it hang from the heavens.

Make it break my trust.

Make it real.

Make it dangerous.

Make it out of the rust and make it passionate and impossible to touch.

It's forever, slowly resurrected from the dust.

When you understand it's everything inside of you, it's us.

You're all I've ever known.

So, to my sleep, you always got me running home.

Handful of roses,

you're my blood and brittle bones,

my soul, an open throne.

You're all I know.

I spoke a whisper in the dark one night:

watch it take form in front of me and mimic my life.

It seemed natural, especially watching it's last breath like poetry:

watch as it clung to its own chest with a smile,

made out of broken pieces of tile.

You can see the thoughts running, chase 'em around for miles.

If you want it, people say that old road is haunted.

If you travel on it long enough, you'll never get off it.

You believe it, 'cause everything is skewed when you see it.

Then you process, automatically think that you feel it,

and automatically sticks to the brain when the truth of it is standing outside,

playing cards in the rain.

You'll never beat the game it plays

You can only turn around and lick the blood from your own switchblade.

It's forever, slowly resurrected from the dust.

When you understand it's everything inside of you, it's us.

~ ~ ~

Write on!

Clove