My desire drives me to work everyday, and it ain’t in no cadillac. I want to say something. I want to write something. I want to read something. I want to make
something. The Need for Wanting Always is the name Gertrude Story gave to a short story collection. Her desire was returned by the way of a muser who dictated the stories, well most of Gertrude’s stories. I can’t remember the dictator’s name
It’s not the wanting that’s so much the problem, I’ve heard. It’s becoming attached so you can’t let go. Makes sense to me like this…I want…I write a poem…as good as I can…then I let it go. Desire is not the same as attachment, said the man with three ex-wives.
I advised an artist to give up on despair and get back to riding desire right to creation. You are god, the creator, the maker, you’ll never find a better job. You make something using everything your desire gives you, to create. You put into the world something that didn’t exist before your wanting then thinking then making. Without desire your imagination withers. Argue if you like but I believe desire beats all.
Herbert Marcuse says somewhere in Eros and Civilzation, that making civilization is Eros sublimated, Thanatos thwarted. Otherwise like the Kills sing in Black Rooster “You just want to fuck and fight (down in the basement).” Argue if you like, but I think making is the ticket to civilization.
Without desire I will die, or want to die. I know while I am working, writing especially something new that didn’t exist just minutes before, I am most alive in the sway of my free-ranging senses making, creating something new.
“If that last thing left you can do is to keep creating, creation will sustain you…. creation is life-sustaining.” I get this, put succinctly by Tom Allen on CBC speaking about Mahler at the end of his life. I hope my family and friends do too.