NITCH

Photo of Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver // "In creative work…creative work of all kinds…those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor requires a different outlook…a different set of priorities. Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity… Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always…are forces…that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit… Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness... He who does not crave that roofless place eternity should stay at home. Such a person is perfectly worthy, and useful, and even beautiful, but is not an artist. Such a person had better live with timely ambitions and finished work formed for the sparkle of the moment only… There is a notion that creative people are absentminded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true. For they are in another world altogether. It is a world where the third self is governor... The working, concentrating artist is an adult who refuses interruption from himself, who remains absorbed and energized in and by the work…who is thus responsible to the work… It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be… My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely… My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive... There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time."