General Topic

A Walk On the Creative Side

Somewhere down the road, I hope to have my name and work immortalized.  This is through no sense of arrogance or desire for stardom . . . I guess, I just don’t want to be forgotten after I’m gone from this world.

I have to wonder how many others out there feel the same.  I know that there are a great number who simply don’t care.  They just go about their lives and whenever they drop dead and move on, well, so be it.  They leave little behind of who they were.  Perhaps a child or two to carry the memory along for a generation or two; but, sadly, those memories are confined to a limited set of relations and fade, eventually, regardless.

What I am speaking of is a sense of legacy.  I’d like to leave behind a little piece of my creativity: a novel, a piece of artwork, a song.  Something.  Something that will be happened upon a century from now that will serve as a reminder that I was here, I was alive, I left my mark.

I suppose there are a few different ways of leaving such a mark: humanitarianism (think Gandhi or Mother Theresa (I’d love to be remembered in this way)), politics (think George Washington (no way, for me!)), or creative inspiration (think Michelangelo, or the Beatles).  The latter is really the only category that i think I even have a shot at.  The work involved is great and deep, but worth it in the end.  I believe.

So, I struggle with this, my one true goal . . .

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

–Dylan Thomas

© 2008 Into The Chaos of Everything.