Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism.
 
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."
 
Stephen Crane
 
Writing is something you do alone in  room.
 
Before any issues of style, content, or form can
be addressed, the fundamental questions are: How
long can you stay in that room? How many hours a
day? How do you behave in that room? How often
can you go back to it? How much fear (and for that
matter, how much elation?) can you endure by your
self? How many years – how many  years – can you
remain in a room?
 
Etc.  Michael Ventura  The Talent of the Room
 
Advice to writers of creative fiction and non fiction,
celebrators of Place and Local Food for Thought,
possibly MFA candidates and MacArthur award
authors, musicians and athletes, fashion designers
makers of cupcakes and all those in a service project
to the muse.  
 
All right, it don’t have to be a real room. It can be
a room so to speak in manners of speaking in Fools
Rush Inn, say. The Woodshed in my Mind as it were.  
with me always. Closet of my own. No one loves a
literalist. Monks of old worked in their cells.
Desert fathers in caves. Actually &
metaphorically.
 
Compulsion and obsession is what Ventura is
turning up. Addiction.  Service beyond  work &
academics. Liberal art. An economy devoutly to
be desired.  Otherwise, forgetaboutit.