The Crap That Through the Publishing Industry Drives the Profits

I recently started reading Cameron and Bryan's book "The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity." (Just from the cover you can tell it's creative because "the" is all lower-case while "ARTIST'S WAY" is in capitals.)


Reading this book makes me want to be an atheist in the worst way: at least then I don't have to put up with the insufferably wimpy God/prime mover/"Creative Power" they espouse. He makes Bob Ross look like Odin by comparison. It reads like a cross between a particularly touchy-feely AA meeting and a southern California workshop in practical Buddhism for every day life.


One of their most egregious faults so far is their tragic misappropriation and abuse of a Dylan Thomas poem: "I learned to turn my creativity over to the only god I could believe in, the god of creativity, the life force Dylan Thomas called, 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.' "


Here's the full text.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower  

Dylan Thomas

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.


The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.


The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.


The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.


And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.




And the lesson they drew from this monumental, herculean work is.... "the life force." Let's sample some nouns from this poem about this beautiful, life-affirming George Lucas Force: "Destroyer." "Hangman's lime." "Lover's tomb." "Crooked worm." 


That's right - Thomas looooooves life and creativity and beauty and wonderfulness and wants you to love them the same way!


Am I crazy, or is Dylan Thomas linking life and death, creativity and obliteration? Nothing could be further from "beauty is truth and truth beauty. That is all you know and all you need know." 


Thomas feels the insane energy and destructive power of life as equivalent to the juggernaut Godzilla rampage of death. Neither can be started or stopped at our discretion. Neither can be made subject to our wills. Both are, and both will continue regardless of our protestations.


So what I'm saying is, "If life is so great, why does it end? If creativity is so necessary, why must it all be swallowed up in the abyss?" 


Because the force that through the green fuse drives the flower...


Hauls my shroud sail.


To create is to die. And death may be the final act of creativity and regeneration. You can only come into your own when your parent dies.