Too Serious?

I'm enjoying a book by Deborah Alun-Jones: The Wry Romance of the Literary Rectory. She explores various old rectories throughout England and the poets and writers who lived in them. It's well written, entertaining to read, and we learn a bit about writers such as Alfred Tennyson, Dorothy L. Sayers, and George Herbert.

Some writers sought solitary, romantic places in which to write; some were rectors as well as writers; some were sons or daughters of rectors. Most of the homes they lived in were in remote places, off in the countryside; they were drafty and damp and no-frills, in some cases without running water or reliable heat. Yet they were graced by lush landscapes and gardens in which to have tea or to otherwise party with friends.

I confess that at times I become irritated with a particular writer or poet who drags a wife and kids off to the country, to a pretty hard life, so that he can write in the kind of space he wants. Having written the better part of two novels on the commuter train to and from Chicago, I can't help but wonder if sometimes we take ourselves too seriously as artists. I can write only in a garden--really? I must make other family members suffer isolation and drudgery because I need a quiet study miles from city confusion--really?

Are we too serious about ourselves sometimes? Are we uncreative about our creativity? If I'm truly creative, then I should be able to make any number of situations work for me. And, as a person of faith of the fairly basic sort, I believe that love for spouse, children, and people in general sometimes makes demands of me that render the creative work more challenging.

We folks of the Judeo-Christian persuasion might imagine David the shepherd lounging out in the pasture, blissfully writing psalms. But have you ever spent much time in a pasture? Lumpy earth, animal dung, bugs, rain--at times the outdoors is almost too distracting for me to do much interior exploration. The shepherd psalmist might have imagined a clean, dry room with a flat surface, such as an ordinary table, as the perfect place to write. Actually, back in David's time, I think they simply composed and memorized and passed along by speaking and singing and memorizing some more. An artist simply did what he needed to do.