[Note from Steve: If you’ve downloaded “Mayhem, Murder, and Music,” the free collection of short crime fiction—see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page if you haven’t—you know that music often inspires me. It’s always been part of my life. I even attempted once to write a Broadway-style musical based on Huxley’s Ape and Essence. (It’s now shredded—I didn’t get much further than a rousing march, “Seventy-Six Trombones” in an apocalyptic setting). This series of posts was also inspired by music. I might even repeat some of the songs from that collection! Enjoy.]

Like Neil Diamond’s existential song of the title (I love the version where a 70-piece orchestra accompanies him—it was recorded along with other famous songs on the CD at the famous Abbey Road Studios), this post is an ode to the loneliness of the artist. Whether writer, musician, painter, potter, or sculpturer, creating art is often a lonely pursuit, at least in the creative part. Diamond might have received inspiration from NYC streets for “Beautiful Noise” (also on that CD), but I’ll wager he was alone in his NYC apartment when he composed both the songs mentioned here. (Ironically, cities are often very lonely places.)

Writers of fiction, even as they mirror the romance, comedy, and tragedy of human existence in their prose, must go it alone. Patterson might have 300+ novels to his name, but his “co-authors,” who wrote a lot of them, still worked alone, as he did in his first books. Like a painter with his brushes, palette, and easel (my father was one), the writer paints with words within the solitary confinement of his story, reaching out to readers as if to slice away at that loneliness.

It’s a big decision for any creative to take: Choose loneliness in order to create. Most people can’t do it; or they don’t want to do it, thinking that creating art just creates more loneliness. There’s some truth to the latter, but creating art also is a cure for loneliness, medicine that with the proper dosage kills the ennui of disconnection.

Or maybe it’s not a decision but an addiction? Some people must create; they can’t help themselves. They’ve decided the loneliness of the creator is an obstacle they’re willing to jump over in order to be creative. And whether other people can benefit from and admire those creations or not, the creatives can still revel in their creations. That satisfaction relieves the loneliness.

I suppose there’s also the satisfaction that some creations might live on after we leave this “mortal coil.” This is one reason I include end notes in every novel. I think every author should. While it might be possible to piece together a writer’s creative life  just using her or his novels, the reason for writing them has some importance, if only as a last blow against loneliness. In my case, someone could patch together a decent biography of my life, but I suspect no one will! Yet my novels will live on, at least for a time, as evidence of my creative life…and my loneliness.

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Comments are always welcome.

Rogue Planet. Perhaps you’re familiar with my Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. Did you know several stories are set in that same sci-fi universe, including the Dr. Carlos tales and A. B. Carolan’s first three YA sci-fi mysteries? Rogue Planet is another one, and it has some Game-of-Throne aspects while still being hard sci-fi. A young prince’s planet is ruled by an oppressive theocracy that has led to a quarantine by ITUIP (Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets). He strives to defeat the theocracy’s leader and bring the planet back from the galaxy’s Dark Ages.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

 

 

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