Day 82: Passion

Bleary bus ride at 07:20 down into the belly of the city, arriving at work to a delivery of Tramlines barrels to be squeezed into a cellar too small for them to fit. Hauling casks out of the lift, chipping concrete from the floor, sweating, swearing. Making space where there was no space. Stomach churning. Shirt sodden. Then eight hours doing laps of the bar, trying to stave off boredom, trying to find a rhythm in the monotony. To make the same phrases repeated to the same customers somehow fresh. To see out of eyes that haven't gone all the way dark. To feel that spark of the sublime still flickering, low, low, underneath all things.

You scrape the clay from the inside of the glasswash, because it needs doing. Pull coffee beans and hair and stringy filth from the glasswash jet arms. Write a note on a stack of cider bottles upstairs to not use them, to use the older ones first, because you know what people are like. Take the bibs from inside empty syrup boxes and break down the cardboard properly, so more will fit in the recycling. Trade cappuccinos with the chef for a cheaper lunch, because you don't have the money to eat it full price.

The mundane has dimensions, weight, and it can be handled - slowly, with patience, one moment at a time. Routine can be hellish or it can be acceptable. Depends where you focus your attention. Ask Ivan Denisovich. He knows.

Then limping back up the hill, homeward, legs gone, but saving the vital two pounds for the bus - a fortune - because I paid in the morning, and I can't afford twice in one day. Missing the cinema and overpriced sweetened snacks with Arron and Pat, missing craft beers and old fashioneds and shots. Not feeling I'm truly missing anything, apart from the company of my friends. I've tried to assuage my soul's suffering with instant pleasures for too long. So now I trudge home and save my handful of pennies and eat leftovers for tea, and I give myself to words, to sighing evenings of work, to dedication to a thing that is very far off but stretches from this point and can perhaps be felt even now. Not filling myself up anymore but emptying myself out, over and over, until all that is left is space.

While putting out the beer garden this morning Pat and Sam were discussing how kids all aspire to be Instagram models and Youtubers these days. I said that in fairness the ones who make it are singularly driven and dedicated and work so hard, because there are so many of them fighting to stand in that sliver of sunlight we call fame that you have to be tireless to succeed. But I ventured that it's a shame all those children don't feel the same drive to learn to play music or make art as they do to take pictures of their faces for social media.

Pat said yes, but obviously there is money and attention in Instagram, and you could play music for all your life and get nowhere.

And I was reminded of something I'd recently read in an Elizabeth Gilbert book. Gilbert said she was friends with an aspiring musician whose sister once asked this musician what would happen if she never got famous, if she pursued her passion forever and never found success.

The friend's response was this: "If you can't see what I'm already getting out of this, then I'll never be able to explain it to you."

When it's love, the work is enough. You're already here.