When You Become a Ghost of Yourself

If you’re new here, welcome! I’m Barbara Ellen McMahon, author of the novella, Mrs. Rochester. It’s a sequel to Jane Eyre. This time, it’s Jane who’s locked in the attic and there’s a new governess. It’s available on Kobo, where it’s been getting rave reviews. If you enjoy my writing here, chances are you’ll love Mrs. Rochester.

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With everyone born human, a poet - an artist - is born who dies young and is survived by an adult.

— Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve —

In The Last Chairlift, John Irving writes that not all ghosts are dead people. “In certain cases, you can be a ghost and still be half-alive — only a significant part of you has died. I wonder how many of these half-alive ghosts are aware of what has died in them.” And I’m thinking, not many. Because if you were aware, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to bring that part of you back to life? Would you not want to at least try to revive your inner artist-poet?

I think it’s this lack of awareness that leads to so much of the pain of this world. We’re walking around half-dead, with the best parts of ourselves no longer functioning, allowing what’s left to make all the decisions. No wonder it’s all messed up!

I just want to grab the sad, broken, angry people and say, “Have you tried drawing?” Yes, it’s frustrating. Yes, it shows up the bald patches in our souls. But it also heals us. It connects us to whatever it is we’re trying to draw and to everyone else on the planet who’s trying to do the same thing. I don’t think we can ever get back to the sort of effortless joy we feel as child creatives. That part of us is really hard to retrieve. But if we keep at it — at whatever practice we choose (or chooses us), we can get somewhere pretty good. We can revive most of our artist-poet selves. We can, if not become less ghost-like, at least bond with our ghost-selves.

And, science tells us, we can actually heal, which, how cool is that? I won’t get all better on journaling and collaging alone. But I am better. Loads better than I was when I wasn’t doing these things. My inner artist-poet is reviving. I am becoming one with my ghosts.

Not that I ever fully abandoned myself for adulthood. I’ve never truly believed that life is serious and I was meant to be successful. I’ve played around at a lot of things that kept my artist-poet at least on life-support, if not actively flourishing.

But I think of much of the rest of society, the business people, the lawyers and accountants and bureaucrats, and how miserable so many of them are and how much damage they do in the world. I think they should all be given a ukulele and a sketch book and told to go and learn to use them. Don’t come back to work until you can play a tune and draw a passable tree. Don’t come back to work until your day feels incomplete if you haven’t played your ukulele and drawn a sketch or three. Then see how they manage work, how much less seriously they’d take the whole thing. How much less damage they’d do.

Carting around the ghost of the artist-poet you used to be, you were meant to be, makes people sad and angry. And that is not a good state to be in when you’re making decisions that affect the lives of others. You shouldn’t be allowed to affect other peoples’ lives when you’re in that state, but since most of the adult world is, we accept it as normal. We think it’s how it should be. We allow these broken, damaged people to run the world. And that, of course, leads to more pain, more damage, more brokenness.

I think we need to get back to the Renaissance, to a time when not only were artists valued, but everyone was expected to at least try to be one. When “what do you do?” didn’t mean, “how do you make money?” but “what medium do you use to express your inner vision? Are you a painter? A sculptor? A musician? A poet?”

The world would be a much better, much happier place if we didn’t keep killing off our artist-poets before they reached adolescence. If we understood that creativity was what we’re here for, not maximizing profits. Not controlling the masses.

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Don’t forget, my book, Mrs. Rochester, is available on Kobo. Your purchase helps to support an independent author.