Elsa's Quest - The Story. Chapter 23 - Who WIll Help Me with My Spark?

Who Will Help Me with My Spark? I thought I sent that piece to you. I haven’t. Human imperfection. I shake my head. But it isn’t a big thing. I will send it to you now.

There is a big thing: the question the piece asks.

I woke up, many years ago, with the first words going through my head:

WHO WILL HELP ME WITH MY SPARK?

When Dorothy landed in the land of Oz
she needed a lot of help because
she was a long long way from home
and could never make it back alone

Who will help me with my spark?
Who wants to build a brand new ark?
Who will help me light the dark?

I cannot do it alone

Who also has a struggling spark?
Who also struggles with an ark?
Who needs help with their own dark?

We cannot do it alone

Dorothy met three new friends
Headless, heartless, spineless - seeking
Each had much to gain
Together they each reached completion

Who will help me light the dark?
Whose spark will meet my spark?
Who wants to help build an ark?

to float to a new land
to reach where we belong
We need an ark that’s safe and strong

Who will help me build this ark?
Who will help me flame this spark?
Who will sail long after dark?

The water’s rising
I cannot complete it alone

I have timber I have nails
I give up without sails
Help me if you care to sail
If you want to build this ark

dark and light
light and dark

Dorothy left her new-found friends
Each with what they’d aimed to gain
I don’t want to leave the ark
I want to keep us close, not apart

But that’s far far far
For now
Who will help me with my spark?
Whose light meets mine in the dark?
Who longs to build with me an ark?

to sail far into the world

Elsa
November 8, 1997
https://elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com/i-need-help-lyrics.html

I put the piece online on June 6, 2009, almost a dozen years later.

The piece also made its way into MOMENTS, in which someone walks into a used bookstore and picks up a book of poetry. He’s not a poetry reader, but somehow he starts reading. On October 18, 2024, he came to Who Will Help Me with My Spark.

I can still feel the cry inside me. Who will help me? Yes, I have had help. Quite a bit. But even now, I am so very far from where, it feels to me, I should be.

How much is me? How much is the world?

It isn’t easy, these days, for creative people to reach widely with what we create. The internet gives amazingly more access to an audience, but we’re also generally not connected to those people. Also just reaching an audience is not easy.

For years I had up to 60,000 page views a month, largely for my poetry. But I didn’t know any of those people. I felt generally alone. No ongoing connection. No community.

I think of a friend who, moving in with a man for what she called the best relationship of her life, left a lifetime of paintings on the curb. I heard that her new partner appreciated her art work but didn’t like the dark colors. She should paint new works.

I remember her joy and pride in her layered dark blues, the way the various tones came through, adding to the effect.

Those dozens of paintings - way over a hundred - most of them framed, many of them exhibited. Did people pick them up and put them on their walls? Or did most of them get picked up by the garbage truck? I don’t know.

I know she died of colon cancer six years later.

Her partner created a video tribute to her work, from photos from an earlier exhibition. But her work was gone.

And I don’t remember any new works in that tribute.

My sense. On some deep level, he failed her. And again on a deep level, at least for a moment, she gave up - betrayed her gift and her work. She had painted for decades, working mainly at little low-pay jobs. She had sold the occasional painting. My sense it that, at least for a moment, it all became too much for her.

Not long after her death, I created a video tribute to her and her work, mentioning the paintings left by the curb, her partner’s not liking the colors. One of the strangest things happened. As I was exporting the finished video from the external hard drive where I had put it together, to my laptop, the external hard drive crashed. The piece was gone. I had a much rougher version on my laptop. I did a lot to recreate the video, but somehow I did not complete the piece.

I have never had something like that crash happen before or since. Did she not want the story to get to the world, or at least not yet? Did she not want to risk hurting her partner’s feelings? Did she somehow, from wherever she was, create the crash? I don’t know. Anyway, I won’t give her name or show any of her work here. I will at some other time.

And then Emily Carr comes to mind, an amazing Canadian painter somewhat associated with the Group of Seven. (I know, that’s not relevant to most people.) She also sold very few pieces in her lifetime, especially early on. At one point, she completely stopped painting. For a period of over 20 years. She owned a house in Victoria, British Columbia. She had boarders. She was a landlady. And then - I don’t remember if there was some external impetus - she went back to painting. An outpouring.

All that to say, it isn’t easy in our society for most people with a strong creative impulse.

I could say more, like about the kind of generally difficult poetry currently generally admired in academia, the kind of abstract art work currently generally promoted in art galleries, the type of music most promoted and the nasty inner workings of the music business.

Instead, again, here is Who Will Help Me with My Spark.

END of CHAPTER 23

TO BE CONTINUED …

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Posted June 18, 2026