I have not devoted much time to Wolfe in the last couple of years, but today’s post is about strength of character.

Strength of character was considered admirable post-war, as everyone’s lives had been touched by horror one way or another.  It was understood that one does not have to be nice to do something good, and that it was more important to stand up for your core beliefs than to be popular.

This appears to be a mystery to more recent generations.

When I fell in love with Wolfe

David Avocado Wolfe

many years ago, it was very much a choice.  His staff had been horrible to me, for no apparent reason, he, whilst fascinating, was fairly trivial and the stories about him were horrific at the time.  I was working very hard on a very heavy book, which I have since not continued with due to massive self-doubt, and I was at a loss to why I found him compelling at all.

However he was a productive muse, and I enjoyed our brief spats, and when all the horrible stuff started happening I could not understand why. The woman referring to herself as the Avocadess appeared to think there was some sort of heirarchy that I should be aware of, and as I live in a different continent I did not really understand why it was relevant at all.

So, rather than doing what most people do, getting offended by the poor treatment and carrying on being very serious and under the radar, I started to ponder how to react to the situation positively.

This led to years and years of self-evaluation, and a basically constant gouch on Wolfe, which has led so far to this website, 35 titles, constant development work and eventually I went to meet him.

I was effectively neutered, because I was so busy thinking about how I could be good enough to meet the challenge of Wolfe effectively that I no longer wanted to participate in a relationship with anyone else.

You could look on it that I was in a situation where I was getting nothing from the several relationships I had at the time, I was not in a position to move on because I was taking care of my mother, and if you were particularly negative, perhaps as a result of watching TV and telling yourself you were over the hill, you could say I had given up.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I am in the fortunate position to be hit on regularly by men young enough to be my son, despite not being particularly beautiful, on the basis of unusual levels of vibrancy.

So, basically what I am getting to with this is – you always have a choice.  You can choose to wallow in your inadequacy, you can choose to hit out at other people, you can choose to be a small, nasty, self-serving individual, or you can choose to evaluate your behaviour, ignore other people and develop to the point where you are able to rise above disaster.

I chose, rather than doing what most otherwise intelligent people do and hating Wolfe and everything he stands for, to effectively fall in love with him for several years until I understood why.

And the reason?  Strength of character.  Wolfe has been through an awful lot, his background was not happy, he made a lot of mistakes, he has messed up far more times than you or I.  His material is often gathered rather than produced, and he has been in trouble several times.  And yet he still stands up and gets on with it.  He spreads information that people would not seek for themselves, and in my case he gave me the self-confidence to pursue a line of research I would otherwise have kept very much on the back burner.  I am now in the business myself.

That is not, however what I have to thank him for.  What I have to thank Wolfe for, is for very cleverly putting together his overall presentation to tell you that the bottom line is getting it out there.  What other people have to say about you is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

An author this morning tweeted at me that I had started a hate campaign against him.  This is because he wishes to imprison a gay man for hitting on him. This author lacks the grace or capacity for the generosity of spirit necessary for a happy life.

His followers are astonished that they have spammed my facebook page for several days, and got nowhere with persuading me that persecuting a gay fan is good because this author is very moderately popular with them.  The mean IQ is not high, needless to say.

Nobody has spammed him, and all I have done is simply disagree with him.

The reason I put this with the rest of the post?

Strength of character.  Get some.  Most of the time, the herd is wrong.

I cannot take any more input at the moment, there is far too much to do.

There are many reasons why you do not want to live with an artist.

1.  In my case, I take up a lot of space, and there is work going on everywhere at home, so I often wander off and do not return for an hour or more.
2. I am always working, even when sleeping, so my mind is often not pointing at you.
3. Nothing is more important than the workload, whether that is creating, writing or going to an actual job, so you are constantly fighting for attention.
4. Seemingly random things are very important one day, and then forgotten entirely for weeks because of the focus.
5. Whilst letting go of caring what other people think is highly desirable, it is not everyone’s cup of tea.  I often see even quite well regarded people who are still in the trap of caring what other people think of them, and I frankly feel sorry for them.
6. Even I do not like everything that I do, and the reason for doing it is often not clear for a few years at a time.  This makes evaluation difficult.  For example, I particularly dislike Rebecca Brooks is fit for work, but it looks great in my kitchen because of the other items in the room and it is very handy.  It is unlikely to make sense that I will happily spend time and money on a piece that I hate throughout, but as I am often working on another idea that I need to practise on to clarify it, it is often unlikely that I can explain that. I really made that piece for my mother and she enjoyed it, so although I hate it, it is not going anywhere.
7. When you are with a person who is in a constant state of self-development, you can feel that they will grow out of you, which again does not suit everyone.
8. Not every artist focuses on people.  I have because that is what provokes emotion and the compulsion to make things, it is also very positive emotionally because even when disasters happen, you can use it for something else. That is alarming for prospective partners, some of whom would prefer that you be devastated by their bullshit.
9. It is impossible to relax when you are constantly sparking off new ideas.  That is not easy to deal with, especially as every word gets used for something.
10. Ego – writing and art are both ego-led activities.  Some people are more resilient than others.  I am pretty sure many of the people taking a pop at me recently would not withstand the regular negativity of other people that I have shrugged off.
11. Not giving a shit about your appearance.  I am often covered in glue or resin, and I will forget about health for months if I am sufficiently entranced by what I am doing.  Little Shiva, for example, has made me rather fat because I haven’t lifted my head in 9 months.  Normally I will finish in 3 months and go and deal with things like breathing, but this period has been intense work.
12. Crazy priorities.  It is very difficult to distract someone who only cares about work.

And then there are the inappropriate choices you make because of your wiring.  I did not end up liking Little Shiva as a person, for example, but he was a hugely productive error of judgement and I otherwise adored him.  I have no idea why he is still on the website, I am assuming it is to do with his rather distant home life, but I assume it is vanity or loneliness that keeps him checking up on progress.  He still has rather a long wait ahead.

It is most interesting when you meet people who are highly creative and who have had it battered out of them, either by a love of convention, or by personal shame, or by family stuff.  It clearly drives them quite crazy.  One chap I have encountered recently is beautifully turned out and drinks far too much, to the point of manipulating and judging other people, simply to numb his nerves.

What I am getting at with this is that your emotional state should not get the better of you in terms of behaviour.  Far better to use it for something useful, like developing your brain to deal with other problems.  It is quite incredible how beneficial working in 3 dimensions is for your writing, for example.

Anyway, I have some 2 dimensional business to take care off, so toodle pip.