“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self,” so said Cyril Connolley, the British intellectual literary critic and writer.

That sentence got me thinking.  I heard it by chance today while on the elliptical machine. during the last minutes of an episode of Criminal Minds.  All their stories get summed up with a pertinent quote.  This one stuck.   Tonight, I took his words to the streets for a walk in the falling snow.

Why write; why do my artist friends create; why do actors and musicians perform, I wondered.  Why go down that road of lonely exploration if not to glean some morsel of wisdom through the process, a beautiful vision, a new interpretation of sound, a good story, a revelation in one’s philosophy, and last but not least, the feeling that one is alive and connected to the divine through creative expression?

Must you give up your self  and integrity to communicate to others?   I always come back to this conclusion: I write to explore the layers of language and because it helps make sense out of chaos.  I write because it’s an expression of humanity.

At the end of the evening’s excursion, with a head heavy from snow, glistening and remembering, I write to connect to you.