In June 1997, Mary Schmich published a piece in the Chicago Tribune. A year later, Baz Luhrmann made it into a spoken word song.
It starts like this.
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '99
Wear sunscreen
No one heard of it until Baz Luhrmann found it and after he did, it hit #1 on the song charts in multiple countries as “the sunscreen song.“
Then someone started a rumor that it was “really” a commencement speech Kurt Vonnegut gave at MIT. That rumor took on a life of its own to the point that people wrote Vonnegut for permission to reprint. To which he replied I’d love to give you permission to reprint and I would if I’d written it, but I didn’t so I can’t.
Sorry, Mary Schmich.
It’s why women used to publish under a male pseudonym for years, so they had a better chance of being remembered. Quick, tell me George Eliot’s real name.
But I digress.
Here’s one of the things she says…
The real troubles in your life
Are apt to be things that
never crossed your worried mind
The kind that blindsides you at 4 p.m.
on some idle Tuesday
In stunning synchronicity that I don’t really understand, it was, in fact, precisely at 4pm on some idle Tuesday when life kicked me square in the face. I am still reeling.
We all get blindsided sometimes.
So you lay there. Broken, but still breathing. And eventually after laying there for a week or eleven days, you realize you can’t just lay there forever so you crawl to the well to quench your parched throat, only to find it’s gone dry.
I haven’t written in 11 days.
My last newsletter, sure. But that was a draft I’d written before life or fate or maybe Wile E. Coyote dropped an anvil on my head.
Some people can suffer the slings and arrows and bounce right back like a rubber ball. Yesterday I read a post by a woman whose mother died the night before and she wrote about it instantly. Held her mother’s hand, said goodbye and then went home, opened her laptop and went to Medium to write about it.
I am not that person. I never will be.
Kafka once said a non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity and those words ring true for me. Writing keeps me sane. But the well is dry. There are no words.
On a logical level, I know what you do when the well runs dry.
There was a well on the farm I grew up on. Best water you ever tasted. If the well ran dry, you had to dig deeper. The trick was the timing. Because digging deeper is hard work and you need to do that hard work before you’re too parched to dig.
But what would you do if the well ran dry and you didn’t have the energy to dig deeper? If you were lucky, you could call on a kindly neighbor for help. With their help, you’d take turns digging until the well wasn’t dry anymore.
Hey neighbor?
What do you do when you have no words?
That’s not metaphorical. It’s a real question. I hope you’ll answer it.
On Medium…
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xo,
Linda
For the answer, let's go back to your well. The well, whether deep or shallow provides the water we need and it comes to us through a pump. We take the handle and "pump" it everyday until water fills our glass. But there are days when the water level is low or the pipe if filled with air and we pump and pump - getting nothing much for a while, letting the air and garbage out of the line, until the water returns. This is what I do when the words won't come. I write. Silly word phrases, curse words damning the world, the town, the worn out shoes on my feet. And I write some more, just getting rid of the garbage in my head while still believing there are words somewhere in there. And eventually they come. The trick is not to read the words for meaning, there isn't any. Don't try to direct them, just let them out. Hope this helps. Tip: I know you don't used them often, but cuss words are the best remedy. Let them rip. For whatever reason a good cuss word carries far more emotion than a darn. After all, you'll be safely inside your home and no one will know.
When I have no words, I go out and digest them. I read. I watch shows. I play games. I indulge in life and conversations I have with family. Sooner or later, I get a eureka moment and the words start flowing out. We have to remember to let our mind soak things up like a sponge before we wring the water out.