Pandemic Writing: "Blood on my Quill"

Emma,

Instead of writing an essay analyzing the novel “Mrs. Dalloway,” I decided to follow in her footsteps and try a stream of consciousness story myself. Similarly to Virginia Woolfe, I have collided different time periods of my life, making a collage of time. They surround the time of illness, injury, and heartbreak: the first, 2 years ago when my ballet career came to a heartbreaking end with the diagnoses of a heart and neurological condition, and the second, today when I am dealing with a heartbreak from the end of a relationship during an international pandemic. In both situations, I ended up back at home to reassess my life and figure out how to go forward. This story is inspired by journal writings that I uncovered from 2 years ago, 1 year ago, and things I have been writing over the past few months to process the current situation I am in. I printed things up and tore pages out and highlighted what was streamlined throughout the time periods. All the writings took place in my bed room, and it indeed has felt like a collage of time in my own life. It is kind of like the “little room” that Clarissa went into when she came to terms with herself. This short story is about a pianist, instead of a dancer. The character’s name is Elizabeth Ryan -- her last name being the one I thought I might’ve had. (Disclaimer: “blood on my quill” is not referencing self harm, it is only a metaphor).

Happy Reading,

Bethany Ward

Elizabeth Ryan: Blood on my Quill

Elizabeth rolled up her sleeves, lightly touching her fingers to the keys of vulnerability. When she played piano, it was as if she was bleeding. It used to shock her that our insides are the color of madness, anger, rage, power, and passion. Blood could have been made a calming lavender, or a weak pink, or even a stable blue, but for some reason when we are opened up we are found to be quite passionate, and if we’re lucky, quite mad. Elizabeth would not say she is mad all the time; she was only crazy when she played piano, and when she had practiced a piece for a very long time and then found herself in a performance, in tune with the piano, but departed from herself. She'd played piano since she was a young girl and was sought out by piano masters across the states to coach her. A smart girl with equal creativity to match, Elizabeth was a dangerous combination: a deep thinker with an assessment of the world around her as if she both lived in the depths of it and seen it from a distance. Piano was her medium to the unworldly. She’d completely lose herself in performances, playing dramatic and extravagant pieces and would pause afterwards, the blood pumping in her veins and no memory of what she had just done. “I went ‘elsewhere’ tonight,” she’d tell her instructor after an inspired show.

On April 12th, 2020, 22 year old Elizabeth sat in her old childhood room with a freshly broken heart and amidst a great pandemic -- the novel coronavirus -- that shut the entire world down (especially her’s, she felt). Elizabeth had just left an unstable relationship with an emotionally unavailable man whom she loved at the same time she left her life at college and headed home due to the international crisis. Just like that, her home in NYC and her boyfriend’s home on the coast of Florida were gone. So there she sat, in her childhood bed, staring at a picture of her old grand piano, the piano she’d played for years. The memories of a previous heartbreak rushed back. Just 2 years back, Elizabeth sat in the same room looking down at her disformed left hand from a car accident, staring at the picture of her grand piano that she couldn’t play, and that she’d never be able to play again. The same room, a different heartbreak, somehow things felt the same. Today, the room was decorated with flowers and photographs, but 2 years ago, Elizabeth sat in an empty room, nothing but a bed, a desk, and gray walls to stare at. She had stripped everything off the walls -- pictures of her life, mementos of her accomplishments as a pianist -- and taken everything off the shelves, every book she had ever read and letter she’d ever saved. Everything that had described her was placed in a closet. She’d been determined to figure out who she was, and she had to start from scratch. For the first time, she’d realized the pain and joy of her identity having the possibility of being whatever she created it to be -- unoccupied by an occupation.

Elizabeth opened up her journal from 2 years past and found a poem she’d written:

“Was my art on borrowed time?

Leasing the name to me --

Plain as day to me

“Artist, dreamer, beauty, grace”

I was told “she has a pianist’s face”

Borrowed time

Hand me a dime

Just to show me that it wasn’t mine?

A crime?

I think so.

But then again, it was borrowed time.

A shrine?

Can you make a shrine on borrowed time?

I made mine on borrowed time.

I don’t own myself -- my existence a tease

A shrine, built on an identity leased”

(Journal Entry 2018)

Elizabeth remembered how hard it had been to accept that she wasn’t a pianist anymore and that she no longer had an eye-catching occupation to stand in for whatever her identity really was -- which she didn’t know. Today, processing that her identity was now unrelated to a relationship, and still no occupation had been found to occupy her, again, Elizabeth was left at a crossroad of being alone with herself, in her little room. She looked around at the mementos that she’d begun filling her room up with anytime she visited home from college in the past 2 years since the accident: the scrapbook from her summer abroad trip, the books from her first friend at Columbia, Summer Sterling, the pictures of her friend Hayden’s lakehouse that she’d met when studying at the University of Tennessee, and the Chanel perfume from her ex-boyfriend for Christmas this year. She thought about the life she’d built from scratch in the past 2 years, and the parts of it that she’d lost. For the first time in a while, she felt a surge of creativity, and decided to write about it.

“My pen has been dry, but now I have ink.

Thank god my blood isn’t the color of pink.

Red will do, for passion it adds

Blood is my ink, for times I’ve gone mad.

In heartbreak and upheaval,

My heart is ill

As for today: its blood on my quill.”

(Journal entry 2020)

Elizabeth remembered how she used to think that writing killed the breath of thought -- the root of creative energy. As an artist left to deal with her life's biggest trauma (no longer being able to be a pianist) without an artform to process it, it led her to an even greater insanity than when she lost herself in piano. Elizabeth took up painting, pottery, dancing, and violin, and there was no medium in which she had been trained enough to adequately express the rawness of her thoughts and feelings during this time. The entrapment was maddening. Finally, she took to what she thought of as the most boring way of expression: writing. Her thoughts were purer than her words, she thought. Chaotic, but beautiful. Spinning. Like the way her hands used to dance across the keys. But when it wasn’t her hands dancing anymore, it was her mind. She couldn’t think and feel in notes anymore, she had to do it through language -- boring, but at least words are something I know, as opposed to painting techniques, she thought.

“I wish I could catch spinning thought. I wish I could just pull the spinning thought right out and dump it into reality, but I can’t imagine that it would still be spinning at that point. I think it would cut off its circulation and it would be frozen, losing its essence all together. If I can figure out how to catch thought in motion without destroying it, I might have a strong enough artform like my music.”

(Journal Entry 2018)

Reading this journal entry, Elizabeth remembered what she learned at college this semester: Shakespeare believed his writing had breath. He believed his writings had life and could preserve life.

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this [poem] gives life to thee.”

- Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

“The fame of Sonnet 18 and daily study of Shakespeare’s writings across the world show that Shakespeare was in fact successful in his attempts to give livelihood to his poem, his beloved, and the English language as we know it today.”

- First Essay at Columbia, 2020

Maybe words really can breathe, Elizabeth thought. Today, her thoughts were buzzing with livelihood just as they had 2 years ago after her injury, but in recent months things weren’t like this. For the past year even, Elizabeth had not been able to write -- not really. When she was home in her childhood room for Spring Break in 2019, she thought back to her thoughts during the time of her career ending injury. In that season of life, her mind had never felt so in motion. It was moldable, full of ideas. Sometimes she missed it. But I am happy now, she thought. Is the only way to be fully tapped into one’s creativity to be distraught? In a turmoil? Complete upheaval? I would never go back to that painful time, she thought. But she’d almost never wanted to leave it -- the chaos had felt beautiful to her; it reached into the depths of her soul and mined gems of creativity she had never seen before. In the spring of 2019 -- a time of contentment but void of creativity -- Elizabeth realized that despite what she previously thought, she wanted to learn how to be a writer.

“Learning and knowledge may not be a way of controlling my mind, but a way of enabling my mind to be more out of control. Practicing the technique of an artform is not being creative, it is just preparing you to have an outlet for a time that you are. Just like practicing piano gave me the ability to lose control, practicing writing could give me the same freedom.”

(journal entry 2019).

Today, amidst the heartbreak of the end of a relationship and the uncertainty of a pandemic, writing was easier for her. Again, she embarks on a journey of self discovery, and tries to record as much of it as she can. This being the second time around dealing with a heartbreak and not having piano to process it, Elizabeth realized how much her education is helping her on this journey. This time, she is studying why she has a love for chaos by reading about the history of goddesses in mythology. There is an ancient goddess named Chaos, who represented the beauty in chaos and was also innovative, inventive, intuitive, inquisitive, and was constantly asking questions about love and life (“The Evolution of Goddess” by Emma Mildon). Her intelligence was part of a deep ability to feel out and understand experiences logically rather than emotionally (Mildon). This inspiration led Elizabeth to use logic instead of emotions to process the heartbreak and uprooting of her life differently this time. Today, in Elizabeth’s little room, she sits and accepts that creativity often comes during a major lifestyle change, tragedy, or after a long enough fit of boredom. It usually comes in waves, and we’re lucky when we catch its breath. She tries to appreciate the times that she bleeds, for I have some ink to write, she thinks. And she appreciates the times that she is happy, so she has time to sharpen her quill.