In the Wilderness

I’m thinking about my friend Gil, who served three years in prison. 

That’s the wilderness. 

Other mates have endured years-long ordeals enslaved to alcohol, drugs, trauma, PTSD, self-dramatization, toxic family dysfunction, you-name-it.

That’s the wilderness. 

My friend Gil at Pro Camp, Gold’s Gym, Venice CA 9/28/22

Think about artists stuck in denial of their gifts … or too terrified to find or embrace their calling. Henry Miller worked for the phone company. Salman Rushdie toiled in advertising. Charles Bukowski labored for the post office. For years!

That’s the wilderness.

It seems that, one way or another, each of us must undergo a passage—internal, external, or both—of exile and estrangement from ourselves. I’ve touched on my own peregrinations in The War of Art and other books. I drove tractor-trailers, I picked fruit, I worked as an oilfield roustabout. I was lost lost lost. Yet in the end, when I finally emerged from this passage, I came to consider it the most fertile and cosmically-alive time of my life—and utterly indispensable to my evolution as a writer. 

I’m starting a video series on Instagram on this subject. I’m calling it “In the Wilderness.” I’ll keep the videos short, and I’ll post them here as well as on IG, etc. weekly or maybe even more frequently.

Full disclosure: part of my motivation is to draw attention to an upcoming book of mine called GOVT CHEESE, a memoir of my “lost years” that I’ve always wanted to write but never found the guts to.

I’m also hoping that this video series will work as a standalone examination of this most critical (and creative) period in all of our lives—our years in exile from ourselves and from our calling. 

P.S. Gil finished a second college degree (he already had one) while he was behind bars. He’s doing great now–and he has been for years.  And for sure he’s never going back.

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