The Enemy is a Very Good Teacher
ds106 Writing Assignment:
This quote from the Dali Lama is the epigraph of Part One of Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art. I pay special attention to epigraphs (the quotes at the beginning of chapters, novels, even films) because they represent the story thematically. Of the three parts in Pressfields book about breaking through creative blocks, Part One is my favorite because, as this quote signifies, it identifies an enemy which we can learn from.
Part One personifies writer’s block, or creative block, as “Resistance.” Throughout the first 57 pages, Pressfield describes Resistance’s traits in such a manner to which it becomes a character. While reading about Resistance, a struggling artist (for brevity, I’ll say "artist" though it can be a writer, musician, entrepreneur, etc.) no longer blames himself or herself for feeling uninspired, or procrastinating, or inventing obstacles. Instead, he or she can visualize these problems as being the influence of a conspiring enemy. An artist can then re-align his or her motives to conquer this devilish Resistance.
I like this method of transforming the abstract and often difficult to decipher concept of creative block into a concrete and understandable persona. Often times menacing incidences or concepts are made more concrete using personification, like evil as being the Devil. Think of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Hell, even hurricanes get names! As with Pressfield’s characterization of Resistance, we use these concrete personas to better learn and understand their influence and implications.
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To conclude my ds106 assignments this semester, I figured I should select a writing assignment. After all, my focal theme is writer's block, so it felt natural. Throughout this semester I have been consistently referring to the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield because I selected it as my additional text for the Digital Storytelling projects. Logically, I wanted to use a quote from this book and to write about what it meant to me.
However, weirdly, I did not use a quote from Pressfield himself, but rather a quote he used to convey his personification of Resistance. My interpretation of this quote (as remixed by Pressfield), as well as the rest of Part One, was an idea mulling around in my head since the first time I read The War of Art several years ago. Pressfield's personification, I think, is a brilliant method for motivating his readers. They become vengeful about their creative process, rather than self-deprecating.
In addition to my three paragraph explanation of the quote, I went a bit outside the requirements of the assignment. I thought I should include a energizing graphic to further my interpretation. I chose angry wolf eyes as the background to the quote because I felt this visage could be perceived in two ways: either viewers identify the angry eyes as the enemy standing in their way and who must be destroyed, or they identify the eyes as their own resentful and ambitious glare toward the enemy. In either case, I think it gives the quote, "The enemy is a very good teacher," by the Dalai Lama more grit.
Writing is something I am very passionate about, hence why I chose writer's block as my focal theme. I felt as though this assignment came rather naturally to me. I can always write decently well about something I feel strongly about. In fact, the writing portion of this assignment was the easiest part. Creating the visual was actually more difficult; I had some troubles manipulating the font.
I feel really good about this assignment. The visual looks great, and I think I explain my interpretation of the quote well enough. I did surprise myself while writing for this assignment. The part about personifying entities like the Devil, and the Grim Reaper was not something I had thought about until I started the assignment. So, Pressfield is correct in that if you put in the work, inspiration will take.
