What’s eating away at you?

I think that … that you work on the thing that’s eating away at you. And I think that the performers that we feel are wrestling with something significant are the performers that hold … they hold our attention. Why couldn’t people take their eyes of Brando? Something was always eating at him. I don’t know if it was ever named, but whatever it was you couldn’t take your eyes of him when he came on screen. Why can’t you take your eyes off of Dylan? Well there was something eating at him. So a lot of my work is drawn from a period in my life where I’m trying to go back and make sense of things that at the time were unfathomable and uncontextualisable. And that continues to this day.
Bruce Springsteen Desert Island Discs, 31’52”

So this is what is eating away at me, what I am always trying to work out, what all my writing is about: I want to be present – to myself, to You, and to Life; I want to be fully in this body, in myself, in You, and alive. I am trying to put across an experience – that this being present is not just an attention located behind the eyes, but is a body presence, felt in and throughout this body. Is it possible to convey this to one who has not already experienced it? Being present is completely in this moment; it is not attended by thinking about somewhere and somewhen else. Thus real presence is without desire because desire has already been fulfilled. I have already arrived because You have never been elsewhere.

What is eating away at you?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.