Looking For An Original Voice

Reflection Sat Aug 17th


When I awoke this morning, the first word that sprung to mind when I thought what I would write today was the word ‘platitude’. It just seemed to come out of nowhere.
I remembered the first time, I encountered that word, I had written an essay for a teacher who was herself an accomplished writer and a prize winner for some of her writing, and I remembered being so chuffed when she wrote a comment on one of my essays saying ‘one of the most original essays I have ever read on this topic.’ The title was ‘My Own Personal Hell’. She then went on to say, she found it very helpful. It was either helpful or hopeful. I couldn’t quite make out that bit of the handwriting, and then she added, ‘but do avoid the odd platitude which creeps in and spoils an otherwise original essay.’

At that stage of my life, I had actually not come across the word ‘platitude’ before, and so the dictionary was pulled out and consulted, and while I know now what it is, I once again consulted it, for a reminder of how it is defined.

Platitude: ‘Trite or commonplace remark esp. one solemnly delivered, dullness, insipidity’ and then I was kind of seized with a sort of sense of dread, followed by a kind of ‘why even bother, what good did writing ever do’ sort of question, and I thought of the line I heard somewhere, ‘I had a very good education, it took me a long time to get over it, ‘ and I wondered does formal education takes us into vanity and ego which takes us further away from a truly original voice, and then I thought of all the great artists who stand out because of their originality and who can therefore offer to the world a new vision, a new way of seeing, and it occurred to me that this must take not only great courage, but also something in one’s formation that is not hindered, and if one’s unique individuality was and is hindered, how does one recover their own authentic and unique voice?

For this question, I have selected the following poem by John O’Donohue from Benedictus:

For The Artist at the Start of Day

May morning be astir with the harvest of night
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to a source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurt and its haunting,
And fixed fortress corners,


A morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,

May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir towards your senses
And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard
That calls space to
A different shape.

May it be its own force-field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.