What is the Story your Silent Self Sings?

a meandering reflection on the impulse to express oneself.

I am inspired in this moment to create my own personal newsletter as a practice in imaginative freedom, a space to share how I see the world whilst I hone that silver tongued craft of oral storytelling and as a journal of Praise Poems, a celebration of all that I love.

1.

When I think on it, I have spent the lion's share of my years writing.

Or at least trying to.

Though I have made my way in this world as a singer of songs, and the emotive lift of melody and voice fuels all I do, the floor around my desk remains littered with lyrical journals of poems, noted plans for essays, half finished stories - really only that vaporous angel's share has ever seen the light of day.  

I have always held highest admiration for those that can conjure worlds with their word, that are able to encapsulate a clarity of thought in poetic expression, chronicling the triumphs and tragedy of the human experience whilst striving towards a redemptive vision of the future. 

I have always aspired to these heights in my songs, but never felt the chutzpah to truly call myself a writer, or dare towards the highest accolade of all, a poet.

Though the simple truth is I am in love with the romance of writing; the staccato clatter as the mind grinds into gear slowly finding that ecstatic flow, that inner cosmic smirk falling upon my face, grinning at the audacity of sharing the wild intimacies of experience with the grandiosity of elevated language.  

Indeed one of my life’s greatest joys is found in the open-ended possibilities of creation; the streams of consciousness that flows from the numinous source of the imagination, before it's concretised in form.

Perhaps this is why all my stories are currently half finished, abandoned before I've made the commitment of conclusions- their future remains unwritten. 

For perhaps inevitably the shadow of all these flights of fancy is chronic procrastination. 

I continue to write and write and write but never share anything, lost in my maze of words words words. I know I have spent too much time over the past years up in my head, restlessly cocooned in my safe space of detachment, intellectual hoarding & analytical judgement.

A long moment has now passed since I've done anything publicly.

I'd like to report I have been sat still in the forrest, listening attentively, courting the muse of poetic inspiration, but in truth I've often found myself waist deep in that stagnant swamp of perfectionism.

Trying to aspire to a monolithic ideal and routinely failing to meet my own expectations,  the merciless inner critique dismissing my dyslexic fragmentations with harsh regard. 

 An uncomfortable question that has begun haunting me is wether I've been prolonging procrastination to avoid the sticky stank of embodiment? Actually getting down and dirty in the complexities of human relations, the diatribes of the culture war.

Have I begun repressing the fierce flame of clear definition for I no longer trust my own ability of accommodating the subtly of thought that does justice to the complexities of life?

Often I feel I simply can not find the "right" words. So I retreat back into my cave, do more intellectual pull ups on the cage bars, biding my time for that someday when I am ready to speak up and speak righteously, for the butterfly to bloom out its chaos minded cocoon... 

But that someday still hasn't come, and I've been caught in this loop way too long. I know I must open up, I must begin to share, if nothing else to initiate myself back into the flow of action, breaking on through the malaise of doubt.   I'll improvise the dance as I find the rhythm.

I just need to start. 

---

Perhaps you can already read it clearly in the car crash of the prior paragraphs, I've been taking my self too damn seriously. I've heard making space for compassionate self love is the key to unlock the well spring of creativity that flows from the luminous Self, but I as I know many, continually to struggle with giving myself permission to truly love myself.

Self flagellation's long been my kink.

It seems I've successfully entrained my brain with years of negative self talk. I've tried many times to change, praying upon that lightning branch revelation, to be born anew in innocense, but the ever present adversary of my inflated ego persona keeps up its cynical cackle, leaving me conflicted, confounded, confused.

And yet I write these words now in a purging effort to turn the page. Though I am already tempted to ctrl alt delete this first letter, abandon ship, put off publishing for another distant moon, that eternal question still lingers…

Do I have the courage to face (my own) Truth?

I have always felt drawn to start a new endeavour with a manifesto, a statement of intent, a promise of permanence written to the ever changing tides of self.

This is what this letter was meant to be; a courageous testament of an optimystic (r)evolutionary… but these words speak more truthfully to my experience of inner frustration that fluctuates from the burning desire to express my fire - to an existential despair that dwells deep in the valleys of doubt, questioning why go on at all.

Whats the point?

We all know everything is fucked.

---

We live in a troubled time.

Strange days get stranger still and ever bleaker troubles are forecast upon the future, it is my sense that the challenges presented call us all to realise the individuated fullness of ourselves. To become all of who we were born to be, step into our power and take responsibility from that perceptional reality. 

This at least is the Great Work that I have endeavoured to take up with sincerity of pursuit.

Last year I finished a new Lost Under Heaven record entitled "Something is Announced by your Life!" where we explore our experience of this moment through a 9 songs soundtrack to Metanoia (It's still yet to be released, but if you'd like to hear more and join our journey, your welcome to become a Patreon) -

As 2020 unraveled I had come to clearly see my habitual attitudes of black pilled hopelessness were suffocating the Joy that is the beating heart of my being, denying the redemptive potential for beauty that is inherent in all creativity. 

Making this record was a profound healing process for me, and as cyclic coincidence would have it, producing it coincided with the 10 year anniversary of "Go Tell Fire to the Mountain" and the creation of the recently published LYF Archives.

Whilst writing the Afterwards to the book in some ecstatic high last July,  I hit once more upon that central nerve, the golden thread that has preoccupied all my creative pursuits over the years.

Sometimes self inquiry leaves you with more intriguing questions than those you came to answer & certainly writing that Afterwards uncorked an unruly vintage of repressed psychic energy- leaving me with much to wrestle with, a few questions I plan to explore in subsequent essays;

-What does it mean to tell Fire? 

-How do we navigate the Mountain and live nobly within its inverted order? 

and then that eternal Lover's Lament; What does it mean to be Free?

Weeping ecstatic Tears of Surrender somewhere betwixt and between Sorrow & Joy. 

To set the scene for further exploration, I will share the Afterwards I wrote to the LYF archives in full next time. I have also made a voice recording of the text, as I for one prefer to listen than read- There is an empathetic power in the spoken word that otherwise may be read tonally dry as ink on a page, or more appropriately pixels on a screen.

I am interested in the aliveness of orality, speaking life into language- so I will endeavour to make recordings of all I write and to improvise yarns on the spot, stand and deliver. I find it a helpful practice to hone my voice, if I can confidently speak the words I have written, I know this to be a good compass of Authenticity. Communicating honestly with a vulnerable trust that those with ears to hear will listen with open hearts has always been a significant part of my path.

I know somewhere out there is a people 14400 strong, I sing to you in my sleep. 

So here it is, the first of what I intend to be many open letters of love and appreciation for life and its crooked path as I tell my story- I am ever grateful for the opportunity to grow and to heal, to alchemise old wounds in the creation of redemptive art. Though I write most of today’s words for myself, to break out of an old story and into the new, I would like to thank you, whomever and wherever you may be, who has taken the time to listen & read to what I offer.  

Ellery James Roberts

August 2022

p.s I would like to express my greatest gratitude to the lovers and mentors who have encouraged me to create this newsletter, to get over myself, open up and start sharing my writing. I feel I’ve been lurking at the edge of a diving board for months. Time to jump in. Swim.