A Writer’s European
Muse, Part II
A European fountain can serve as inspiration for writers and birds alike. Photo by Gretchen Schutsky.
By Wayne Schutsky
Modern Times Magazine
Part Two of a three-part series.
Prologue | Part Two | Epilogue
March 27, 2012 — With every passing day, Phoenix feels further away. I have spent nights in Barcelona, Montpellier and Nice, and it is beginning to feel like I don't have a home.
These places, with their ancient stone buildings and unique cultures, still do not feel familiar to me, and I cannot remember the last time I slept in my own bed.
But the pains of the backaches and lumpy mattresses are no match for the architecture and history and culture I am absorbing. And the food is not half bad either.
I am uncomfortable and in awe, confronted by a situation that forces me into an existential middle ground.
Prologue | Part Two | Epilogue
Is this what it felt like for Hemingway or Fitzgerald? I wonder if they had second thoughts. They came to Europe because they felt lost at home, but, early on, did this place feel any less alienating?
From my ever changing perspective, I think that the answer is that it did and it did not.
As I spend more time here, it is natural that I will become more acclimated to my surroundings. The old narrow streets and the languages and the history will become real and comfortable and more than a tourist attraction.
But I will not be home. I will still remember what that feels like and know that it can only be found in one place.
Being here, in Western Europe, gives a writer the ability to gain experience. But it also provides a writer with a new perspective on home.
Prologue | Part Two | Epilogue
One of my writing instructors once told me not to write about a failed relationship for five years. Until that point the wounds are too fresh and will muddy up the story. A writer needs a distinctive mix of emotion, level-headedness and time before he can write about the relationship with the clarity and creativity needed to create something worth reading.
I think that writing about home is the same in a lot of ways.
In order to really know how you feel about the place, you have to leave it. You have to look at it from a distance. The detachment, longing and ultimate ease you feel will eventually lead to a perspective worth writing from.
I would like to think that the greats of the past, while sitting in a Parisian coffee shop or sipping on anise in Barcelona, were doing more than looking awesome. They were contemplating and absorbing their new surroundings. They were taking in everything about the place, losing a little of their old selves, and fighting to figure out what the past and what home meant to them.
That is where some of the greatest American literature comes from.
America can feel so huge and isolated and important sometimes. It is not like Europe, where you can visit a multitude of countries in a few days by hopping on the trains. It is, in many ways, an isolated nation with prepackaged adventures. There are 47 other continental states to visit when I am in need of a vacation and two more exotic ones if I really want to push the envelope.
Prologue | Part Two | Epilogue
But those places are still safe and familiar. They are soaked in America. The language and life there is very much the same one I live at home, transposed onto a different landscape.
As a writer, I need to get away. I need to feel homesick. And then I need to feel better. Only then can I really write about this relationship.
I do not have five years, but I do have a few weeks. Hopefully it is long enough for me to figure a few things out.
Wayne Schutsky lives in Phoenix, Ariz. Follow him @ThemanofLetters.
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