Let me introduce you to my new friend: Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art.
Short book. Easy Read. Steven Pressfield is a screen-writer and novelist, best known for The Legend of Bagger Vance. So not too big a deal? Don’t be cynical. It takes a lot of work to achieve any kind of success in these realms, and in truth it makes him the kind of guy that a guy like me should be listening to. Neither a superstar nor a schmo, he’s proof of what can be achieved if you focus on the task, and find your satisfaction in the craft.
The War of Art is primarily a call-to-arms for the writer, but applies equally well to the entrepreneur, or the athlete, or to anyone looking to do that Thing they’ve always meant to do, were born to do, that blessedly divine Thing that’s perpetually met by an equal and opposite force: The Resistance!
Pressfield describes The Resistance as a “protean” force of self-sabotage that rages from the lower self and goes wild whenever we try to ascend, to make personal progress. It lashes out when we engage in any project that rejects “immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity.”
The Resistance is, like the Devil, “always lying and always full of shit.” And if you grew up pew-bound, Pressfield’s Resistance — this inexorable turpitudinous temptation, this lax slide to dissipation that throttles and snares every worthwhile thing that we try to do — sounds a lot like thorn-in-the-side original sin.
The Resistance comes in many ways: procrastination, self-medication, drama-seeking, cheap sex, victimizing, blaming, self-doubt, quick bucks, familial expectations, undermining acquaintances, false fame, fear. It takes on whatever form is most convenient to thwart you from that one simple, urgent task: creating something new.
Sound familiar? Rang true as all heck to me.
The War of Art summed up everything I’ve been banging against and generally (not) doing since I packed up my cap-‘n-gown, stuttering and sputtering my way through the last few decades of feigned adulting.
But I will admit that there are two equal and opposite reasons to dismiss this book: Pressfield comes across both as a hard-ass and a mystic, two kinds of folks that can be a little annoying when you’re not in the mood.
In the first half — once he defines The Resistance — he prescribes one basic remedy: Work! And he has very little patience for any mealy-mouthed excuse that might come between you and getting your butt back in gear. Mental health issues? Stop whining and get to work! Physical ailments? Shut up and get to work! Work is his simple pill for all-that-ails-you.
He claims that getting to work in the pursuit of our individual callings will “put every shrink in the directory out of business. Prisons would stand empty. The alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with the junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment businesses, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and the medical profession from top to bottom. Domestic abuse would become extinct, as would addiction, obesity, migraine headaches, road rage, and dandruff.”
After page upon page of confessional whip-cracking, he switches gears and dives straight into the woo. The last chapters are replete with the interpretation of dreams, with channeling the Gods (the Greek variety are his favorites), and his musings on the otherworldly roots of genius. Here he sounds a lot like Elizabeth Gilbert in her book-on-art, Big Magic. (But I’ve recommended that too.)
How can he have it both ways? How can he sound like a grumpy old man and a peyote-popping hippie at the same time? That’s a tricky line to walk, but he pulls it off. And I think he’s right. Taken together you get a mosaic of the chequered days — the perspiration and inspiration — that comprise any artist’s life.
I’ve now given The War of Art a reverential place in my house: the back of the john. I keep it there to remind me of the things I need to do when another dreary, dead-eyed morning dawns, have it close at hand to awaken the better self when I’m at my most vulnerable: pants down, waiting while my body purges yesterday’s crapulous past, bowels constricting through a satisfying evacuation.
Mind renewed, I arise. Time to get back to work. The Resistance flushed away, defeated for another day.
