Five a clock in the morning and I’m wide awake. Both physically and mentally completely switched on. I do not feel startled or anything. I am just very, very, very awake and alert. It happens to me every now and then. I wake up with a feeling of urgency, of importance. I realise that I had an epiphany. Not the kind where you see the holy Mary at the end of your bed – now that would give me a fright! – but the kind that you recognise as being crucial in your life and choices. Most of the time these kind of awakenings do not leave room for any going back to sleep. Instead feel pressed into action, like this morning.

Quietly uncompromising

The thought that I woke up with is that I have to start writing without compromise. No reserves, just BAM straight from the heart. I right away ask myself whether I didn’t always do that? I am not the compromising type, I don’t do half-baked living, do I? And the answer came immediately and ruthlessly. No, I didn’t write without compromise. Living without reserves, I’m good at that. In my decision making I hurtle full speed into whatever I think is good for me. But always quietly. As soon as I have put things to paper, when it is there in black and white ready to go into the world, in this age of the internet maybe for all eternity, it feels differently.

I read the pages about the site and I realise that they have been composed to please people. To offend as few people as little as possible. That goes for the posts as well. In some I show an undiluted version of me, but in others… There are still truths in there, but they are voiced in a manner that disempowers them. I switch the status of the pages to private until I find the time to rewrite them thoroughly.

Facing the music

In my head I hear Thé Lau sing two Dutch songs, Rigoreus and Rauw, Hees en Teder. Rigoreus means rigorously, rauw, hees en teder means as much as raw, hoarse and tenderly. For some reason these songs are inseparably connected this morning, both to each other and to me. That how my head works: with the words the images and the music arrive. It suits me. Like Rocky finds the energy to run up those stairs effortlessly to the sounds of The Eye of the Tiger (yes, I’m that old), Thé sings the words right out my head and into the laptop.

From today onwards I will be writing without compromise. You will get to see the unchastened version of this writer, raw but also tender. I will be writing rigorously but always from my heart. Consider yourself warned.

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