Worms

Several days ago I was asked about a place where you can’t write. A situation that blocks all creative process and art becomes impossible. I kept thinking about this for a week. After all, when you have to do it – you will do it. There’s no force in Hell or in Heaven that could stop you. You can write when you're exhausted, when you have a fever, when you wake up in the middle of the night and your heart is so heavy you have to play “Higgs Boson Blues” to kill those palpitations.

Art has been created everywhere, in every situation imaginable.

In the streets, by dead people, at five o’clock in the morning, in the gutter, by animals, in prison cells, in freezing cold, on a death row, in labour camps, during periods of desperate depression, by broken-hearted people, by people writing in blood, by children, while making love, on trains destined to be crashed, in the face of inevitable failure, with no money at all, in desolate houses with empty walls, in desolate houses with no walls at all, to the sound of atomic rain and to intense, deadly silence.

Today in the morning I finally got my answer. I woke up, had my breakfast, went out and began walking on the slippery pavement. I saw worms, millions of them. Like tiny red ribbons that were – somehow – alive. I walked carefully, thinking about how not to step on them. After all, they really were alive and how can people walk and not notice. And then I realised I cannot think about anything else. I cannot think about writing or anything remotely connected with art. 

Because there are all these worms, and I can’t step on them.