Thoughts from a Chelsea bookshop | The quest for inspiration ch 3

- Dickens and Tolstoy meet on the stairs -

You know that you’re in a bad way as a writer when you’re not even inspired to write about your lack of inspiration. This was the state in which I found myself last week, knowing that I was accountable to myself, if no one else, to write. But the past few weeks had been rather devoid of daring escapades, and I have not the literary skill to make a detailed account of how I missed my bus on Thursday into an emotive and inspiring read. But knowing that I must write something, I decided to seek inspiration in one of my favourite establishments.

The John Sandoe bookshop sits just off King's Road, which runs like a great artery through the red-bricked, quiet, terraced streets of Chelsea. It is formed of the essence that all great bookshops should be: books. Books on selves and piled on tables, books crammed down the tight winding stairs, books on sliding shelves with still more books behind them. Books of poetry, literature, art. Tales of adventure, love, loss, and laughter – cuttings of life in this world of ours.

Standing there amidst the handiwork of so many past writers, the pursuit of art feels a little more tangible. Surrounded by the names of those who went before and doubtless shall, in part remain, long after I am gone, the path ahead lies a little clearer, as if those mute volumes speak forth a wisdom from between the lines of their ink-stained pages. ‘You live’, they say, ‘so put your pen to paper and from your very lifeblood draw forth art. For it is life on paper, nothing more. So live and write, for even the greatest chapter was once a scribbled line.’ It reminds me of a quote I once read by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to be precise it is from Anster’s (arguably loose) translation of Goethe’s Faust. And he writes:

Then indecision brings its own delays,

And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.

Are you in earnest? seize this very minute–

What you can do, or dream you can, begin it,’

Begin it? I suppose that in a small way that is what I’m doing here, another few hundred words committed to paper. My magnum opus? Not by any means, but it is a beginning, and a beginning is all it needs to be.

And as for that half-finished collection sitting on my shelf, perhaps it is time to sit down at my desk, pick up my pen and simply begin.

-Robert.