The friend I travelled to London with only had two days there. She wanted most to see the War Rooms–Churchill’s headquarters during World War 2 including during the Blitz. The rooms had been built in an underground bunker a short walk from 10 Downing Street. They included operational and command facilities and spartan sleeping quarters for the military people and clerical staff as well as for Churchill and his officers. Today, they are open to the public.
Since my own work day has underground components and is fuelled with hot beverages from a somewhat retro kitchen, I felt a surprising affinity with the place.
Outside it was a gorgeous fall day. London in November still offers roses as well as autumn leaves. But as I absorbed the import of this underground command centre, the contrast between holiday tourism and serious work effort struck me heavily. I’ve always been inclined to regard creative work as a joy and a romp. Surely it’s true that joy provides the impetus for it. But yes there is this other face to accomplishing anything worth doing: the need for tenacity, for persisting by great effort and, yes, sacrifice and discipline. For a resolute exercise of pure will–not on an ego level, but from a deeper level of purpose. There was something here I needed to absorb and understand. I could scarcely name it. So I took photos, already picturing them on the wall of my office back in Montreal. To remind me of the need to adjust my own practice, shift in this direction. We no longer speak, in moral terms, of The Enemy. Yet standing in those narrow corridors I felt that I would need to find a correlative operating stance when I returned. There was some sort of struggle to be waged. Years back, I bought a book titled The War of Art and, well, it’s probably around someplace. As Rachel Maddow tells her listeners, “put a marker in this one.”
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