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scenario here is one of the workplace, where we find the girl going out
into the fields, and apparently laboring so long that she cannot return
home and will have to find lodgings over-night in the villages, ready
to go out early next morning to inspect the state of the vineyards –
where, once again, the buds and the blossoms typify on-going creative
projects that need to be monitored and progressed.
Be
a Professional and Schedule Your Time
Even in the more casual days of the sundial and the water clock, Solomon’s
message seems to be the importance of organized, scheduled effort. The
would-be professional cannot afford to laze about in a genteel Bohemian
fashion, hoping , sometime soon, to “feel creative” and get
the urge to do some work.
The
Working Routine of a Writer
Charles Dickens, we are told, planned his working day according to a strict
methodical schedule. From nine in the morning until two in the afternoon,
he sat in his study writing. Sometimes this period was very productive,
but sometimes he would be forced to sit and doodle and stare out of the
window, waiting for characters such as Oliver Twist to “appear”
in his imagination and start moving things along by their words and actions
-- but he would never give up and stop work. In the afternoon he made
a habit of walking for three hours, a proven way to relax and get in touch
with the imagination.
According to Alfred Hock in “The Origin of Genius”, the French
write Balzac “worked for 18 hours at a stretch, even while he ate
. . . The first draft is put down with great gaps between singe paragraphs
and the enormously wide margins are filled in gradually . . . On every
sheet he used only 8 to 10 lines because he lacks the sureness of expression
and is unable to find at once the definitive formulation. Whereas at first
he has only a skeleton of a novel ready, the details are invented by and
by."
"I don’t believe in writer’s block” said novelist.
Barbara Taylor Bradford in a Sunday Times interview. “ If I have
a bad day, I always write something, even if it’s just notes. That
way you’ve got something to work on the next day".
The
Working Routine of John Lennon
Biographer Frederic Seaman says of John Lennon: "His approach to
song writing was very methodical . . . In the morning, I could hear John
playing the guitar in his room refining the lyrics . . . When I came back
from a trip to Hamilton I found him sitting at the piano in the living
room still working on the song . . . a songwriter whose discipline and
tenacity as a musician were nothing short of astounding. He could strum
the guitar or sit at the piano for hours, doggedly playing the same chords
and singing the same lyrics over and over again until he was able to ‘fill
in the blanks’ "
A
Labour of Love
Notice, however, that the girl is not going to be striving at her projects,
but working as a joyful labour of love with her creative partner –
with whom she will have a very relaxed and intimate relationship, as indicated
by the phrase in the last line: There will I give you my breasts.
Notice also that it is in her place of work, developing her practical
projects, that she will achieve intimate contact with her creative partner.
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