Flannery Understood

Thoughts on "Wildcat"

Saw ‘Wildcat’.

The greatest compliment I can give is that I never felt like I was watching a movie. I was always inside Flannery feeling her angst and thinking her thoughts.

It brought home in a beautiful and terrible way the call of the artist. To be a portal - a channel - for Divine messages to the world - without getting in the way. Without casting your own shadow over the grace received.

And yet being allowed to feel the heady, overwhelming, gloriousness of sudden inspiration - you know not how or whence it comes - you just feel high with it and want to keep it as your own. You want it again and again - you want to be in control of it. Like Icarus flying too high with borrowed wings. But you crash and burn. It isn’t your own. It is God’s. And only suffering over and over again will wrest it from you and give it back to Him - to Him who is the writer, the only real artist - and you, only the portal through which he has chosen to come.

That constant struggle between wanting to own the “Parnassian” fire and knowing it cannot exist anywhere but in God’s will - knowing it could destroy a merely human soul trying to bear it alone in pride.

How awe-ful and fearful it is to be called by God to any art. Being called to suffer all these struggles - consenting that God may tell His stories through you. And more importantly consenting to bear the almost crushing weight of His trust in you - that you will never steal His glory for your own. I felt all this with Flannery.

This is the message of “Wildcat” for me. The price of art.

I do not feel inclined at this time to have a paid substack. But if we were together in a cafe discussing all these thoughts, I would not be opposed to you buying me a cup of coffee - with cream, of course. In that spirit, if any of my posts resonate with you and you feel so inclined, you can donate here: buymeacoffee.com/denise_trull