Love what you do

Tonight I went to hear Ray Bradbury speak at IVC. The man is my father's age, 92 or so, and cannot hear or see very well, it seems. But let me tell you--the man can talk. He is as full of energy and enthusiasm as anyone of any age I have ever seen.
Though I came in late, thinking somehow that the talk would start later (didn't actually look at the tickets or I would have known better), I got the drift. He told the whole story of his writing life, how things seemed to fall into his lap, but actually were spurred by his "loves," as he put it, his enthusiasm for writers, film makers, etc., to whom he reached out in one way or another or who, somehow feeling the affinity from afar, reached out to him and became mentors and life-long friends.
It was an inspiring life he related, in which he claimed to remember everything, including being in the womb, being nursed (for 5 days, he said, and he remembered the taste!), and being circumcised. That's a good one.
He told how he managed to write a screenplay about Moby Dick for John Huston although he could never before manage to get through the book via Melville's channeling of Shakespeare in that book. And he in turn came to channel Melville in writing the screenplay for the film.
It was a totally emotional, anti-intellectual approach to writing and to life, but it worked for him, and perhaps it is in some ways the happiest way to live. It is, sadly, not one that is natural to me, who never was able to live a moment without thinking it through and dissecting it.
I am glad I went, as he wrote his own work, "as a lark," although I was tired and might have been tempted to stay home and vegetate in front of the tube or just go to bed early. I saw some of my students there, and I will council them to take to heart as writers and as human beings what the man said, even if it undermines my own words in class: "Do what you love," he said, "And don't listen to anyone who tells you not to." What could be wrong in that?