I just woke up after staying up till 8:30 am playing Skyrim, so forgive me if today’a magic missive is a wee bit more rambling and incoherent than usual.
If that’s possible.
I realize recently that this habit I have fallen into of playing Skyrim for eight hours straight when everyone else is asleep basically means I spend half my waking hours (at least) playing the damned thing.
That’s a sobering thought. It’s one thing to know you are addicted and quite another to look at the hard data that proves it.
I can’t help but think of all the human potential that I am wasting. Here I am, brain and talent the size of a planet (and a fat one at that), and I spend most of my time doing something utterly unproductive.
What I need is some crazy new porject. And I have one in mind but it’s not quite fully baked yet. I know the basics of what it will be about and what it will be like, but it hasn’t coalesced into a mental picture yet. At some pointm critical mass will be reached and it will jump the synaptic gap from ideas and notions to something I am wildly enthusastic about and raring to do, and that’s’ when it will become a reality.
Until then, all I can do is stay busy while the charge accumulates and gently shepherd the process forward.
Every creator worships the same God : their muse. Their process. Creativity is a proicess that defies direct control, and so we are left not so much controlling it as managing it and trying to make sure it has what it needs while staying out of its way.
It’s like being your own inner agent, in a way. Or parent.
I think that’s part of the reason why we tend to be such a neurotic and impulsive bunch too. Even in the relatively cerebral world of writing (as opposed to the more right-brain arts like painting or music), to be creative one must have direct access to one’s emotional core as possible because that’s where the raw stuff of inspiration comes from, and therefore that’s the wellspring of our creativity.
PErhaps that is also why we tend to be a shy and reclusive bunch. You have to have some serious alone time to clear your mind enough to hear that all important inner voice. Also, it’s us urban hermits who have trouble expressing ourselves in the usual ways that end up having to do it through art.
And that means that all the energies that usually would express themselves widely and overtly are squeezed through the narrow apeture of our talent instead. To us, our talent is far more than a way to pay the rent.
And that’s good, because it rarely ever does.
No, our talent is our escape valve for all the repressed feelings and pent up passions we have so much trouble expressing in our normal lives.
Or at least that’s how it works for me.
This little blog o’ mine is my vital link to the world outside my dimly lit garret. In it, I can escape myself for a bit as I, quite timidly and quietly, reach out to the world that so terrifies me and offer it something of myself.
And seeing as I am the sort of person who blogs about his experiences with his latest butt toy, it’s often more of myself than the world really wants to know.
In that regard : I seem to be getting better at using it. I suppose you get better at anything if you do it enough. Had a lovely time with it last night in bed.
And this pleases me not just because it felt wonderful and not just because I need all the physical pleasure I can get in my metaphyrical little life in order to ground me in reality and remind me I am alive, but also because I think some of my depression comes from a vast unsatisfied need for sex/romance/kicks, and therefore I would be a happier person if I could express someof those vital energies more fully.
Does it seem weird when I talk about such intimate things so clinically? Because it’s honestly the only way I know how to do it. There have been people in my life who have accused me of using “fancy language” to “show off how smart I am”, but I can honestly say that it’s my native tongue.
Everything else is an act of translation.
It’s also the only way I know to achieve the sort of message density I need in order to stand any sort of chance of getting what is in me out. Simpler language doesn’t have the degree of nuance and intricacy needed for the sorts of things I need to express.
No Hemingway here.
It’s partgicularly true for this blog, because this is the place where I express myself most directly, and so I am always articulating the previously unarticulated, and need the full range of language in order to stand a chance of doing it.
When I write prose, which is high density by nature, I can been less high-falutin’ in my language. Medium-falutin’ at most. Prose requires me to express myself in a different direction and drains those mental energies of mine in a different way.
This blog is where I spill my guts.
Prose is where I dream out loud.
You use different skills.
I would probably be better off if I wrote more prose. It takes more out of me and that is a good thing. Writing my book shaped thing last November was a lot of fun and made me a calmer than usual person, and that’s always good.
But it’s hard to stay motivated when none of it really goes anywhere. By that I mean that nobody but my beloved loved ones will ever read it. And while I appreciate their attention to my words more than even my words can express, I want more.
And that means opening that door and letting the world in.
That’s my Holy Grail now.
That’s where I will find my home.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.