something about having trouble being creative
Lately whenever I write, I find it hard to find any authenticity in what I put down. Is it that I’ve become so boring that the only things I can think to write about are inherently “fake,” in such a way that it can’t help but exude from whatever I put down? Or is it that I’m unable to separate myself from the technique of adding a superficial gloss, no matter the topic, because it lends me some weird psychic surety of having written something “worthwhile”?
Last year when I was taking a stab at creating a ’zine, I wrote a piece about seeing the mountains around me explode into nuclear fire. I just felt my skin shimmer with the effervescence of the finest douche chill, just writing that sentence. In retrospect it had the same energy as someone who claims that they have synesthesia. Of course, it would be so nice if I actually couldn’t stop seeing the San Gabriel mountains immolated whenever I looked at them, because that would be such a statement as to… something… about how society is doomed, or how my mind can’t help but go to incredibly dark places, or some other bullshit.
The authentic feelings I have are… maybe not that interesting? Or maybe it’s that I try putting them down (or to be more honest, think of putting them down) and I don’t really get anything cathartic out of the experience, which is ultimately what I’m looking for, I think. The feeling of complete uselessness that subsumes me when my son is wailing, nothing I’m doing is working, and I find myself thinking about how so much I have attempted (or at least entered into attempting–maybe I didn’t give these things the old college try, exactly) has resulted in failure or just the wasting of time, a big old psychic brand across my soul with the letters DNF: I would like to be able to purge that feeling, somehow. But writing hasn’t succeeded in doing that, not yet.
Even when I’m feeling doom-and-gloom about the world, it’s not like the troubles that plague this planet or this country have ever redounded unto me, I have to admit.
It’s times like this that I wonder if Jack Torrance had the right idea. Would I get anything out of “all work and no play”-ing myself down a few hundred pages of text? Seems boring to try.