writer's block

you start to develop ways of dealing with it. in my case, i look through pictures. flip through books of poetry, or magazines and things- see if an image or someone else's work will jog my imagination. contemporaneously with that, i listen to music. certain songs work best: Breathe Me by Sia works really well. Gravity, Big Runga. Spiders and Snakes by A Weather. The songs sift through memory usually, try and find moments i haven't relived correctly yet, maybe i can make them better. maybe there's still some redemption to be found in something of my past. often not though, when you think about, my stories are the same as yours. met person of opposite sex. it was exciting and amazing and tense till we kissed. we rode the ride for a while, through ups and downs. it ends and we're super-duper-sad. (repeat). friends made. conflicts of interests/idealogy/betrayal experienced. friends unmade. perhaps you see each other in crowded places and smile courteously at one another and walk outside and mutter under your breath fu&^ing loser (and take respite in knowing you're being called the same thing). otherwise what is life? lonely nights you wish you were out and partying and younger and cooler and hipper. and other nights you are out and wish you were loved and in a silent place with silent friends that don't demand soo much from you. you want sex you know you'll find dissapointing. you want love you know only comes when it's not called. you want to know how you came to be where you are, how you lost all you did, how lucky you were to dodge the bullets that missed you, express anger at how unfair it was at the ones you got hit by. you want to hold someone by the hand and lead them and point to the ground at the droplets you shed getting through it all. so, here i am, wondering why tonight i have nothing to write about? (now we're listening to Oh My Stars by A Weather, which makes me miss LA, but most songs make me miss someone someothing someplace sometime.

then there's fantasy. there's that. there's no one out there that can ruin that for me. I can write about Odd Orchestras and the characters that comprise them. i can write stories about orgyists and homeless people who swear and argue about Schubert. i can write autobiographies about young men named Dean who dissapear, or stories that end in:

I’ve spent a lot of time here. It has come to be my irrational belief that in everyone’s chest lives a jumble of noises. From the outside, it sounds like a dull thud, a rhythmic dum-dum, ending in a rattle and a semibreve rest with a massive fermata. And then, when the body stops interfering with it, you hear just a few notes, just a few per person, husbands and wives I’ve heard, viola with harmonizing cello… someone buried a baby not too long ago- clarinet… and people’s dreams start to dance, all those things, moments too brief, kisses, and afternoons spent reading alone in rooms we were too young to embrace, all those dreams dance. Three notes here, four notes there. And all the things we’ve lost… left behind, or left us behind, all these bodies; and their final literary efforts

__________FOREVER LOVED

__________FOREVER MISSED

__________ALWAYS REMEMBERED

__________NEVER ALONE

__________DREAMS PEACEFULLY

__________CANNOT BE LOST

__________PERFECTED

__________MY ONE TRUE

__________HUSBAND OF

__________WIFE & MOTHER

__________SLEEPS HERE

__________DREAMS PEACEFULLY

__________YOURS IS THE MUSIC FOR NO INSTRUMENT

(three notes here, four notes there)

__________PERPETUAL LIGHT

__________SON OF

__________DAUGHTER

__________THE BODY OF

__________SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION

__________ALL THE WORLDS OF

__________ETERNITY

__________EVERYTHING TO ME

__________EVERYTHING

(three notes here, four notes there)



_____silenced.


_____silent

and i know most of you haven't read that story, i don't think i sent it out widely because i was never really happy with it. and i'm not really happy with it now. and i'm not really sad. and i'm not really anything, and i don't understand why i don't have anything to write about. i seem to have exhausted: the past, love, the present, hopes for the future, dreams i've had, dreams i hope to continue to have, dreams i recall, translating feelings to words, attempting to dissect myself into being more human, failure. i've drained myself of my humanity for these words. and i have failed on all counts. or as i put it better:

_____silenced.


_____silent