Could my creativity really be drying up so soon?
I have realized that of late, my writing has been utterly boring and self involved... What's new? you'll ponder. No nothing really, I suppose everything is narcissistic, this damn habit of chronicling one's days is just a poor excuse for attention-getting.
It is kind of funny. I have about 15 tomes of diaries that I wrote between the ages of 16 and 20. I haven't read them over, ever. M. read them, and seems to know more things about me than even I do (or perhaps more than I care to remember?) but something stops me from re-reading myself, and it is not solely my hyper-occupied life, though that could be a part of it. For years, (and this is how I am using the blog, as an on-line journal, more for my own ready access than for anyone else's benefit, seeing as how, this all cannot possibly be of interest to anyone else) I was my only (or almost only) interlocutor. I never really felt lonely as long as I had a pen (always a pen for permanence) and a blank sheet available, and more likely than not, a walkman. In those days, when I was just recently initiated, it could have been Nirvana, or Smashing Pumpkins, or NIN as likely as Tori or Joni Mitchell or the Indigo Girls. It might have been Belly or Sui Generis, or the Redonditos de Ricotta, Depeche Mode, Neil Young, Gregorian Chant (which I believe was popular then), REM, Rage Against the Machine, Green Day or the Doors. It could have been Joan Manuel Serrat or maybe Janis Joplin, singin' "Me and Bobbie McGee" or Dylan, The Carmina Burana... see I didn't care as long as there was raw human emotion to be found...
I have lost that sense of music as companionship. Of course I still love music, and I still love making music, but it has been forever since I wrote a song, and I used to write them all the time and then, with my highly technical abilities and a double tape deck I would lay down the melody and then overlay the harmonies losing generation after generation in the analog format, but etching pieces of my soul into a film of plastic that could easily be lost or destroyed. What faith I had. The times I would run down into Swarthmore, avoiding the leers of the men that would cruise by the isolated parts underneath the blue route. The pounding of "Under a blood red sky..." or bouncing along to "D'yer Maker". I doubt that this brand of self-sustaining solitude is ever attainable again. I don't think so, but it is the part of me that I most miss, the part of me that was still full of possibility, boundless possibility for what life would become.
Not to say, of course that I am not still full of possibility (it just has its manifested limitations), I truly believe that we always have the opportunity to effect change in our own lives and the lives of others, but there was a freedom in not knowing, in having no idea whatsoever, about what was happening, what was going to unfold. I think 16 is the perfect age in which to situate one's inner child. Part of me will always be 16.
Maybe that is why I don't go back and read myself, because it would be too painful to remember who I was, when confronted with the impossibility of ever being able to recapture the perfection of my being. I would like to write the novel/memoir without re-reading myself and then go back and compare notes. (No I haven't abandonded the project, I am going to give myself a month after classes end to read the whole Quijote and write my novel in turns). I think it would be a really interesting excercise in the function of memory. How many details will I have whitewashed out? How much will I have altered reality in lieu of narrative perfection. Of course, it is frightening to think of writing something so monumental with no real audience, no real criticism, but let's not demotivate ourselves just yet, shall we?
No, I suppose my creativity hasn't been totally lost, but I can't wait to be finished with these latest hurdles so I can tell some more stories (there is one about an elevator that jumped out at me, while Marcelo and I were descending to Portuguese class today). In banal and boring news, my professor was extremely pleased with me, and while he will have suggestions, he admitted that he had his doubts but was pleasantly surprised by my mega-effort (it turns out that he was only expecting the first few pages). So at least it is not back to the drawing board for me. In other hoop-jumping news I managed to do my Fafsa on time and even scrounge up all our tax documents to go ahead and figure that out too. I even paid my bills on time. This only goes to prove that the busier you are, the more you can get done. It is all about prioritizing and finding the right space and mindset to do work...blah blah blah.
Funny thought for the day... Jenny emailed me an article about Alabama banning the sale of sex-toys and all things that would promote non-organic orgasms... as debilitating for the health of the state... snarf... I've been contemplating such objects of late. Maybe I'll write about it somewhere. Guess the southerners will just have to jerk eachother off. That is, of course, unless they are sharing a bed with children like our fav Santa Barbaran...
It is kind of funny. I have about 15 tomes of diaries that I wrote between the ages of 16 and 20. I haven't read them over, ever. M. read them, and seems to know more things about me than even I do (or perhaps more than I care to remember?) but something stops me from re-reading myself, and it is not solely my hyper-occupied life, though that could be a part of it. For years, (and this is how I am using the blog, as an on-line journal, more for my own ready access than for anyone else's benefit, seeing as how, this all cannot possibly be of interest to anyone else) I was my only (or almost only) interlocutor. I never really felt lonely as long as I had a pen (always a pen for permanence) and a blank sheet available, and more likely than not, a walkman. In those days, when I was just recently initiated, it could have been Nirvana, or Smashing Pumpkins, or NIN as likely as Tori or Joni Mitchell or the Indigo Girls. It might have been Belly or Sui Generis, or the Redonditos de Ricotta, Depeche Mode, Neil Young, Gregorian Chant (which I believe was popular then), REM, Rage Against the Machine, Green Day or the Doors. It could have been Joan Manuel Serrat or maybe Janis Joplin, singin' "Me and Bobbie McGee" or Dylan, The Carmina Burana... see I didn't care as long as there was raw human emotion to be found...
I have lost that sense of music as companionship. Of course I still love music, and I still love making music, but it has been forever since I wrote a song, and I used to write them all the time and then, with my highly technical abilities and a double tape deck I would lay down the melody and then overlay the harmonies losing generation after generation in the analog format, but etching pieces of my soul into a film of plastic that could easily be lost or destroyed. What faith I had. The times I would run down into Swarthmore, avoiding the leers of the men that would cruise by the isolated parts underneath the blue route. The pounding of "Under a blood red sky..." or bouncing along to "D'yer Maker". I doubt that this brand of self-sustaining solitude is ever attainable again. I don't think so, but it is the part of me that I most miss, the part of me that was still full of possibility, boundless possibility for what life would become.
Not to say, of course that I am not still full of possibility (it just has its manifested limitations), I truly believe that we always have the opportunity to effect change in our own lives and the lives of others, but there was a freedom in not knowing, in having no idea whatsoever, about what was happening, what was going to unfold. I think 16 is the perfect age in which to situate one's inner child. Part of me will always be 16.
Maybe that is why I don't go back and read myself, because it would be too painful to remember who I was, when confronted with the impossibility of ever being able to recapture the perfection of my being. I would like to write the novel/memoir without re-reading myself and then go back and compare notes. (No I haven't abandonded the project, I am going to give myself a month after classes end to read the whole Quijote and write my novel in turns). I think it would be a really interesting excercise in the function of memory. How many details will I have whitewashed out? How much will I have altered reality in lieu of narrative perfection. Of course, it is frightening to think of writing something so monumental with no real audience, no real criticism, but let's not demotivate ourselves just yet, shall we?
No, I suppose my creativity hasn't been totally lost, but I can't wait to be finished with these latest hurdles so I can tell some more stories (there is one about an elevator that jumped out at me, while Marcelo and I were descending to Portuguese class today). In banal and boring news, my professor was extremely pleased with me, and while he will have suggestions, he admitted that he had his doubts but was pleasantly surprised by my mega-effort (it turns out that he was only expecting the first few pages). So at least it is not back to the drawing board for me. In other hoop-jumping news I managed to do my Fafsa on time and even scrounge up all our tax documents to go ahead and figure that out too. I even paid my bills on time. This only goes to prove that the busier you are, the more you can get done. It is all about prioritizing and finding the right space and mindset to do work...blah blah blah.
Funny thought for the day... Jenny emailed me an article about Alabama banning the sale of sex-toys and all things that would promote non-organic orgasms... as debilitating for the health of the state... snarf... I've been contemplating such objects of late. Maybe I'll write about it somewhere. Guess the southerners will just have to jerk eachother off. That is, of course, unless they are sharing a bed with children like our fav Santa Barbaran...
posted by ilana at 10:20 p.m.
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