The uncarved block
I toil most weekdays at horrendously practical things. "Trace that wire," the boss shouts; "lift that pail!", "hammer that tile", "clean up this mess", and so on into the interminable hours as thoughts swirl in my head, many of them about death and whether I'll be doing this all my life. For the first time in my life, I've felt the pang of class-consciousness. Even though I've been bred to be a modern Mandarin like most of my peers, appearances point to other things. I could believably pretend that I don't speak English, or at the very least that I don't know "all dem big words". Anyway, the only thing that maintains my connection to the relative sanity of the life I've chosen is my writing. So a week-long writer's block could not have come at a worse time.
I could not apply the usual solutions: getting drunk and falling off of statues, cooing at the pigeons in the park, climbing church scaffolds and making up modern mythologies based on our canopy of seven (plus or minus two) night sky stars visible in dear old Toronto, lying down on sidewalks recalling the strains of a music video from the dim past (Radiohead - Just.mpeg), attempting ot have visions or talking into the night, then talking to the creaking wheels of the subway cars, doing pull-ups on the handrails, staggering in playgrounds, belting out sordid modern albums to the empty street, walking down the middle of the same street with my whiskey-soaked cerebellum, stealing bar sandwich-signs, discussing the girls of our youth who took no vows and believed in nothing, &c., &c. It seems to me there might not be an evening this summer where I won't have to "take it easy". That is, stopping before crazy, at merely happy, stopping before imaginative at merely regurgitating, stopping before adventurous, at merely sleepy.
But we all deal with writer's block, some people for a lifetime, some for weeks or years. I guess it's my endless fear that there is nothing original, novel or interesting in my association cortex.
Filipino Proverb: "Aanhin mo ang palasyo, kung ang nakatira ay kuwago? Mabuti pa ang bahay kubo, ang nakatira ay tao.
(What good is a palace if it's inhabited by owls. Better a straw hut inhabited by humans.)"
I could not apply the usual solutions: getting drunk and falling off of statues, cooing at the pigeons in the park, climbing church scaffolds and making up modern mythologies based on our canopy of seven (plus or minus two) night sky stars visible in dear old Toronto, lying down on sidewalks recalling the strains of a music video from the dim past (Radiohead - Just.mpeg), attempting ot have visions or talking into the night, then talking to the creaking wheels of the subway cars, doing pull-ups on the handrails, staggering in playgrounds, belting out sordid modern albums to the empty street, walking down the middle of the same street with my whiskey-soaked cerebellum, stealing bar sandwich-signs, discussing the girls of our youth who took no vows and believed in nothing, &c., &c. It seems to me there might not be an evening this summer where I won't have to "take it easy". That is, stopping before crazy, at merely happy, stopping before imaginative at merely regurgitating, stopping before adventurous, at merely sleepy.
But we all deal with writer's block, some people for a lifetime, some for weeks or years. I guess it's my endless fear that there is nothing original, novel or interesting in my association cortex.
Filipino Proverb: "Aanhin mo ang palasyo, kung ang nakatira ay kuwago? Mabuti pa ang bahay kubo, ang nakatira ay tao.
(What good is a palace if it's inhabited by owls. Better a straw hut inhabited by humans.)"
posted by A. D. at 12:39 PM
2 Comments:
Just write already. Stop trying to be original, novel or interesting. You're a talented writer, it's enough. I hope to see some quality stuff like your "Poets" and "Absurd" entries again. Have a great rest of summer.
I thank you kindly. I just need a change of some sort to get started again.
Cheers!
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