To write, or, more broadly, to create, I feel I must know, as many do, all the things that must be known, albeit not everything, since no one can know everything. But, in the case of the creatives, I speak of those who know many things to reference and metaphorize, which, in my general naivety, or general choice to ignore all rules, I’m claiming it as a word, red-dotted underline be damned. And, I do not have such knowledge, so I feel I have not earned the right to create. Not yet. But when?
I know so little. I know what I know of constantly fluctuating emotions in the boiling bubble of my brain, but little else. All that I’ve “learned” disappears in moments. I have nothing to reference. I’m discovering notes without knowing that music is an art form. I’ve got nothing.
Is it too late to learn something–to know something? To know, to know enough? What does that even mean? Must I read 100 books before I can start to write my own, and somehow pay attention to every page? Must I study story structure and how to write dialogue to produce something that resembles a screenplay? Will I ever be able to create quality fiction if my imagination goes only so far as taking the people I know and altering their true life stories ever so slightly?
Creatives are so far outside of my current existence I don’t know how to become that–yet I can’t help but want a better, healthier way to export the thoughts I have, and to share them with the world in some sort of productive fashion–and, no, I don’t count random musing blogging as productive. It’s a creative means but not a means to an end.
What I want is // I want to create moments in time // moments in time that connect us all. Those raw, disorientating moments where we know ourselves a little too well, alone, or with others. I seek out those moments because they are the moments that make life worth living, and stories worth telling. The awkward pauses which take us off course, knock us off our feet, force us to learn something knew about ourselves, or access parts of ourself we’ve forgotten and lost through our ages. The stories that tie us all together, across age, gender, race, genetic makeup, time of existence — because, we’re all human, and being human is fucked up and farcically funny and traumatically tragic and magically marvelous all at the same fucking time.
And, as every day the reality of life’s brevity sinks in, I close my eyes and drift to sleep thinking how I want to leave behind something, or somethings, that have a life outside of my own. I want to take this fervid force I have inside me burning a hole in the pit of my stomach and up through my heart and unleash it in all of its ugly pretty. Maybe no one else will care to look, but at least it won’t be holed up inside me anymore, at least I won’t feel so afraid to create without knowing enough, to press the keys to an instrument I hadn’t expected to produce noise, and revel in its delightful dissonant din until the notes produce an output cacophonic no longer.
life with interest 