"Writer's block? I've heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn't a writer anymore." - Warren Ellis
To an individual that is decidedly a non-composer, composition is a funny little exercise. Whenever I dip my toe into these personally uncharted waters, I find myself brutally assaulted by a riptide of clichéd metaphors that might clog even Jim Steinman's gullet. Most of the composition tropes that crop up in elementary school creative writing class also tend to surface whilst musicking. As of late, I have spent far more time than I'd prefer nibbling on the most common shred of advice one seems to run across:
Write what you know.
There are two ways to digest this nugget of joy. On the one hand, I could sublimate my twenty-something, white, middle-class rage into a mélange of "nobody cares" sauce. Though tempting, I wouldn't subject myself to this sort of musical masturbation, let alone anyone else. At the risk of minimizing my current woes, I'm going to go out on a limb and hypothesize that my present life would not translate into a terribly compelling broadside. Despite efforts to foist "Mediation Brief Blues" onto my peers as a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, writing about my present feels like a mostly-dead end.
Mostly?
That's where the other hand comes in. It has been years - at least ten or so - since I've spilled my heart through meaningful creative expression. I've spent countless hours on blogging buffoonery and academic regurgitation, but surprisingly little on anything I would consider "serious." As mentioned earlier, "serious" has never been my strong suit as the public face goes. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of what happens to be mucking around in my head, the recipients of my output are remarkably few.
Honestly, the idea of dumping the contents of my brain onto tape provokes the idea of dumping the contents of my bowels into my underpants.1 Even writing about writing about it feels a bit strange; I've really only had two major life events that knocked me off course enough to openly talk about them. In those cases, the sharing was cautious and incomplete. I could utilize the easy escape route and aim my pen towards pop culture ramblings and various homages to the artists that have aided in the sculpting of the Ed I know and love, but I think I might be capable of something more personally powerful.
It's not as if I have nothing to write about. I can always fall back on such lovely notions as matters of the heart evolving/devolving into over-analyzed matters of the brain, overcoming the general Valentine Michael Smith-ism of my past year and a half, or, as commonly crops up, the "Lonely House" that is life in New York City.2
I recently had a wonderful (albeit very drunken) conversation with a close friend on this very topic, which reignited my interest in actually finishing this essay (and caused me to expand from one post to however many it takes to exhaust this train of thought). There was a month's time between the first and final words of my last post. The past month has been a bit of an odd spot, with all of my wordcrafting focused on the ol' thesis and most of my thoughtcrafting focused on not plopping too many of the proverbial Cheez Doodles on any individual wager.3 It comes as no surprise that the following comment resonated most deeply: "Sometimes you just need distance."
Whether spatial or temporal, a bit of distance makes the personal, the painful, and the I'm-going-to-curl-into-a-ball-and-weep embarrassing a tad easier to share. Or to process. Or to interpret. Whatever the verb, time has a way of loosening the jaw. Though I haven't exactly struck a vein of usefulness, I'm working towards comfortability with uncomfortability. That appears to be the ultimate goal, as introspective writing goes: grabbing the bull by the business-parts and slamming said business-parts on the kitchen table for the benefit of gawking passers-by. The missing step is to obviously get myself some sort of special gloves or something, because I'm not sure how ready I am for that sort of gruntwork.
I am so done with that metaphor. I think y'all get the point.
Of course, writing doesn't have to be introspective. I could always take "write what you know" a bit more literally and start pounding out observational tales and musical renditions of yarns from my internal story-bank. I've been told I'm an engaging storyteller, though I've no idea what sorts of ears are seeking Randy Newman knockoffs with more vomit.
Why do all of my stories end with somebody/everybody barfing?4
1 I wanted to re-word this, but it was just too beautiful. And classy. More classy than "to shit one's pants," anyways.
2 The only real difference between the past two years of my life and the middle third of Stranger in a Strange Land is a marked lack of making out in swimming pools.
3 Tangent: I finally broke down and bought the Costco tub o' Utz Cheez Balls. I don't really like them that much, but the siren's call of the hefty orange bucket has been tugging on my eyeballs for months now. If you're interested, I can apparently fit twenty-three of them into my mouth before it becomes a problem.
4 Those who know me on the non-Interweb know that my folks inexplicably call me Chuck instead of Ed. My nickname as a tot was Upchuck-Chuck. This explains a lot about the analogies my brain constructs regarding "vomit" and "comedic panacea."
