Musing along

It's always a danger of a writer, a musician, an artist of any kind really, to burn out.
You do so much, say so much, that you feel like you've said all that needs saying.



Thus you sit back and wait for the muse to strike again.
Days pass, maybe weeks, maybe more. It turns out that the muse has very little concern for your schedule, if all you are going to do is wait.

Sometimes, you have to sit down and force this stuff out. It isn't easy, or everyone would be a novelist.
No, it takes deliberate and delicate effort. Deliberate in that you have to struggle with yourself, the most fearsome enemy anyone can face. Delicate in that if you push too hard, the ideas strain and crack and you lose the artistry in favor of efficiency. You need both.

So here I am, writing something from nothing. I'm not particularly inspired, neither in a good nor bad mood...none of this -has- to come out.

I'll no doubt be unhappy with it, much like the essays you're forced to write in school. There is always something missing, something lacking. But I say that as if I'm ever happy with my own work. As if anyone ever is.

It would be easy to cave to the desire to end this early. Call it a blog post, and be done with it.
But that doesn't solve the problem.

The problem stems from closing yourself off to the flow of ideas, for whatever reason.
Whatever you may have heard about when a door closes, a window opens? That doesn't apply here.
You stop the flow of ideas, and lacking a major event or inspiration it stays stopped.

Instead, you have to sift through the dross and dull until something can be made from the pieces of concepts scattered around in your mind.

That may be why this all seems so broken-up and jagged, unrefined.
I'd say I'm losing my touch, but I know better.
At least I think I do.

So why do it at all? Why force creation from a place where creativity has, for the moment, chosen to abandon?

Maybe it's to stay in practice, lest the tools of creation become rusted and worn.
Maybe there is an element of inspiration to be had in the struggle against your own apathy.
Maybe because enough is never enough.

I like that last bit. No matter how much I write, how much I say, how many songs I play...there is always more. Choosing to wait for it to be easy to find inspiration, that's the cheap way out.

I'm not a fan of cheap ways out, nor easy ways. Very little worth the trouble comes easily, as they say.

There is always something more, some new concept on the brink of the mind - floating and forever lost unless you wade into this ocean of thought and imagination long enough to pull it to safety and cultivate it.

- C