Every day starts with relatively infinite possibilities, then gets narrowed down as the minutes march on. Such a sentiment is more widely-held by the younger set, those fortunate ones who haven’t whittled and winnowed away their enthusiasm just yet. Fledgling adults seem to have an inherent audacity for tirelessly pursuing various pies in various skies, relentless endeavors repeated remorselessly (whose results range in reliability).
I recall a time in my life when my brand of audacity was to compose thoughtful and robust sentences. The verisimilitude and substance of said sentences was inconsequential, as long as I was doing something in the literary arts. This brazen approach yielded numerous charming products, some of which may contain the universe’s secrets when stretched out to a nanometer’s width (who knows?).
Nowadays, that zest has all but extinguished itself. The audacious spirit is suspended in amber, a fossilized vestige of my past humanity. But at least I have records of this triumphant hubris, because I WROTE IT DOWN. Just the way I’m writing down this little thought experiment right at this very moment. Period.
Ooh, how audacious. Might have to just keep writing these things in order to spite myself. If I’m defiantly demonstrating my worth as a wordsmith on a semi-frequent basis, perhaps I’ll once again perceive myself as such (instead of lollygagging around with some namby pamby excuse as to why I’m supposed to be a writer but the world around me is too fucked up for me, blah blah blah).
I suppose I’ll issue myself a challenge. Keep writing like this, ya moron. Don’t you remember how good it felt once you’d finished polishing up these turds and putting all the tags and categories on them? Yeah you do, especially when those turds had metamorphosed into some sort of precious mineral (or at least clean-burning fuel source).
Okay, good pep talk. Unsure if this is helpful for anyone out there in the big ol’ world, but if you’re feeling burnt out on “life”, maybe this naïvely cynical take will make you chuckle for a second.
Tag: Motivation
Check Check, Test Test
Wow, this recent sequence of events is quite a roller coaster ride of rediscovery and contemplation as an artist. All those times–hundreds–that I doubted why I was putting in the time, I was incapable of seeing the bigger picture. And now that I’ve glimpsed a larger scheme of things, I can also understand that I’ll never see the entire picture. My senses limit that panoply.
But that’s okay! I can make do with what I’ve got, and make it as colorful as possible.
My Straitjacket series, as you may have noticed, is the driving force behind this particular reinvigoration.
I’m going to post dozens of these Straitjacket poems, all named a particular time of day, Greenwich Mean Time. There are 1,440 possible titles for this series, if you consider the different combinations of digits that represent particular periods in time (however ambiguous).
The older me would have let that overwhelm him, likely thinking about that 1,440 number as a challenge to WRITE 1,440 POEMS FOR THE SERIES. Anything less would have been a letdown.
Fortunately, my thought processes are much healthier these days, and I’m just taking it one poem at a time.
The speaker in these poems is… a man in a straitjacket. He’s in a rubber room, doesn’t know how he got there. Time is static in this environment, and sensory deprivation is opening up new ways of thought for him. As time progresses, he becomes more and more comfortable with his purest expressions, abandoning the inner critic that always told him he wasn’t good enough, and that he’d just end up selling used cars out of an auto mechanic’s garage (well, not exactly in the garage–it’s out back, Gus owns the adjacent lot and decided one day to supplement his income by buying fixer-uppers and flipping them for tidy profits).
Taking the idea of audience out of the equation for the speaker is sublime and freeing, I can do whatever I want with words under the umbrella of absurdity and non-sequitur, legitimized through a unified theme.
So I reckon that’s about it for now. Just wanted to check in, let you know that I’m happily creating. Perhaps, in the near future, an upgrade will come my way. Some kind of monetization. Perchance a book or booksss? That’s my hope, eh? Just need to figure out how to self-publish printed materials and reach the widest possible audience.
Cheers, mates!
-Aidan
WHARVED 