Sunday, September 07, 2008

 

Here's to Tripping


I used to be able to write. Words used to flow from my pen like… like… well, see? Now even the simplest of similes sounds trite (and are accompanied, apparently, by an abundance of aggravating alliteration*). Neglect (and schooling) has dulled the once sharp tools of my wit – to whatever extent I was witty – and voice – to whatever extent it was mine. Even when I had nothing to say, I said it well enough. When, a few days ago, I glanced at some of my previous work, I was overcome with a nostalgia for a time when words obeyed me with simple loyalty. Now my vocabulary clumsily tumbles to the page as if written left-handed.

I’m not even struggling against a writer’s block or some definite creative obstacle. I’m just lost – struck immobile by the inability to find direction. Now I’m sprinting just to move. Now I’m sprinting just to find out which way I’m headed.

And my initial steps have led me here. The Feld-blog has, in the past, acted as my clockwork muse, and is the last known residence of my talent. Now I hope it will serve as the home of my rehabilitation [efforts]. It will no longer be constrained by the theme of politics, nor stoop to the function of a daily journal. With any luck this wild freedom of theme and genre will help reveal the focus I seem to have misplaced.

⎯ No. Misplaced seems wrong… fractured maybe?

See – I’ve started to think of myself as both the nerd and the class clown, simultaneously sternly intellectual and silly, watching the West Wing and Arrested Development. And this seems incongruous somehow. Ironically, this deeper self-awareness of my personal point of view has only crippled my ability to convey it. Persistent musings on the subject have left me with neither the proper language nor the appropriate vehicle to present myself undiluted and unabridged.

So my focus fractured. My ADD spilled out of my personality and into my artistic endeavors leaving a puddle of half-completed projects – abandoned because they couldn’t profoundly capture my underlying philosophy of art. Or because they weren’t funny. So I’ll use this space to sprint. Maybe I’ll trip over the answer.




*True, this is not technically alliteration since ‘a’ is a vowel and alliteration describes the repetition of leading consonant sounds.


# posted by Michael @ 10:51 PM
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