Have you looked at the sky lately? It’s the talk of the town. This morning, a sun burning through a sheen of clouds, making a sunrise of pastel pink and orange, last night, a big bright moon surrounded by stars – it’s hard not to look up. In prettier moments, it makes me feel small in a good way.
Waning poetic.
I’ve been told that I’m a writer and therefore have no choice but to write. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Surely you’ve noticed, waiting weeks with bated breath, that I haven’t been doing this very much. Any writing I have been doing has been squirreled away secretly in notebooks that will remain unread until I die and my literary executor, swept away by the artistic value of even my most casual thoughts and feelings, defies my dying wish to burn all extant writing materials, instead opting to publish them, and I get catapulted to post-mortem fame.
Forgive the fantasy—forgive the bravado. I didn’t sleep great last night, and it fills me with a flavor of mania. It’s kind of an effective tool for making things, or at least for getting the inspiration to make them. Rest assured that everything I’ve said so far has been bullshit.
Pithy edginess aside, I’ve determined that I do much better in every way when I’m working on some sort of project. So, in an effort to do much better in every way, I am working on a project—the specifics of which will go unsaid, but can easily be surmised by the fact that it’s been over a year since I released any music.
I also do better when I’m reading. Currently, I’m reading Sandman at the behest of the same friend that insisted I’m a writer and therefore have to write. Despite my hesitance to read a graphic novel (in other words, pretentiousness), it’s pretty good—a nice change of pace after soldiering through Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, which I enjoyed, despite at times feeling too stupid or too drunk to fully appreciate the depth of the stories.
After Sandman, I think I’ll read The Bluest Eye or Beloved because apparently I love whiplash. If anybody has something worth saying in a time like this though, I’d imagine Toni Morrison is one, and her work presents a significant gap in my reading. I’m looking forward to seeing what all the literary fuss is about, so to speak.
If a prospective employer is reading this (and why would you do that?), note well that I am an interesting and artistic person outside of work, and I am desperate to deliver value to your shareholders—truly, it’s my biggest dream.
Truthfully though (sarcasm aside), I just want to make enough money to finance a simple creative life. I don’t need to derive all my fulfillment from work, despite the vestigial Protestant work ethic that makes me feel guilty when I don’t in fact make my life solely about working. When the dreaded question is asked in interviews of why I want to do something like, say, office administration, I wish it was an acceptable answer to say that I have bills and I want to do a job that is straightforward and allows me to daydream about creative pursuits, because I can truly do that and be a good employee. Despite my snark, despite the consistent façade I project that I’m a hip, creative, ‘lax guy, I actually am a good worker. I can promise you that. Ask me—really. Go ahead. That’s a better question, because I’m not going to bullshit an answer on why I’m passionate about office work.
The fact that I won’t bullshit you about it is another reason, I think, that I’m a good candidate.
Whatever though– that’s enough of that. Given that attention is one of our greatest currencies, I’m not going to waste any more (at least in this blog) about shit I have no control over, like the questions one gets asked in interviews. Limiting attention to that which can actually be improved upon or influenced in day-to-day life can’t be a bad thing. Why else would I feel like I’m giving myself brain damage when I zone out on my phone for extended periods of time?
There’s caustic image after caustic image of a world evidently falling apart, and good people trying to do something about it with their “platforms,” and truly I don’t know what kind of noise to contribute to that torrent of noise.
That’s why I haven’t really been writing this thing. I don’t want to add to the torrent. Having expressed that to a friend, I was told, “well, just don’t make it noise, then.” But I think it’s noise.
Or, noisy, at the very least.
Then again, I suppose it isn’t up to me to decide. Lately, when I feel anxious about doing anything creative (and rest assured, the feeling is frequent), I realize that it happens when I think about the end result before the thing is even done: of posting the blog, or putting out a record, performing the song in front of an audience or, god forbid, submitting a story for potential publication (yeah, I still write those now and then, but I haven’t submitted anything for like, 18 months)—basically, thinking about presentation over and before production.
It just kills the joy of making the thing. Cart before the horse, et cetera et cetera. Ironically, parsing that out in writing is somewhat cathartic. And I had a good time; did you? (Don’t answer that.)
But anyway, to lend this thing a semblance of circularity, look at the sky later. The moon will be big. It’ll make you feel small, but along with it, all our problems too.
matt nilsen 