Life as of 6-30-2012

Some people say "Write what you know" is the mantra of all successful writers. Other like to say things about how you won't be producing interesting writing unless you are living an interesting life, getting new experiences all the time. Others say, Fuck it, just write.

I've been living a very interesting life as of late, but it has been keeping me from producing writing at all. I don't think I am the sort of person who writes about what is happening to them. Usually.



I've been wondering what I used to do, the How Of Writing, that I no longer do. Writing now seems like drudge work. I have had my worst showing ever in the 30 in 30 poetry challenge this month--less than 15 poems. Of those 10 or so, I like none of them. How sad is that, when you aren't even producing art that YOU enjoy? I can think of few things sadder than an artist who can only make art that ze hates (please leave a reply with a thing sadder than an artist who can only make art ze hates).

Some writers call this block. Writer's block, to be more specific. I have always thought block to be a paralysis originating from hesitation. You're stuck on where to begin, because you have imposed some limit on yourself that you aren't aware of. This is block. You aren't letting yourself write.

I am writing. I am not blocked. I am simply not getting wrapped up in the act any more. I have not felt like I am even in the proximity of a muse in months.

This muse idea has got me thinking about what it is that makes me write in the first place. What used to inspire me? It used to take almost nothing. I'd see a cloud of dust passing on the highway, or a tree, and I'd wonder about its history, its future, its friends, emotions, what is like it and not like it. The world would be drawing connections between its pieces for me.

I think we write from certain positions. Not like on the couch or laying down or sitting or upside-down and stuck in a doorway, but those may help. I mean the instant that gets us wanting to write, the feeling or spark or flash or litle insight that initiates the act of deep seeing that written art asks the author to enact. Deep seeing. Something catches my eye, a glint, a bird shadow, and I am transported into Wondertown.

For me, I have a few starting positions. Desire is a big one. Anger another. Physical discomfort. Emotional discomfort. Anxiety. Joy. Drunkenness. These starting points all get the world to reveal its arterial highways of meaning--the subtle is exposed after being injected with ink. Or at least it used to be.

So I have to wonder what's different now. What's in the way?

It's summertime, I live in a beautiful town with great people, have awesome friends, surround myself with opportunities to create, and I'm picking up new hobbies and casting off old habits often.  By my own standards, I should be very inspired. I try new things. I do new things. I cook now. I work out now. I have been losing weight, a long-term goal of this summer (less than 200 pounds for the first time since 2003, you're day is nigh). I'm in psychotherapy again, and I like the therapist. I'm exploring and studying gender. I'm blogging now. I've been vegetarian for over a month. I'm researching PhD programs. I'm taking care of 6 separate health concerns (wrist, knee, back muscles, dermatology, diet, weight). I'm journaling nightly. I'm reading new poets, Lousie Gluck and Kenneth Koch and Mayakovsky.

I wrote a 14-page single-spaced letter to my mother (30 pages double spaced) essentially telling her to grow up, because I am, and it hurts to see her try to ignore her own suffering by self-medicating; telling her about why I never come home; telling her how and why I'm identifying as transgendered now though It took me a long time (15 years) to be able to do that. See? I am not blocked.

I move out of my apartment today. I don't have an apartment to move into, so I'm crashing at a friend's place (may blessings be upon him!) until I do. As exciting as house-hunting is, this state of not having a place to call my own is no fun. I had a place lined up, the perfect place: pets ok, drums ok, all utilities paid, backyard, garage, close to campus, downtown, relatively cheap rent, private landlord, cool neighbors, lots of space, not a dive. I set up a forwarding address, dates to turn off the utilities, told my current landlord I would not be renewing my lease, rented a truck. Then the landlord sold the house and the new owner is not renting it. I found this out last Wednesday. I have essentially been panicking since.

Even before the apartment fell through, I was not sleeping and full of rage at my body's betrayal of my will. Ask me about how I had a good friend help me find my happy place last week, and then within minutes of us parting I filled the happy place with a fire-breathing on-fire dragon that burned the whole thing to the ground. Ask me about going to bed at 11pm and not passing out until 7am (chirp chirp chirp the birds gun-gun-cachung-rrrrrroooooh construction next door) and waking up at 9am and eating and doping myself back to sleep for a few weeks in a row. Ask me about feeling like a victim of your body, helpless at the whim of an unfeeling antagonist. Ask me about coming out to my mother and having her be unsupportive, much less than when I came out to my siblings and aunt. Ask me how it feels to be told that people like me "never turn out very well," or writing a 14-page letter only to have its recipient deny all the memories you put in there, memories it took you your whole life to muster the courage to confront her with, memories attached to feelings you thought you had in order until the person they were directed at ignores them and wants to talk about the weather and how bad things are for her. Then ask me how losing all the security embodied in the place you were supposed to live would feel.

Finding a place where I can drum, have a pet, be close to campus and groceries and feel like I live in a home instead of a series of overpriced dingy rooms with hating ears behind every thin wall is rare. Being able to afford a place like that is rarer. I already miss the hypothetical life I would have lived there.

The Buddhists say attachment is the source of all suffering. In my experience, they're mostly right.

I was talking to my friend Leah today. I ended up saying somewhere in the conversation that I get more joy from drumming than from writing. She told me she continuously wonders why I am not a music major. My reply was honest, but stupid. When I was an undergrad, I found out the music program was a 5-6 year program. I thought I would never be in college for that long, but I took a stab at it anyway. I failed my Aural (listening) Skills class the first semester I took it, not due to a lack of aptitude, but due to a lack of attendance. That semester I dropped out of all my classes due to depression. I wasn't going to any class, couldn't drag myself out of bed, was sleeping through the day and waking at night. I did that three more times before I found my groove. After 8 years, I got my BA in English, and another BA in Communications. 

I didn't then, but now I regret not studying and following where my bliss naturally takes me, given all the sacrifices I make and energy I expend and money I put into the drums. The things I do for those discs and cylinders, wood and copper and plastic and chrome. They're worth it, but I could live almost anywhere if I didn't have to factor them and their noise into potential residences. It would make house-hunting (and house-living, and furniture arranging, and neighbor-relations, and back problems, and wrist problems, and knee problems) a lot less arduous.

So for the last week I've been contemplating giving up drums for a while, maybe forever, and focusing on writing, trying to turn writing--what I have already gone into thousands of dollars of debt for, what I have spent almost a decade studying and practicing, what I envision my future career to be in, what I have loved, what I do anyway, what helps me focus my thoughts and energies, what gives me power, what gives me calm--into something that will eventually start paying off. Right now, the drums are a source of spiritual bliss (as always) yet practical woe, a major inconvenience. Is there an ideal residence for me somewhere in Flagstaff? I cannot say. It is out of my hands. And that is goddam scary.

Besides my gender identity, I have never tried to not express something I consider to be an essential part of my being. Look where denying my gender dysphoria got me--15 closeted, awkward, fearful, anxious years, years marked by depression, denial, self-imposed barriers, despair, drugs, lies, doublethink, doublespeak, doubleplusungoodness. If I lose drums, I know I will go crazy. It's in me, and it's got to come out, whatever it is that coordinates my limbs and makes me grin and bob my neck when I'm behind the kit, deep in the pocket of a groove. I don't think it would be healthy to deny that part of me. How wound up I could get. How bursting at the seams. How kindling something nasty.

So maybe that's what's different. Life is in the way. Sometimes I think when there is a lot of order in my life, I seek chaos in art. It's a simplistic binary to think inside of, but it works here. And vice-versa: when my life is full of chaos, I seek order, stability, in art. Instead of wanting to write / drum like a hurricane, I want to occupy the still, quiet eye.

Do I throw up my hands (a funny turn of phrase, that) and say "There is too much chaos! I am going to wait for shit to calm down before trying to write!"? No. I have been writing. I am writing. Just not about my life craziness. Well, until now. When there is too much order, I do not wait for it to get crazy.

That last block of prose sounds like the idealist speaking. The idealist likes his abstractions. Honest emotional pragmatist says, well, maybe. Maybe trying to be an artist on top of a freshly-uncloseted transgendered human being, an apartment hunter an editor, a secretary, a broken-but-getting-healthier body, a shaking-things-up son, a brokeass college student, a second-year teacher, a second-year grad student, a reluctant president, a seeking spirit, and a PhD applicant is too much at once. Maybe just cutting one out isn't enough. Maybe I should progressively stop doings things until I feel centered again, or at least until I am able to sleep at night. What time is it?

What a shit month. The insomnia is back. The anxiety is raging. The bliss is in jeopardy. The art is not happening. The muse is distant. The body vexes the spirit. The spirit spits in its cage.


This is summertime. I thought things were supposed to be relaxing. 

Until next time,

J