I never realized what a great bubble of inspiration my former room was. Filled more by windows than by walls, it was always beautiful - though occasionally I took it for granted and found it rather monotonous. I miss it more than I first realized. It wasn't just a room, it feels. It was this delightful little sanctuary I had masterfully crafted for myself. My personality adorned every inch of that room and never had such a liberating space ever existed for me. I could do as I pleased and it inspired me to do things I never knew could be pleasing. I once deemed it "a magical place where magical things happen" and it seems more true with each passing moment that I no longer spend within it. It seemed cosmically aligned to reap my most fruitful inspirations. For a while, dating between the last post and this one, I hardly listened to music. Or at least I didn't listen to it enough. Not until I recently, when I've purposely eliminated myself from all bullshit and just LISTENED, did I realize how grounding music's constant therapeutic abilities were to me. Its utterly vital. Now I find myself bursting with seemingly endless bouts of inspiration, sentences flowing about my head in a way stronger than I've felt in a while. I'm experiencing so much change. I'm not depressed or upset - I won't allow myself to be. But when this inspiration strikes, so completely and wondrously, I find its overwhelming. It brings to the forefront every monumental emotion I've experienced lately. I realize I've tried to null out such emotions, in case one gets too powerful. I can't let it overtake me. I won't let it. For right now, there is no solution - to a problem I can't be bothered to disclose. (Though I assure you its nothing like heartache, which I find is too much of the same wah-wah.) Its a waiting game. I realize in the process of nulling out potentially beastly emotions, I've closed up my creative outlet. Its difficult for me to find the time and place to write, yet simultaneously, I've never felt so much like a writer. I've never, ever felt the writing process was so essential to my being. So despite my vague, fleeting crisis, I MUST prevail creatively, for its what truly keeps me afloat. More coming, I promise you that!
'... That's what I was gonna do, and I wasn't going to hurt. And if you shut yourself off and say, "This isn't going to hurt me," you can't shut it down without shutting it down totally. I closed myself down so much that I was making it, doing great with surviving - but my soul was completely encased. I didn't even consider that I would need a soul to play my music, that when I shut the door on pain, I shut the door on my music. That's what I did. And that's how people get old.'
- I'm reading Nick Kent's The Dark Stuff currently, and you can't imagine my surprise when reading his piece on Neil Young and stumbling upon this quote, just the day after writing the above. I suppose I'm on a similar wavelength as late seventies Neil - but, like Neil, I excel at naturally getting myself out of funks.
The most tremendous, nearly unfathomable strength stems from the most horrendous situations. If you can play it the right way, new lows can result in new strength. What seemed scary or dramatic no longer seems to matter when you've seen what does. You view things with a new, fortified appreciation because you now know what you don't have. All I know is my boldest moments (or 'brave and strong', as Sly would say) seem to come in the midst of awful situations. The courageousness I feel building inside of me is something I purely cannot articulate in words. I've come out of this summer extremely changed, and I didn't even notice. Normalcy is settling in under the most unusual circumstances, and I'm allowing things to lighten up. And it can only get better... xx
