The gaps of silence grow longer and deeper.
When I was very young, I didn’t know how to shut up.
People would constantly have to tell me to stop talking, and eventually I learned my lesson. I started talking less, and decided to expend that boundless energy on creative pursuits. I would hole myself up in my room and invent games, write stories and poetry, draw pictures, explore an endless tide of interests.
Most of those interests have faded into the background, or disappeared entirely. But I do find myself in my mid-twenties still clutching to those primal creative desires to make music, write poetry and prose, and create something interesting and worthwhile. However, recently those desires have not seemed so primal, so urgent.
It used to be that I couldn’t help myself from spewing all manner of words into thousands of poems, or composing every melody that got stuck in my head into a song. I would release hours of music a year, or self-publish a collection of poetry at the same steady pace; now it’s been months since I’ve shown any signs of life on my YouTube channel, or written a poem any longer than a Tanka. Past attempts at writing blog posts with any consistent schedule have all inevitably failed.
I alluded to this feeling of silence, or stagnation, in the foreword to my last poetry collection, “Even If I Am Ash”, as it was released nearly three whole years after the previous collection. I don’t like the feeling of being in this perpetual dry creative season. I find it difficult to scrounge up the motivation to write more than a few lines of poetry at a time, as I feel I simply have less to say without repeating myself. I find it difficult to sit at my desk and make music without struggling to land on a worthwhile idea or sound.
This second case is especially frustrating for me right now, as I’m coming up on a self-imposed deadline to release the next Maps of Low Fidelity album by the end of September. As of the time of writing this blog post, I only have an early version of a single track recorded, and it’s the first recorded music I’ve made in months.
I think part of this problem is the strange sense of dread it creates in me, that I’m slowly drying up creatively, and will soon cease to create anything else worth seeing the light of day.
But I also think this line of reasoning is a bit dramatic, and could use some perspective from the world of reality. I’ve got more going on in my life now than I ever have in the past, I’ve got a better grasp of what is worth sharing and what is worth leaving on the cutting room floor, and I’ve been enjoying the peace of mind that comes with simple – and wordless – appreciation of the world around me.
These things forge a creative silence in my life, but what fills that silence is not death, or anything so dramatic. It’s life, all that other stuff that goes on outside of my music and poetry. I have a job to do, bills to pay, relationships to tend to, and life skills to acquire and hone.
So here are some ideas I’d like to implement going forward that will hopefully help my mindset when it comes to my creative ventures:
These are things I want to keep in mind for the future, so that hopefully I can create more things that people will resonate with and enjoy. I want to get back into the habit of having fun making music and poetry. I want to write more blog posts about random interests when the thought arises. I want to feel that same primal creative desire I did when I was 10, and 20, and I want to feel it still when I am 30 and beyond.
Perhaps you can apply some of these thoughts to make something you find compelling as well. Thanks for reading.