'Look how black the sky is, the writer said.
I made it that way.'
I've just finished re-reading Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis and this sentence has been pounding through my head since I read it a few days ago. I had genuinely forgotten almost everything about the book, having last read it back in 2007 so admittedly a reread was way overdue... and something I think I really needed.
One of my biggest struggles with any of my writing has been the constant inner battle between the wannabe journo who has to dispassionately relay facts, events, timelines and the writer desperate to emotionally delve as far as possible while doing so with some kind of lyrical grace. The battle between the adult trying to sensibly get through each day by being level-headed and not letting emotions cloud their judgement and the dreamer who can't help but see the moments for what they are, each their own fleeting tale of joy, pain, hunger, rage... the Realist versus the Idealist, round 1... the Journalist versus the Activist, round 2.
In fact, it's not just in my writing that this discord keeps rearing itself. My general demeanour is one of optimism, cheer and openness. I like seeing the good around me and very often do. I also don't like to complain because despite my own troubles, I can't help seeing how starkly they pale in comparison to so many others. Not to mention the fact that constant complainers (read: fucking drama kings/queens) are among my least favourite people on the planet. I like to keep trying to move forward, however slowly - and in my case, it's often glacial - and I like to look around the world for all the wonder it has to behold.
But that said, that wonder will always inevitably come with its share of drama and the creative part of me can't help pushing aside the rational part of me saying, 'get the hell over it already and move on' and wanting to pick it all apart, pull its guts out and splash it somewhere, even if only onto the canvas hanging off kilter inside my own head. It's this side of me that is drawn to the dark and the depressive, the pain and the anguish that is so intrinsically part of bouncing around on this insane rock. It was this side of me that obviously wanted to reread something written by the guy who came up with the reportedly (I haven't yet read it, although I have recently attained my own copy) vividly grotesque American Psycho. Even in Lunar Park, he refers to his writing American Psycho as 'an extremely disturbing experience', with Patrick Bateman haunting him at every turn till he was finally done. He even wrote the following:
'But even years later I couldn't look back at the book, let alone touch it or reread it - there was something, well, evil about it.'
I do imagine this sentence was certainly dramatically tainted, but that being said, it's no secret that everything you write takes a piece out of you. Stephen King has spoken about how writing Pet Sematary was one of the hardest things to do because of the places he had to bring his mind to in order to complete it. Anyone who has read it can easily imagine why. Having attempted my own forays into the deadlights (ayup), the headspace into which you collapse can be overpowering and it can cripple the hell right out of you. A more recent attempt had me attempting to actually create a scenario that has remained one of my (and likely many people's) greatest fears and give it life (or death) on the page. I wasn't very far in when I had to shut my eyes and physically get the fuck away from my laptop. As is unfortunately my way, I never finished it, although the door is nowhere near closed on it.
As a naturally sensitive person, navigating adulthood has involved a huge amount of personal change - or at least my trying to implement that change - with a varying degree of success. Unfortunately, what that has also come to mean is that I actively repress my creative side. I doff it in exchange for rationalisation of my non-existent right to complain when there's so, so much worse. While I'm happy to be happy, I do know we are all allowed to rant, bitch, rave and moan from time to time, but for the most part, the person I am now, the person I have become, the person I've trained myself to be, prefers to limit that allowance and try to see the good. The sad part is, it's when I'm really indulging that creative side that I feel alive. As in fully present. ME.
And the notion of a balance between the two is so ridiculously difficult. Even now, I can hear Little Miss Sensible telling me to just get down to it, write, woman! Write! Stop trying to find time, just do it, get your ass in gear, do iiiit! Quit with all the analysis already!
But the other part of me knows that this is who I am. This is all part of what makes me, me and I can't not try to know it, to dissect it, to figure it all out and to revel in doing so.
But LMS is winning. Right now, having written all this, I want to wrap it up neatly by saying, make the time. That's it. Work when you have to work, socialise when you have to socialise and write and dream when you have to be. That's all there is to it. You know that. When you open your laptop and are sitting there staring at the page and that damned blinking cursor and you're wondering what in hell makes you think you have anything of importance to say and even if you did, what makes you think you have any ability to elucidate it, just do what you did just now. Start writing. Something. Motherfucking anything. And get wherever it is you have to go, as a journo, as an activist, as an artist or as yourself.
Get writing and darken that damn sky.
To which I can only reply with, 'Ok.'
And to be honest, it's a bare victory. The very existence of this blog, technically a piece of exhibitionism that the anti-exhibitionist inside of me abhors, is proof of that. Yet, were it not, I would be defying my own words in my own article - words imploring everyone (myself) not to be too afraid to speak and be heard.
So up this goes in defiance of hypocrisy.
'Let my own lack of a voice be heard.'
