Period of Rest

Current Tunes: Darkest Hour - Convalescence

So this will be one of my more ironic posts that I can imagine, but nonetheless I’ll be grateful for it. I’m posting from the LAN party at a friend’s house out in Lawrenceville, and I hadn’t particularly planned on posting but the opportunity and inspiration arrived and I was more than willing to open the door.

I just watched this interesting, if flawed, episode of ”Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” The main plot revolved around one of the characters (Jake Sisko) being seduced/tempted by a mysterious woman who promised to help him stimulate his creative self and in turn allow him to generate brilliant writing material, all at the cost of his physical health (she was some sort of psionic succubus).

Anyway, the plot wasn’t the point, not precisely. It just dawned on me that I used to be inspired every day, even for the shortest moments that lead to writing something. That doesn’t seem to happen much these days. I can pinpoint several of the causes I think; stress, depression, discontentment, anxiety, restlessness. Unbelievable, otherworldly restlessness.

On another level, it has to do with the title, or concept of the episode, which was called “The Muse.” My usual pattern would be me saying something along these lines: “That’s what I need, a muse.” I won’t be that affirmative about it; but I do think it would be fascinating. I’d like to see what kind of writing I would churn out if I had this magnificent, strange woman to inspire my writing. I’d like to give it a shot, trouble is I don’t have any money or anything else of value to offer in exchange. It’s probably nothing but foolishness either way.

There are physical ways to overcome these things though. In the episode, there’s a quick exchange of dialogue where the succubus/muse woman creates a metaphor where she equates to writing ink on paper for a writer is exactly the same as a fine artist taking paint to canvas. That’s where the irony of this post I referred to earlier comes into play. I should be writing this on paper right now instead of typing it up, in spirit with this idea that I should get back to writing on paper again.

Those days when I wrote all the time, I was writing on paper then. I want to get back to that. Notebooks scribbled in and pages torn out here and there. I want a drawer full of them. They don’t even have to be meaningful writings. Just ink poured out on paper, released from its plastic case pen prison. This is a habit that I can fairly effortlessly adapt. The question will be if I have the memory and patience to make it persist.