2004-03-06 - 5:02 a.m.
it’s not so much an age-old question as it is the question of our age: meditation or medication? do i need a psychic or a psychiatrist? am i crazy, or is this how ALL people feel at one point or another? i seem to be the anthropomorphic personification of physical langiudness, listlessness, and laziness, but at the same time i am constantly uptight, high-strung, and wired to the point of short-circuiting. i can’t even write. not because of writer’s block, but its polar opposite. i have too many ideas. i am overwhelmed as inspiration floods my conscious mind, cascading in from the depths of the subconscious in a ceaseless, relentless deluge. drowning me. too much is happening; when the entire life and times of every single character materializes before your omniscient and god-like eyes, hundreds of years of history occuring in an instant, how can you focus on any one point long enough to create a coherent, linear story? and what if your brain didn’t function chronologically? what if, instead of those hundred years rushing past as if on a lightspeed fast-forward, what if they were all occuring in real-time, all at the same time? as if someone opened a worm hole inside your head and everything that happens, has happened, and will happen in every possible realm of dimention is all happening at the same time? lost? so i am. but it’s in my head, so at least you have the advantage of stepping back and taking a clean and perspective point of view. allow me to draw you in further... imagine you are watching TV. a show you enjoy and never miss. remember all those past episodes? remember all those things you would have done differently if you had been the director, or if you had been the good guy, or the bad guy? have you ever thought about what’s going to happen on the next episode, or the next season? now imagine that every past episode, and every future episode, along with all of the versions you had fantasized in your head, are all playing simultaneously. not in separate little boxes gridded across the screen, though. they all take up the full screen; they are layered one on top of the other like the strata of a million year’s worth of sediment. but you don’t have the advantage of seeing the cut-through side view. you are looking at every scene of every episode playing together- the visual equivilant of hearing an 8000 piece orchestra in which each instrument is playing a different melody. how do you cope with that? the visions are merging and twisting together, blurring and flashing in and out. it is impossible to separate any one strand for more than a few moments. a few sentances or paragraphs. maybe even a page. but then what? back into the fray. back into the confusion until you find yourself begging for it to stop. it’s too much sensation in too small an amount of time. you become frustrated. you become stagnant, as there’s nothing left to do but watch it all play out, knowing what it is, knowing what you want it to be, but not being able to manifest that knowledge. There are artists out in the world who would give anything for inspiration, and i’ve actually caught myself praying to god for it to stop because i don’t feel like i can handle it. it’s just too much. let’s try another metephor. your faucet(=imagination) has been turned on and you have to transfer all the water into a random receptacle(=paper, sheet of music, etc.). the problem is the container you are using to move the water across(=your attention, concentration, etc.). in my case i’ve got a paper dixie cup. and as you are frantically trying to move as much water as possible, the tap is being turned up, the water flow is becoming stronger and stronger, but you’ve still only got a tiny paper cup. the water pressure is growing higher and higher until it has become torrential. now two things are happening at once. first of all, the amount of water you’re losing down the drain is obviously exponentialy larger than the amount of water you’re able to capture. second, the pressure is so strong that it becomes exceedingly harder to fill the cup at all, as the pure force of the water is blasting itself right back out of the cup. it gets to the point where the water is so strong, and the cup is so soggy and useless, that you have no choice but to watch the stream flow down the drain until finally stops. the parade goes by too fast to paint a portrait of any single figure, and it is beyond the realm of human ability to paint the entirety of the parade all at once. and what happens when the parade is over? the rush has stopped, the valve turned off? it’s not the same as trying to paint from memory. not when the parade was in your head to begin with. it never comes out right, the features are distorted and the symphony is reduced to a tin whistle. it can’t ever be as good as creating amid the rush, in flight. for how can you sail when the river is dried up? nothing to do but wait until the next flood and hope you can manage it then. accessing a memory from your brain is one thing, but have you ever tried to remember a time when you remembered something? it’s like looking at a reflection in a small mirror in a much bigger mirror. a reflection of a refleciton. sure, you can maybe see it’s general shape and size, but the details are too obscured to make out. it becomes a ghost of itself. try standing in between two mirrors and see if you can clearly make out the 50th reflection of yourself. you can tell it’s you, but could you tell your own eye color? or any other detail? eye color is the thing that determines good art from mediocre art. how can you settle on drawing a little red balloon when you’ve just seen a mighty zeplin rocket across the sky and then consume itself in flame? how can you settle on a budgie when you’ve just had a pheonix in your posession and watched it burn? you don’t. you can’t. at least, i’m not the kind of person who can. so then what do you do? do you scream? do you buckle beneath the pressure? do you let the frustration kill you? no. you wait. you just sit there, awestruck, licking your wounds and gleaning what you can and you wait. and then you let it happen again because there is no other choice. you are unable to do anything but wait there until the pheonix is reborn, only to know that, inevitably, it will incinerate yet again. and all that was just one story. what happens when you’ve got two stories? then to those two stories you add five songs. and then to those two stories and those five songs, you add every other thing that’s going on in your life- every other worry, concern, dream, hope, and emotion crossing the spectrum of human existance? don’t know? neither do i. writing and music are just two of my interests. i haven’t even bothered drawing in a very long time. is this the curse of the renaisance man? the joke of the jack-of-all-trades? that you can be decent at many things, in little pieces, for small amounts of time, but never truly excel in any of them? so that leads us back to the original questions: overactive imagination? chemical imbalance? some sort of strange divine intervention to keep me from rocking too hard? ;) meditation or medication? well i can’t afford the prescriptions or doctor visits for it to be chemical. but i don’t see how mental relaxation is even an option. my mind is in overdrive twenty-four, seven. when i clear it of one thing, it comes up with something else. is it OK to say my mind has a mind of its own? i don’t know what i need. inspiration? got quite enough of that, thank you very much (see above). mayhap i need a different kind of inspiration. maybe it’s time to try a different muse. one perhaps with less propensity to be hyperactive and hit things. one who doesn’t wear a hat. as a friend once said: “a muse doesn’t always have to get freaky with you.” which is true. but the freaky helps. or maybe i need to pay some little old oriental guy to put needles in my temples or fold myself into impractical and uncomfortable positions. but again, i don’t have the money to be folded into awkward positions. the pressure is not being relieved through artistic manifestations. and think about it. what happens when you have lots of pressure behind a thin boundary? it’s simple physics. you put a small hole in it to reduce the pressure and BANG! it blows. i need something to divert some of this mental energy so i can focus on writing or music, or anything. i mean, really focus. real concentration, not this half-assed attempt and being able to follow something for 5 minutes, and then fake it once mind brain has wandered off somewhere else. as far as diversions go, i can’t afford doctors, needles, or impractical positions. i’ve already ruled out drink and those things that are a touch less legal. maybe that’s it. maybe i need to get good and stoned. but alas, methinks that would be a trial of folly. i mean what if i try it and instead of being the relaxing, inspirational, eye-opening whatever it’s claimed to be, what if i get insects? ...what if i get spiders? i mean i’ve been on the emotional edge for years and the last thing i need is something to push me over. and why the crap am i able to write this much on the ill-balanced affairs of my brain, but i can’t freaking go for more than a few sentances about anything else? *grrrrrowlsnarlhissclaw* ok, i don’t think i’m crazy, by any means, at least not more than a neurosis here or there, but i don’t have the fallback other people do of being able to say things like “i’ve got a lot going on in my life.” virtually nothing is going on in my life! i go to work where i slack, i go to denny’s (rarely) where i slack and smoke, and i hang out at my house where i smoke a lot more. and slack. it’s not exactly like things are topsy-turvey or anything. but i would say that his goes beyond “overactive imagination.” my brian at any given point is doing the work of 5 or more normal brains, but don’t get me wrong, it’s not in a good way, not in that “i’m as smart as 5 people" or “i create what it would take 5 others to create” way. it’s like i do the worry of 5 people. or when i am trying to be creative, it’s like the 5 people have completely different styles and argue a lot and hate each other. i think one is wearing a hat of some sort. but not enough, mind you, to kill each other- that would be too simple. because then there’d only be one left, and then god knows i might actually be able to do something productive. *snarl* but again, shit, maybe EVERYONE goes through this. maybe this isn’t special. maybe that’s why i’ve posted this ridiculously long entry, in hopes that maybe some of you guys have a suggestion or idea. i dunno really what the point of this is. whatever. peace, i’m out.
