Nothing can be said about what goes on in my head when I write... when I used to write... It is a kind of madness that breaks out without warning and possesses you and drains you of life word by word, and sometimes leaves you stranded mid-sentence, word, or comma,... what torture.
Writing takes a lot of nerve, to think that you have something worthwhile to say. To hope that you may be healed if only you use the right words. Write and be whole, write and be damned forever. For once written, you don't exist, only words do... at least the one sentence you have saved to be the noose around your neck... or fingers.
Why should I write? Because I must.
2. But why can't I write?
Stuck. It is some form of fear that eats from inside out. The disease starts in a brain clogged with duties unfulfilled, that loan you'd have to pay in 7 years but have no idea how, the assignment you don't see the point of doing anymore, the people you don't want to talk to but have to. You don't attend parties bcuz your dejection may seep through all the alcohol and substances you imbibe and people may notice, you attend parties bcuz people may also notice your withdrawal, so you restrict your public consumption to 3 drinks, and return to the stash in your apartment...
Stuck. And yet the diseased brain recognizes the blank page, that thing which obsesses you to fill it with words - only now, you are afflicted, you obsess that it will remain blank.
3. Why can't I write?
To write well about something, you need to believe in it. Belief. And hope. In words. For the unbelievers and the hopeless. Words are for all those in need of it, to soothe, to scar, to burn, to love...So why is it that when you are in the depths of despair, you sit silent, so wordless in a corner? Is it cuz when dejection first started creeping in, you hurt someone with words when all you were asking without asking was their help to survive before the darkness hit?
If there is nothing to believe in, if I believe in nothing, how can I write? How can you write about your dreams if you don't dream? And if all you have are your nightmares, should you write about it? For to write about your nightmares, your fears, is to bring them to life.
And so the world was made from nothing - with a few well-said words.
4. Why can't I write?
I don't have anything to say. But then one late night the radio plays U2, Bono belting out 'with or without you'...'and you give yourself away.....' and it all comes back to you in a flash - the nights you locked yourself in a small room with only bottles of the cheapest vodka and cigarettes for company... writing. Writing because you couldn't sleep until the words were torn out of your daytime silences, writing bcuz it was a madness you used against the other madness that was always so close.
You hear a song and like a recovered addict crave for the words...except now you have to try harder, longer and require more for the same high. You can't write because of the pain of self-induced silence, and the doubt that the other darkness may have swallowed your words forever.
5. Why can't I write?
Maybe I should. Write that is. Just the same stories that have all been told before. Maybe in the re-telling there may arise something new.
