Where have all the good words gone
Writing used to be simple, easy. It never was a chore when I was young. It was natural. Words literally poured from my fingertips. Like a harpist’s fingers on a piece of paper and words danced through it like music.
But now, gone. Like a bottle of glue with a solid neck, words won’t come out because of disuse.
Still, I write, because I’ve always loved words and expressing myself through them. Even though I doubt if my thoughts are worth expressing. Even if all I ever write about is writing. Still, what else is there to do than write.
Until it’s just right. Until it no longer feels foreign, like a hand that has forgotten how to hold a pen, a voice forgotten. What else is there to do, but write.
Lately, I’ve been drawing more than writing. Often it feels like I have to choose between the two. Words or lines, art or writing, as if the two are different planets and not essentially the same.
They’re both an act of creating - making something out of nothing, something entirely your own, reflective of your style and skill. Both a channel of self-expression, born out of a need to release a feeling, whether known or unknown. Both a distraction to break the routine. As time keeps on ticking, and tasks checked off day by day, what else could remind me that I’m still here--alive, present, breathing, thinking and feeling--than expressing myself through words or pictures.
Maybe I’ve accepted that art and writing, for me, serve a selfish purpose of keeping myself alive. To keep myself in check. To drift from the humdrum of daily living. I don’t want to die before I even start living.
And maybe that purpose is enough. If my words are self-serving, baring my soul to the abyss that is the internet, free to feed prying strangers whom I might see in real life, where’s the harm? So I’m a bothered person, are you not as well? (If you’re not, let’s talk so I can change your mind.)
Truth is, we’re all screwed up in our own little ways. To claim to be perfect is an issue in itself. For this, we have art or writing to rewire our worn out minds, to have an illusion that things make sense just because you were able to string a bunch of words, or form a picture out of a bunch of lines, to find order amid chaos.
It’s raining outside. It’s 4:00am. But why am I wide awake?
Maybe I had a late night craving for words and I found them. All I needed was to shut off my mind and welcome my thoughts as they come, to turn off self-criticism, even for a while, as words drizzled. I could go on and on about why and how I love writing, but I don’t want to run out of things to write about in the coming days.
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