So I think I'm having an existential crisis? I'm not entirely sure.
Like, over the past week alone I've watched no less than 5 of my very good friends doing things that they love. Like, drawing, painting, making electronic music, coming up with lyrics, poetry... and I was sitting here at the coffee shop tonight with Kyla, and I had a thought that made me stop doing homework and stare at a wall for 15 minutes- I have no creative outlet. What's worse, there isn't one that's interesting or accessible to me either. Like, I've never been good with the physical arts- drawing, painting, carving, etc. are all just vastly beyond my zone of comprehension. I don't have the capability of cooking, which I love doing, but at my house its literally impossible for me to cook just for the sake of cooking- my parents stress me out too much for that to be a viable option, and I don't want to have to spend the money out trying to get the things to cook at a friend's house because I'm afraid of using the food they have and wasting their families' food and money. I have no place that I can make music, and neither do I have the ear for writing stuff in my head, nor do I have a level of proficiency with *any* instrument other than my voice to come up with melodies and harmonies. I can't compose at home, because my parents also get very annoyed with any kind of repetitive plunking on my piano, and I just straight up don't know enough guitar to mess around on that to come up with something. When I write poetry, it comes out as stupid and sappy and verrrrryyyyyy long, and I'm never happy with what comes out of it. I'm not really in the writing mood, and I haven't had a good story idea in fucking *years.* Even revisiting some of the stories that I wanted to write in middleschool just sounds stupid to me, because I look back on them now and I see how different of a place I was in then.
I feel like I'm really good at consuming media- critiquing art, movies, books, music, food, but I'm not really good at creating any of it. I mean, I can imitate until I'm dead. Give me enough time, and I can mimic just about anything. But at the end of the day, I feel like I'm just a bird making the same sounds over and over again. I feel like I've lost my creative edge, something that I've always prided myself on, and I don't really know what to do about it. I'm learning a lot right now- linguistically, culturally, personally, but again I'm pulling from entirely outside sources to process information. There's nothing that I've done recently that I can call *mine* proudly, and mean it. I mean, sure, I can make a beautiful beurre blanc, sear a steak, bullshit an appetizer until I'm dead- but all of it is something that I've either done before, or I've picked up from someone else. Nothing that I've been doing has any kind of lasting effect on the world, and that bothers me. I have nothing to show for all the thinking that I do, and no real lasting way to manifest my thoughts.
I've become very quiet recently, and even when I'm talking I'm not saying a whole lot- just a string of sounds to appease the silence created by others in conversation. I've been dwelling in my head a LOT, which isn't a bad thing. But I feel like I don't really have any way of getting the thoughts I have out of my brain coherently. Every once in a while, I'll be clever, but its just a passing comment that phases into the ether as the sounds fade. I don't know...
There's a part of me that wants to say "HEY BEING A CRITIC IS OK THAT TAKES SOME KIND OF KNOWLEDGE OR CRITICAL EYE FOR TALENT RIGHT" but then I think of the implications that being some kind of connoisseur carries and I can't help but fall into the mindset of "Well just because you can't create that means you just have to be someone who appreciates things professionally." Which then leads to "Well who the fuck are YOU to critique something that you wouldn't even have an idea where to begin if you were to try and do something better so go fuck yourself."
I get it- I can successfully make something that tastes good and looks good on a plate. But its just performing the same tricks over and over- this is a good sautee, this is a good sear, this is a technically brilliant braise. I can go through the motions all I want, whether in music or cooking or writing, but I don't feel like I have the passion for any of it anymore. I've always been someone who gleefully gives himself over to passing passions- I've totally immersed myself in different written scripts (I taught myself to write in Tengwar in middleschool and used it frequently for 2 years to take notes in class), bought a completely foreign instrument for the hell of it (the chinese pipa), and even started playing with molecular gastronomy at the expense of one of the chefs out west. But I don't feel like that anymore- I don't have any passing fancy that I want to immerse myself in. The world feels like its getting very small for me, and I hate it. I know its way the fuck bigger than I could ever comprehend, but right now I just feel like there's nothing that triggers a real, deep interest in me anymore. And I don't know what to do about it.
Sorry for the long post, I just needed to get all of this random shit out of my head for a bit. I'm going out for a cigarette now...
