It's June 2026 and I have yet again been met with that awful wall of doubt. No inspiration has come to me in months. It feels as if I am fully and completely out of the honeymoon phase for my story Leave The Lights On For Me. Much like any good relationship, however, I think the best remedy for this is to rediscover the story through a different lens.
I often compare creativity to a wild dog, one that does not come when she's cold but instead needs to be chased down. However, for this story, instead of chasing down the dog I found a lot of joy and progress through just following the dog. Being so controlling over something that is made to be free—the very essence of my human soul—That's not great. Since November 2024 I have learned that the dog can lead me to some beautiful, inspiring, truly immaculate places. However, everything must have a balance. If I let the dog completely lead me without any structure, we find ourselves here: sniffing around in circles at a dead end.
So, I'm determined to give myself a little structure. A new playground, a fresh field in the infinite forest of knowledge. This won't be completed and it won't be very good, but below is what happens when I let the dogs just wander off.
It's 1992, a brisk and surprisingly cheery fall in Branchfield, Illinois. Twyla Carver, 27-years-old, had just published her very first book. A bibliography all about the once elusive, brilliant composer of the Branchfield City Orchestra, Felix Browski.
This was supposed to make her happy, why wouldn't it? Of course, for a brief moment it did—seeing her face on the back of the hardcover, smiling and shaking hands with her childhood musical hero in a home filled with her own words—but that was just a moment. It only took a moment later for a strange emptiness to nest inside of her breast.
"What would he think of me now?" Twyla thought before she could stop herself.
Before the guild could fully wash over her, that's strange desire for Otis's approval, an unexpected cacophony of squeals rushed her from behind.
"Oh my God! Oh my god! It's actually here!" Janiyah's chipper voice reached Twyla right before The healing squeeze of a mighty hug.
"That's my girl!" Valencia said, joining in the affection alongside Janiyah, her long arms around them both. "See, babe, I told you the picture would turn out okay."
A third voice chimed in, coming from the same directions as the other two women enthusiastically embracing Twyla.
"And we each bought our own copies," Natalie said, brandishing her own, avoiding the physical affection. "The royalties better be worth a damn or else you're publishers will have to talk to me."
"I already sent you my contract like 20 times, Nat. Anything I get, you already approved of," Twyla laughed, swaying back and forth with the other two the way excited school children did.
Chatting and dispersing, moving like one unit through the fall painted street, Twila and her friends spoke of celebrations and New beginnings. What Otis thought of Twyla Carver was so far from her mind then, pushed away and snuffed out by the overwhelming love of the people around her.
What would it matter what he He would think of her when the people who matter already thought the world of her?
ok well I asked Will Graham, and he closed his eyes and twitched for a while talking to himself and then opened them and started hyperventilating and shaking.
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It's so crazy to me that this is a sex line now. I called, and was solicited to instead of offered my lots and lots of trains DVD. My disappointment isn't measurable.
Joyeux anniversaire, Robespierre. Wherever you are, thank you again and here's to another year.
*The biography is called Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life. For the Introduction's title, Peter Mcphee was in fact referencing another quote by another biographer (Janet Malcolm) for a different biography.
I was rewatching Steven Universe Future and remembered that it came out during 2020.
Despite how awful things are right now, I am really happy that we're experiencing a different media culture. The pandemic just painted everything in this specific brand of misery that made even the sweetest things bitter.
Here's to being a in a slightly better future, and to an even better future to come.
