Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Writing Block

It’s been so long since I wrote. I write and it’s clunky. I write and it’s contrived, its forced. I try to let the words flow; I’m scared that they are pretentious. How did I string the words together before into sentences that were not derivatives, plagiarisms of someone else’s expression?
I look back and think it must have been someone else’s writing. I read things I wrote and I’m so impressed, maybe I am stupid to be impressed, maybe they are just as bad as this clunky clumsiness, but they freed me and this doesn’t.
The words flowed. It was always about flowing, flowing not like water, but like air, flowing effortless frictionless.
I write and reread and its clunky, clumsy, word after word. Hesitant.
Pause, is this pretentious? Or is this lame? Is this pretentious so it’s lame? Or is it lame that it becomes pretentious. I have to laugh at myself because once I’ve asked that question in that way in this prose then that it was it has become, pretentiously lame and worst of all uninspired.
There is no rhythm for my words to dance to. I would have liked to use reverberate because that is the word that sounds right, not dance, but reverberate does not have the right meaning.
How many times have my words, my heart, my chest “danced” how many times have situations, thoughts, desires “sung”?
A few words strung here and there used, reused till they have lost all rhythm, all element of surprise and inspiration. Uninspired. The same worn pack of cards, you know what’s coming next, you know every bend and fold and which card it corresponds to, there is no more game to play, it is predictable, the excitement contrived, the excitement forced. My words are words, my emotions are not expressed in words, and they become contrived by my words. Clunky, silent and clumsy, awkward post-modern and pretentious. My expression not just my words are predictable. If I say it’s contrived, I know it will be followed by me saying, thinking or writing forced. I try to edit myself, to sound a bit more original to myself, but then it feels contrived, it feels forced.
I talk about you, again and again, always you, you the faceless, the nameless, the abstract, the hidden masked love. You change outside my words, but in my words you remain as you, eternally, unchanging, you. You were the transient, the fleeting. Once again predictable words strung together. If I say transient, then it will be followed by fleeting. You were the transient, the ethereal, the fleeting, but today you become the stagnant and the stagnation. You remain hidden in my words, but if I must write then you must become something other than you. Something unhidden and unmasked. You must become un-air-brushed, your ugliness exposed, your abstractness denied. You will be made tangible. My heart must not “sing” or “dance” or “quiver” with its love for you, but rebel, scream and free itself with its hatred towards you. My words must expose your ugliness not just mine.

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