milemarker

Well, I'm feeling a little funny after passing a milemarker birthday yesterday. I've always been this way as long as I can remember. I think passing a birthday just makes me feel reflective about the past year or years and where I thought I might be at this point.Mostly, I just spend too much time in my own head for better or for worse.

This past week I've watched both The Devil and Daniel Johnston and In The Realms of the Unreal., the movie about outsider artist Henry Darger. It got me thinking about the nature of creativity. Clearly the motivation for both Johnston and Darger was something bigger and more powerful than even the most creative of us feel. We may never really know what pushed Darger to rarely sleep in order to write a 15,000 page illustrated novel.

The blogging world is full of inspiration, full of pages of people in the midst of the creative process. There are so many prolific people out there, full of inspiration and motivation. I guess what I wonder about is what about when you don't feel particularly inspired? What do you do on those days when it seems that everything wonderful has already been done.That feeling reminds me of one of my favorite Bright Eye's songs, Waste of Paint.When I'm feeling frustrated, I always think of the lines:
As I hide behind these books I read, while scribbling my poetry,
like art could save a wretch like me, with some ideal ideology that no one can hope to achieve.
And I am never real; it is just a sketch of me.
And everything I made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint, of tape, of time.

Those words may not be particularly positive or inspiring, but they comfort me in knowing that I'm not alone in that feeling, even someone who's been a prolific writer since adolescence feels that way.Sometimes you have to step away from work in order to get around to the right place, sometimes you have to push right through it to get to that place. It's tough sometimes.

We work in the dark
We do what we can
We give what we have
- Henry James