impossible loves, part 1
Jul. 30th, 2008 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupLooking back, one thing that was decisive in me putting away my emotional furniture for safe keeping happened in the summer of 1993, when I was about as utterly miserable as I've ever been in my life. People who know me know this story well, so I won't rehash it here. Long story short, at the start of the summer I began going out with a woman, S_ E_, who was very unpleasant, who I knew was all wrong for me -- but there just seemed to be something so charmed in how we met, in how the stars had lined up to make it happen, that I couldn't help pursuing her anyway, writing letters, making a mix tape, looking at poems and movies and the whole nine yards. And when she dumped me I was just devastated, and the summer was a long arc traveling from vainly hoping she'd see me as I wanted to be seen, to vainly hoping she'd apologize for doing the dump in as cold a fashion as possible.
Why did I care? She was a soulless person and we were hopelessly mismatched. But there's something very deep in me about being hoodwinked, or hoodwinking myself in this case, that just galls me endlessly. The idea that in my own stupidity I could believe that by throwing all kinds of verbiage and culture at someone I could will them to love me. I was disposed to throw my whole life into romantic pursuit -- it came to feel the same as being alive -- but I then I realized that I lacked some pieces of a character detector, so that I was always at the mercy of who I was with in terms of what ended up happening.
So I learned that not only was this dangerous and awful to live through, it's usually a serious turn-off. After that I just started to put it away -- in the case of literature and poetry literally boxing it up into my attic, where it all is now. All my journals, books, drawings. What, really, is the use? I never had the talent to be a serious writer or artist; all this feeling-deeply stuff seemed so firmly adolescent; and I had history books to read and hoped that if I read enough I might actually be a decent historian one day rather than a dilettante at everything else.
Well, fifteen years later, now I'm a dilettante at being a historian, my job is far from mindless but it only allows creativity in fits and starts, and there's nobody in my everyday life with whom to have an ideas-based conversation. And I've slowly realized that this is at the core of all the whining I've done on LiveJournal and elsewhere over the years, why I've just been unable to make myself happy with any achievements or success. My ability to feel creative has atrophied or calloused over (pick your metaphor). I'm starting to have some chances again to create and I realize a) how good it can feel, and b) how much time I've lost over the years by not exercising it at all. So I'm finding that I want to get it all down from the metaphorical attic, dust it off, and play with it again, to try to use ideas to create... stuff.
But that doesn't solve the basic problem. Other than besotted verbiage and mix tapes, I never did much of anything with all that creativity. It should be about your Vision, not just impressing one other person, I realize that. But not using it in all these years means that I never figured out what it might really be good for. I can't see what kind of medium all this expressiveness is meant to go into... I'll never be a good fiction writer or poet, I'm tired of history, I don't really know music or art. LiveJournal doesn't count as one of the Seven Arts, either. And since it goes hand-in-hand with a certain degree of self-pity, overemotionality, and Deep Thinking, all this also feels atavistic to adolescence. So I tend to give up even before I start.
And this is the point at which you're supposed to say: who ever said that being creative or feeling deeply makes you happy? It's kind of the opposite, isn't it.
Why did I care? She was a soulless person and we were hopelessly mismatched. But there's something very deep in me about being hoodwinked, or hoodwinking myself in this case, that just galls me endlessly. The idea that in my own stupidity I could believe that by throwing all kinds of verbiage and culture at someone I could will them to love me. I was disposed to throw my whole life into romantic pursuit -- it came to feel the same as being alive -- but I then I realized that I lacked some pieces of a character detector, so that I was always at the mercy of who I was with in terms of what ended up happening.
So I learned that not only was this dangerous and awful to live through, it's usually a serious turn-off. After that I just started to put it away -- in the case of literature and poetry literally boxing it up into my attic, where it all is now. All my journals, books, drawings. What, really, is the use? I never had the talent to be a serious writer or artist; all this feeling-deeply stuff seemed so firmly adolescent; and I had history books to read and hoped that if I read enough I might actually be a decent historian one day rather than a dilettante at everything else.
Well, fifteen years later, now I'm a dilettante at being a historian, my job is far from mindless but it only allows creativity in fits and starts, and there's nobody in my everyday life with whom to have an ideas-based conversation. And I've slowly realized that this is at the core of all the whining I've done on LiveJournal and elsewhere over the years, why I've just been unable to make myself happy with any achievements or success. My ability to feel creative has atrophied or calloused over (pick your metaphor). I'm starting to have some chances again to create and I realize a) how good it can feel, and b) how much time I've lost over the years by not exercising it at all. So I'm finding that I want to get it all down from the metaphorical attic, dust it off, and play with it again, to try to use ideas to create... stuff.
But that doesn't solve the basic problem. Other than besotted verbiage and mix tapes, I never did much of anything with all that creativity. It should be about your Vision, not just impressing one other person, I realize that. But not using it in all these years means that I never figured out what it might really be good for. I can't see what kind of medium all this expressiveness is meant to go into... I'll never be a good fiction writer or poet, I'm tired of history, I don't really know music or art. LiveJournal doesn't count as one of the Seven Arts, either. And since it goes hand-in-hand with a certain degree of self-pity, overemotionality, and Deep Thinking, all this also feels atavistic to adolescence. So I tend to give up even before I start.
And this is the point at which you're supposed to say: who ever said that being creative or feeling deeply makes you happy? It's kind of the opposite, isn't it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-30 07:18 pm (UTC)I think Kurt Vonnegut said that when you write for one person in mind, you'll get the best results. I think this might hold for other creative pursuits as well, and I've found it to be true in my experience.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 05:06 pm (UTC)i don't know what happy is either
Date: 2008-07-31 08:10 pm (UTC)And I like making itunes mixes. I hardly ever get to do it but it is about the funnest nearly free thing I can think of. Well, that you can do with your clothes on.
Re: i don't know what happy is either
Date: 2008-08-01 01:03 pm (UTC)For me, it's not as though S is going to graciously take two very challenging kids away just so I can craft exquisite LiveJournal posts. But clearly, what's making me unhappy is that I woke up in the morning wanting to write something and it's taken me two hours just to make this comment, because of the constant screaming and prating and interruptions. So it's easier on one level to give up the attempt to create anything, especially if you don't really think that what you'll create is that good and the act of creation comes at others' expense. Otherwise it's just being selfish.
Yeah, you were always good at the mixes too. Actually you've always been good at this kind of ideal of creation that's more than just self-absorption, which is very, very cool. But that's my next post (also being brewed over the past day or so).
Re: i don't know what happy is either
Date: 2008-08-04 09:41 pm (UTC)Re: i don't know what happy is either
Date: 2008-08-05 05:00 pm (UTC)