Something I wrote a long time ago, and called "Book that will not be a book"

Prescript:This was soul-wrenching for me to write. Probably not very good, either. But it was exactly how I felt, and it felt good to at least try to see if I could capture it. And I did, but it wasn't what I wanted to capture, and made me realize exactly how I felt. Now I'm sharing it, just because this is a blog and I can write what I want.

How do you start a book that tells the story you’re trying to end? I guess you could start with spoons, and let it all spill out from there, in hopes of scooping it up along the way and turning odds and ends into middles and soup. In the end it really might just be in the effort, and the trick lies in the art of losing the build up and maybe nothing else. Where when how and why did the creativity leave and how the fuck do you get something back when you don’t even know when you lost it or remember that you had it? I guess that’s what it means to get lost in the act so deep you forget its purpose. And that’s when drugs start to suck and life starts to suck and you really have to take a nasty hard look at who you’ve become and decide if you’ve got it in you to turn around and make it worth it. And if you don’t, do you have it in you to quit the race because you know you don’t know what winning it means? Fuck that, it’s way to fucking deep, and I don’t know if I can make sense or make fun or make it flow like I once did. The thing about growing up is all the shit that really makes life depressing and makes or breaks you is that it’s not fun. It’s not the kind of thing you can write about or moan about or wallow in. it’s the kind of thing where all those songs you thought you related to are really about, and once they turn into your reality you don’t want to relate. That shit you loved as a teenager, all those strung out songs by junkie bands and hopeless souls you idolized when you had no idea what it meant to have to write or sing those things. All of a sudden you realize those songs are there because someone lived them, and the words start becoming too real. No more metaphors or distanced relating to your own trivial angsts. Somewhere along the road you live the songs, and realize how fucking hard it really is to write that, and what it takes to make the words resonate. It suddenly becomes apparent that the only reason those songs and books have their power is because they are painful, embarrassing admissions of a tortured soul. And that fucking sucks a hell of a lot, and what makes it worse is realizing that you are living the guilty world of defeat the junkie songwriters did, except you can’t even justify it by expression. So you end up nameless and defeated and realize that the reason artists are artists is because when a being gets to that point it is almost impossible to look at it, much less name it. There’s a time when you could write for hours and thought it was deep and important, and there’s a time after that when emptiness sets in and you sit dazed and confused, wishing and wondering why the words are gone. That’s the time that what you have to say really might be deep, and you aren’t even concerned with importance. Those, these, are the words books and songs are made from. Those fucking words you don’t ever want to read again. And you know what? Probably you won’t and no one else will either because you don’t have it in you to start a story at it’s end make it all the way back to the beginning. Like now, when continuing means torture and it’s easier to stop and justify quitting with a responsibility to pick up the pieces and try to erase the evil side of the fractured life you’re living. The up is easy to write about and the down isn’t worth the words and the sober doesn’t have the freedom or poetry to explain itself. The hardest, most important part is somewhere in between, and putting it down in words means reconciling your demons, and that’s just fucking hard to do. If you can’t be an artist and you can’t stop the cycle, you can’t write about the in between because there is no bridge between the two worlds. The addiction and the rest of your life live separately, and you realize that tortured artists are just the people who are fucked up like you but can force the limbo out and say it so that everyone forgives and gives false purpose to their failure. I used to think I wanted to be those people, but now I realize that I can’t find glamour or solace or purpose in an existence like this, no matter how beautifully or deeply I can express it. It’s not in me to be the tortured artist, and that’s why this will never be a book to read. I just hope I can give up the motivating circumstances now that they’ve lost their use. Otherwise I’m just fucked and that’s too bad. I really can’t stand the thought of nameless, typical failure. So I stop at that and hope to pick up the pieces and find my true direction.