Get the Gears Going

I used to draw to release my daemons. All of the pent-up emotional constipation could be let out with a pallet and graphite laxative. Just bleed out my pain on the page and no one gets hurt. I think that's the best part: fantasty, story. All of the questions about my life I refused to ask were sketched out in a prepubescent haze, fueled with an intense fascination with the world. That's how I got through the morbid and awkward years leading into my inevitable teenage angst.

I gave myself some invaluable practice during those moments, taking in all of the information I could -- not just on the way things looked -- on the way things ARE. How anything works, operates, lives, exists... I became obsessed. Maybe I didn't know how to handle figuring myself out then and just turned that energy on everything else. My art had a clear purpose then and when I no longer needed to pour my frustrated heart onto a papercup (see: drown my sorrows in sexual satisfaction and martial arts) I no longer drew with the intense focus I required to let out the pressure.

Two point five years and -- surprise, surprise -- sex didn't bury the emotional beast for long. I had skeletons rattling in my closet I knew had no business being there. (say goodbye to first love) A new outlet was needed and talking didn't always drag out the old bones. Then, Creative Writing I drew me in.

I found words could keep me comfortable and provide a (slightly) more specific account of what was crawling out of my head. Now I can use stanzas, freewrites, pantoums and the villanelle to mold the raw power of my bored and largely ignored heart. I understood the access I was providing myself; I found doors into deeper parts of myself and I walked through many of them. I even decided I was going to give myself to music and write Jazz.

Then, love comes along again. "Bad love! Very, very bad love!" Well, it wasn't love's fault I used it like a fish needs water. All you need is love, right? All I needed was a foot up my ass. The love was okay, the girl smart, beautiful and driven. In another world, we stayed together and I kicked my own butt into shape many moons ago. In this world, she shoved her foot so far into me, she shorted out the system.

There's a reason a cliché is a cliché. The gravity of her decision imploded my pretty little world. It was gone. I was floating, shell-shocked without reprieve. Writing was stale and everything I rendered appeared moldy. I was cradling the body of my guitar and strumming -- with severe arhythmia -- and I couldn't coax a tune. What else was there but to mourn love and wait in a blind hopelessness for her (my image of everything right in the world) to return?

AH! Yet, everything changes, eh?

Six months pass and I meet someone who thinks like me, plays guitar, and not only likes Room For Squares, he knows how to play most of it! Enter: music and a new friend. NF and I would meet every day and play the guitar. He'd listen to me gripe about how much I missed love while guiding me toward setting a palatable rhythm pattern in my strum. He led me through Incubus and Mayer until I found something else to substitute my creativity.

My fire was out and I knew I had to get it back and there were people with ideas who could provide a framework for sparking what I snuffed out half a year prior. Trouble is, I forgot to include myself in on the fun most of the time and hardly picked up a pen, steadied my hands over the computerkeyboard, or played much of the guitar I had grown so fond of.

This is a personal exploration. I'm exploring what purpose my talents have in my life, where they fit in. Where did my art, music, and writing come from and what they can do today. Cut and dry.. Where do I go? These are personal questions. I've been questioning my existance since I emerged and I'm just beginning to see that this question is meant for acceptance. I see a lot of people who walk the streets and take the train and they seem to accept and revel in their own existance. God is great because faith takes the question, "What is my existance for?", out of the mind. It answers it: To serve god.

What if I just went for it? What if I just let myself go of this question. What if I forget about a future history, a personal destiny, and chose to live organically?

Let my Ricky go.