Somewhere in the pages upon pages of Kurt Vonnegut that I have burned into my frontal lobe over the years he put forth the idea that in order for a writer to find their voice, they must first write for an audience of one. Think of one person and write to them. From there everyone else will follow.
The idea was separate from that of a muse. It was more along the lines of having someone in mind that the writer would feel comfortable enough to sit down with and tell the story to conversationally. Think of what you would say to this person and how you would say it and then put that on the paper. Seems simple enough of a concept.
Vonnegut wrote with his sister, Alice, in mind going all the way back into their childhood when they would write stories and read them to each other to pass the time. Even after her passing, he kept writing to her in a way to deal with his grief, to help keep her memory alive and to keep the conversation with her moving even though she was gone. His novel Slapstick may have been given every bad review under the sun but it was a great example of this and his relationship with his sister.
Several months ago, I started to dwell on this idea and kept coming back to it during one of my many existential crises over my creativity. In an effort to try to figure out why I do what I do and to decide whether I should keep doing it, I began deconstructing every aspect of my attempts at creativity so I could try to make more sense of them to myself. In other words, I was trying to find a reason other than my usual caffeine fueled, dumpster fire of spite to continue this endeavor.
I didn’t come to many worthwhile conclusions during this exercise but I hardly ever do. This rummaging through the disorganized junk drawer of my mind has turned into more of a way to procrastinate and avoid actually doing the work than figuring out anything substantial that may be the slightest bit helpful to me.
There has only ever been one person that has consistently paid any attention to the things that I put out into the world. Only one person that comes remotely close to being able to relate to what goes on inside my broken brain. The one thing that I have in common with Kurt Vonnegut is that the person in my head that I am writing to is also my sister. Unfortunately, other than my affinity for naughty words, that is where my similarities with the great Hoosier end.
Even if I’m putting forth ideas that I am unable to verbalize or writing words that no one besides the unsuspecting fool that makes the mistake of walking off with my laptop will ever read, in my head, my sister was always the one sitting in the chair on the other side of the table, politely suffering through my mental diatribes while I hacked away at the keyboard.
Now that I have more years behind me than I have in front of me, I’m starting to see clocks with indeterminate amounts of time counting down to zero everywhere I look. And I’m seeing friends and loved ones as dominoes ready to fall. As the losses and dire situations continue piling up, I find myself constantly picking at the scabs of unaddressed grief and trauma simply because there isn’t enough time to clean the shit off of the fan before the next turd missile hits.
In the wake of Jeff Cherep’s passing, I’ve had long conversations with Alex Submachine in our attempts to navigate our respective grief. One of the things that Alex kept coming back to was that, after all of these years, Jeff finally got him to shut up. Jeff had to go an extreme length to do it but he finally did it. It’s as if he has nothing left to say or at least he doesn’t know how to say it.
As I am seeing my sister’s domino starting to teeter, I have no idea what I’ll do if it falls. I’d probably end up going full punk rock monk, taking a vow of silence and never coming down off the mountainside that I live on to be seen or heard from again.
The fear and uncertainty of the current moment is definitely starting to get to me. This may be why I’m isolating myself and staying away from people more than I usually do. If I stay away from people, it will hurt less when they’re gone because, in my infinite stubbornness, I put a divide between myself and the rest of the population. I am aware that this makes very little sense but at this point neither does anything else.
It feels like I’m entering the wounded animal phase of my life or crawling deeper into the one that I’ve probably been in for most of the last forty odd years. If the world around me won’t give me a moment to heal or even catch my breath then I will spend as little time as possible out in it.
Nothing surprises me anymore. These days, when something bursts into flames, I don’t even bother trying to put out the fire. I shrug my shoulders and continue on to the next bit of awfulness to see what else will go wrong. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with my decision making process but shit keeps happening. Life is a relentless asshole and doesn’t know when to let up. To paraphrase Walter Schreifels, I still try to do the right thing when the right thing counts but that gets harder to do when it feels like I’m running out of road.
This is when I wish that I was like the average person and didn’t have these thoughts rolling around in my head. That I would be satisfied with a shitty day job and going home to watch television after I clocked out. How easy the docile masses must have it, living their lives oblivious to their surroundings and with minimal consequence. How easily they can move on without thinking about anything.
One thing that I am starting to understand is how writers lose their voice as they age and stop writing. There are only so many ways that the same ideas can be reworded to try to make people understand a concept that the writer has been trying to convey over the years. Repeatedly shouting from the mountaintops that humanity is doomed while no one is listening can lead to a “Well, fuck it, you’re on your own then. I tried to tell you,” type reaction. Add to that the simple fact of aging and the loneliness and solitude that comes with it.
I already feel myself becoming quieter in a way that I can barely explain. It’s as if I’m running out of things to say and everything is becoming so obviously and frustratingly clear so anything I would have to add feels redundant but everyone is still missing the point. Spending a lifetime trying to make anyone understand only for the words to fall on deaf ears. There is a sense of futility in all of it that feels like I’m screaming at a wall but I refuse to stand mute for some reason and continue to fill the void because I have no idea what else to do.
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