I was waiting in a mall.
Mistake number one.
I was thinking.
Mistake number two.
A band was playing an event (would you call it an event? I'm not even sure what you would call it) within one of the stores and I thought, after just working an eight hour shift in customer service, "What the fuck? These 'kids" get to play music for a living. Meanwhile I've been playing for sixteen years and, although I've been in bands and can play quite well, no one has the time to really devote to it-thus it never goes anywhere." I tried to get my mind off of things by going to the bookstore down in the dregs of the mall. This would be mistake number three. There I found a woman reading aloud to a group of eager senior citizens. Whether they were eager because they loved her work or whether it was due to the fact that they didn't have long for this world I don't know...all I do know is that she had an audience, at least for the time being. As I sat alone on one of the benches I thought about how each book represented a dream and that, even though there were probably a hundred rejection letters which accompanied each of those dreams, they had found a way to get out, to have a physical body in which to come across to the world. Each body I've tried to give to my dreams has been aborted, by me or some other, and I slowly noticed in that book store that I've apparently stop creating bodies. I never planned to give up. It wasn't something I decided one day. "Hey I love being creative..how about I just stop creating and get a run of the mill job so I can try and please people who can't be pleased!"
Nonetheless now I find myself staring at walls at 3am while receiving endless friend requests on Face Book of people from High school who needed marriage and babies the way a crack addict needs a fix.
I left the book store and wandered, lost in thought. If I wasn't in a mall one would've most likely noted that I resembled a zombie. But in a mall everyone is a zombie...for one reason or another.
It's hard to breathe life back into something that's so close to being nothing more than a whisper in a crowded stadium.
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dave paul. welcome back.
ReplyDeleteOkay, so you're bummin'-- I get it! But obviously, you ARE creative. You haven't given up; you're blogging, aren't you? No, I know you'll say it's trite, or bs... but the truth is very likely that you are maturing. When we're young, to be creative is like breathing the air. As we mature, even if the arts are our gig, we must foster and flex our creative parts... Just compare us to frogs; no longer are we tadpoles. We walk on the land (day job) and still swim in the water. We need to come up for air-- (grown up life) but need to stay wet to survive (our creative side). Even within our limitations, we are greater than we were before. Don't despair! (or should I say, don't dry out!) Circe
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