"Bleed It Out" by Linkin Park

I've been struggling with regaining the spark these past few weeks. Exhaustion has taken up a lot of my time and I hate sleeping all the time. I know my body is going through something but it's taking my mind with it. A whole month wasted like this, going to bed early and missing my morning pages because I'm still tired when I wake up. The problem with inspiration is that you have to feed it - that's why writer's block can last for months to years. You get caught up in the anxiety of not writing that you stop writing altogether. But, as Ernest Hemingway (might have) said, "writing is easy...you just open a vein and bleed." That's why Julia Cameron, in "The Artist's Way," insists morning pages are so essential. You're purging. Sure, it starts out mundane, because you think your head is empty (as I've increasingly felt these past couple of weeks). I had cereal this morning. I went for a walk. But slowly, as you build confidence, images build up and bits and pieces of your psyche start leaking out. Shattered fragments of something. Sometimes pain. Sometimes more pleasant. Sometimes truths you don't want to admit to yourself. That you're in love or heartbroken (occasionally both). That you're lost and afraid. Or that you don't know what to do. Or maybe you do know what to do, you just don't want to. After the stopper is removed on all that stuff, that's when the real inspiration comes. It's a long process. Cameron's "Artist's Way" course takes 12 weeks. Eventually, I'll be able to finish it. If I'm able to stay awake long enough. 

Yeah, here we go for the hundredth time

Hand grenade pins in every line

Throw 'em up and let something shine

Going out of my fucking mind

As I've said, my process is rather sporadic - usually triggered by music, but it's the visions I see when I hear the music that give me the inspiration. In a way, it makes things easier. Once there's a vision, I just describe what I can see and hear and feel. To be honest, I'm weak on smell and taste but I'm working on it. Otherwise, these pictures are fairly vivid, almost like memories. On Thursday, for example, I could see my arms, covered up to the elbow in slick redness. Blood, I'm assuming, but it could've been red corn syrup. I could see my face in the mirror, pale against a slash of dark hair, determined. It looked like a scene from a movie - my job now is to figure out where it belongs. I had an idea for a movie once - it was about a man who thought he was trapped in a stalker situation with a woman he'd been dating. The twist at the end was that he had a psychiatric disorder that made him paranoid and the woman was his wife. But the movie would initially be edited to be seen from his point of view, so that the audience would be convinced that the woman was a crazy stalker, too. One of my favorite French movies, "He Loves Me/He Loves Me Not," is laid out like this. The audience is made to believe that the main character (played by Audrey Tautou) is having a secret love affair with a man from her building but then the film is rewound and played from his point of view. From his point of view, they had an inconsequential encounter where he performed a simple act of kindness and she built an entire relationship from it. She has Erotomanic Delusional Disorder, which is quite common among stalkers and frequently comorbid with BPD. This was also the basis of the brilliant film, "The Crush," starring Cary Elwes and Alicia Silverstone. I realize I'm just ranting about films now, but to be honest, these feel like the most intelligent thoughts I've had all week so I'm just going with it.

Truth is you can stop and stare

Bled myself out and no one cares

Dug a trench out, laid down there

With a shovel up out of reach somewhere

This song is about how hard it is to create something good and meaningful. Mike Shinoda was speaking about writing rap lyrics, but I think it can be applied to any art, especially generative arts where you're trying to create something new. I've spoken about it before but to create something meaningful, you have to be willing to get vulnerable. To shake some skeletons out of the closet, to free those shadows. "Bleed It Out" isn't about physical wounds, but psychological ones, too. And to heal some wounds, you have to re-open them. It's like when a break heals incorrectly and the doctor has to break the limb again to set it correctly. Most of the time, we think something has healed because "enough time" has passed. But time doesn't heal wounds. You have to uncover and address the things that created them in the first place before any real healing begins. This is the aching process of repeatedly questioning your thoughts and your choices. Why did I go down the path that led to this pain? Was it avoidable? Why didn't I trust my intuition? What was I seeking? How do I really feel about the situation? And how do I stop the self-betraying behaviors? When you have the answers to those questions, it helps to write them down so you'll remember them the next time. Especially if you have trouble remembering. 

"Bleed It Out" Video