Give Yourself Something To Respond To
🗓️ September 13, 2024
⏰ Read Time: 5 min
“Rumble! Grumble! Crumble!” The air and acid in my stomach shouted at me, letting me know it was in need of sustenance. The dark walls that keep out the dark morning and the damp dew were blocking like linebackers, but I found my way to the kitchen. I filled the tank, sat back at the antique, tiny bar cart my computer currently rests upon, and started to write again. I grabbed the guitar, put it down, grabbed it again, and decided fifteen different times, in fifteen different ways that I was not, in fact, a songwriter and that no one, indeed, would ever want to hear this drivel. I grabbed the guitar again and strummed louder than the thoughts. Then like the squeak of a weak hinge, I heard it again: “Rumble! Grumble! Crumble!”
“I fed you already!” I shouted in silence at the systems and infrastructure in my skeleton. Ignoring the call, I kept on doing…well I wasn’t really doing anything — trying to write is code for just sitting there. But the rumbling, grumbling, and crumbling of my insides wouldn’t stop. I sat back, put on my invisible pointed and polka-dotted hat and had the nicest little pity party. After too long, I unfolded my arms and stared at a blank page. The canary-yellow legal pad, and the black push-button pen looked like they weighed 1000 lbs — unmovable, and uninviting.
I’m not a believer in writer's block. Just write something bad, remind yourself that the mechanics of the activity are not difficult and that no one has to see anything you don’t want them to see. Write something bad until you write something good. Chances are you won’t really know which one is which anyways, so just go for it. And I tried following my own advice, but when that pen and paper took on that extra 1000 lbs, I decided I didn’t have the strength, and gave up.
As the mundane and unexciting admin work consumed the better part of the next eight hours, I churned and rolled over the dilemma of the morning. Was I not passionate enough? Was I uninspired and “over” expressing myself through music? Have the endless parade of “no’s” dealt their final blow to my desire to keep on? Then that daggum, relentless, grotesque sound haunted my ear once more. GRUMBLE. RUMBLE. CRUMBLE. This time, it really was hunger, and the leftover chili did the trick fine…but of course! That’s why I couldn’t write! Why would I expect it to be any different? As the stomach demands food for energy and movement, so too does the mind and soul. And what fills the mind and soul to the caloric surplus needed to break through the blank page, and lift the 1000 lbs pen? Easy. The answer is…
If it were easy, then everyone would be as fit as a fiddle, and we’d have Mozart’s running around everywhere. See, if you eat pop-tarts for dinner, you get some nutrients, but not half as many as grilled chicken and vegetables would give. And even if you made the healthy choice, there are other things like exercise, schedule, and genetics that determine how effective your body will be in turning that healthy food into the right energy you need to reach your goals. Art is the same way. While I don’t have a conveyor belt system that will fix my empty grumblings by shoveling perfect creative nutrients into my soul, I did think of something that might get things started in the right direction. I grabbed the pale white masking tape and the trusty gel pen (always lighter and easy to lift when not in the middle of the creative process), and I smacked a saying on my little bar cart desk, right at the edge so I’d see it the next time I heard the grumblings.
“Give yourself something to respond to.” When the tank is empty, when the pen is heavy, when the grumblings are loud, see what other people are saying about things and then see how what they said made you feel. Better yet, intentionally seek out something you know will make you mad, and then ask yourself, why did it make me mad? Watch a movie that has made you cry 9 out of the last 10 times you watched it, just to feel something — just to give yourself something to respond to. The hunger for inspiration is only satisfied by a certain food on a certain day at a certain time. So you’ve gotta eat, and eat, and eat some more until finally some of those nutrients start to get digested. Then, hopefully, prayerfully — that energy becomes something you use to make some food for someone else.
Your friend,
Joseph Bones
