Henry David Thoreau observed that the average man lives his life in a state of "quiet desperation."
There are times when I feel it, to be honest. Every time that I sit down to think about my novel, and I just know that it can be wonderful but at the same time the right words, the right sequence of events, the right characterizations just never emerge. So I pick up a book written by someone else.
Or when I sit down to my piano or with my guitar or ukulele, and I feel the power to compose a brilliant melody, but all I do is play a few chords and pick a few arpeggios. So I listen to a song written and performed by someone else.
It's when I sit to write or pick a tune that I feel that "quiet desperation" of which Thoreau spoke. There is something inside me, and it's not just gas. Alas, I haven't figured it out, yet. I guess that for now I'll have to be content with being CEO of Vandelay Industries.
Somehow, I understand exactly what you mean.
ReplyDeleteI'll sit down at my computer to work on my own novels and wonder why I just can't write, so instead I grab my favorite book and read it for the seventeenth time. I'll sit on my piano bench and simply look at the keys because not a drop of inspiration remains in my head. Or worse, I'll stare at a blank sheet of paper and pray to some obscure god of words that I'll know what to write.
I am not a man, nor am I average. But I do know and feel that "quiet desperation." And it really, really sucks...