From my English journal, circa October 1982:
Writer's Block
This is not the first time this year. Oh yes, I've had plenty of writer's block.
I have ideas, but I just can't put them down on paper.
So what do I do? I sit ... and think ... I look around ... look at recent happenings ... it usually does no good.
Other times I'll write anything in my mind down onto a piece of scratch paper and see what I can do with them.
So what happens when none of these work? I lay [sic] down and read, stand on my head, go jogging, or even ... watch TV.
All of these have been proven to work as some earlier journal topics of mine were inspired by one of these methods.
Now, the ultimate disaster ... none of these methods work [sic]. What do I do? I write about it. Gosh, I didn't know I could write so much about such an off-the-wall topic, but there it is, no more writer's block.
I was already quite the blogger a quarter of a century ago.
Greetings faithful readers. Sorry for the thin gruel served up around here recently.
When you don't have original material, what do you do? Borrow!
Here's a Rush lyric that has some significance to me these days:
Open Secrets
It went right by me
At the time it went over my head
I was looking out the window
I should have looked
At your face instead.It went right by me
Just another wall
There should have been a moment
When we let our barriers fall
I never meant what you're thinking
That is not what I meant at all.Well I guess we all have these feelings
We can't leave unreconciled
Some of them burned on our ceilings
Some of them learned as a child
The things that we're concealing
Will never let us grow
Time will do its healing, You've got to let it go.Closed for my protection
Opened to your scorn
Between these two directions
My heart is sometimes torn.I lie awake with my secrets
Spinning around my head
Something that somehow escaped me
Something you shouldn't have said
I was looking out the window
I should have looked at your face instead.Well I guess we all have these feelings
We can't leave unreconciled
Some of them burned on our ceilings
Some of them learned as a child
The things that we're concealing
Will never let us grow
Time will do its healing, You've got to let it go.I find no absolution
In my rational point of view
Maybe some things are instinctive
But there’s one thing you could do
You could try to understand me
I could try to understand you.
From 1987's Hold Your Fire, an album that I was too immature to appreciate fully when it came out. Now that I'm about the same age Neil Peart was when he penned those lyrics, I completely understand where he's coming from. Nice nod to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in there, too.
"May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live."
- Minerva in Time Enough for Love.
Happy Valentine's Day this month!