Unfinished Self-Portrait of The Artist As A Youngish Man

The problem is not the ideas or some lack of them. It has never been about good or bad ideas — I have both kinds in spades. Ideas, projects, stories, and songs: they descend upon me from the corners of my mind in great, unending waves. There are so many of them, all the time, at all hours of the day and night.

It’s impossible for me to catch them all — I want to catch them all. I frantically scribble some down, others I snatch, sniff, and water. I watch them grow for a while and then file them for later use. If I’m lucky, they’ll be found where I left them.

Some I begin and then let linger and languish in a drawer, a folder, a notebook.

But so many ideas wash away. I watch in horror as they slip past me, sparkling on the surface of their own slick.

There is simply not enough time to grow them all. I have not the necessary number of limbs to even list them let alone grasp and hold them.

It is for this alone that I suffer: I am repeatedly tortured by the potentiality of every moment, and each moment’s inevitable nothingness.

A moment comes and goes at once; I can’t hold on.

And I know, I know: one must let go. The attempt to grasp only makes it all worse.

This is why an artist doesn’t finish projects: it is an unwillingness to let go of ninety-nine point nine percent of all ideas, to watch them born into being and then watch them die instantly. It is physically painful.

I have thought (for most of my adult life) and continue to believe that within me is some innate potential for greatness, some idea that will take me Where I want to go. I’m not sure where that Where is. Validation? Reputation? Fame? Money? I don’t know. Why do I need any of those things to validate my art, to validate my very existence?

Why cannot the creation itself be enough? Why cannot the expression of one or two droplets sucked from a wave satisfy the selfish desire to impact another soul with my own?

It is all so brutally exhausting.

This need to bring an idea to expression — what is it? Why is it?

What is an idea without expression? Is it still a thing, did it happen, was it mine? Who sent it to me? I take ownership of each idea immediately, but how can I be sure they are mine? I do not choose to think my thoughts.

So whose are they? It must be okay to let them go. There are too many, and so I have to choose.

And that is the saddest thing of all.

I don’t want to choose.

I want them all.