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The Big Hit
I've been in a serious funk the past month, dealing with monumental depression that has devestated my social function, thought, writing, and supply of clean laundry. What brought this on is anybody's guess. Maybe it was seeing my uncle dying in the cancer ward of the county hospital in Houston right after I arrived home for the holidays. Or maybe it was something far less dramatic: something I ate, a movie I saw, a line I overheard at a party, something I read? I don't know. Maybe a combination of the above. But whatever the reasons, I've just felt like crap and have had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. What's wrong?
I was discussing this with my dad sometime last week and one of the arguments I made was that it's been a long time since I've had a hit. What? Yeah, that was his reaction, too. But you know what I mean: a hit. Something that proves to yourself and the world that you're of significant existential value and not just an interchangeable cog in some politico-socio-economic machine. Something original, beautiful, profound, clever. Something that could only come from you, no matter how small: an email to a beloved friend; a new theory; a performance of a Bach sonata; a 5-minute movie.
When you make something beautiful, you feel beautiful. When you do something original, you feel smart. Creation is a form of self-validation. I'm sure some folks are just happy to believe in their goodness as a matter of religious conviction, but I demand proof: what have I created today to account for myself? What foundation can my self-confidence stand upon?
I don't know about other people, but making things is a necessary component of my self-definition. Reading other people's writing and watching their movies is all good and well, but it tends to induce in me a schizophrenia that changes orientation with each new book or DVD. It is only by taking those influences and making something new that I define where I stand and where I want to go. Without creation, existence just feels like an identity crisis with destination nowhere.
The converse is true: creation is very difficult in the face of an identity crisis. In fact, creation and identity are so inextricably bound together that I find that when one begins to falter, the other follows close behind. A man who doesn't know where he wants his life to go has a hard time directing his prose towards an agreeable ending, and vice-versa. And so when depression strikes, a downward spiral of the creation/identity duality ensues until I find myself where I am now.
The only reason I'm telling you all this is not because I think you care. I'm not that pretentious. I've seen my Humphry Bogart. If the problems of a few little people don't amount to a hill of beans, then those of a single person must certainly ring up as something far less. No, this entry is for me. Because I haven't posted a damn thing here in over a month. Because I need to kick myself out of this stupid void of nothingness I'm in and get back to making things.
I suppose it all comes down to a matter of faith, something not lost to observers of the religious holidays. Absent a solid portfolio of recent successes, I'm just going to have to assume that I'm up to the task of making a hit. I have to assume that the article or movie or book on my coffeetable is worth exploring, that I won't run out of interesting influences, that I can eventually channel them into something new and worthwhile to show the world.
So here's to a creative 2003. Thanks for reading this space in the past year. And let's see who I become this time around.
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