November 11, 2004

can you feel me near you

I'll be spending the weekend one mountaintop away from a steaming molten volcano this weekend as we all head off to Annex Theatre's yearly retreat.

I need to start thinking of what I'm going to bring to the performance table. I don't feel like I've been creatively productive on any of my own projects since I started going to school. I started writing a new song the other day, but I couldn't get motivated to finish it.

To tell you the truth, my creative production is at its best when I'm at my emotional worst. My friend Natty and and I had a talk last night about realizing how patterns shape us, how our childhoods can be reviewed to find the roots of our adult personalities and how we've each got to accept responsibility for who we are today despite that past.

So maybe I grew up learning that writing is only for expressing sad things, that if you talk about being happy too much you jinx it.

Or maybe happy songs and stories just arent that compelling.

Posted by Sonya at November 11, 2004 10:25 AM
Comments

Or maybe happy people are too busy doing the things that make them happy to bother sitting around by themselves writing songs and stuff.

Posted by: flamingbanjo at November 11, 2004 12:20 PM

I find that I'm more creative when I spend lots of time alone, and when I'm happy I tend to hang out with people more. If I'm happy and isolated, then I'm creative, so maybe it's less direct than "happy = not creative". Maybe. :-)

Posted by: iona at November 11, 2004 01:43 PM

I think a lot of the problem (at least, it is with me) is that happy is a really difficult emotion to express. Plus, if you don't get it just right, it comes off as sappy, saccharine, and pathetic. Depression, on the other hand, is easy to express and, when expressed in the form of song or prose, comes off as deep and philosophical.

I have a theory that it was some manic-depressive philosophers who came up with the popular view that happy=stupid and depressed=deep. You see, you have to be depressed to be a philosopher.

Posted by: tom at November 11, 2004 04:22 PM

Ooh, thank you for the Pizza Nite reminder. Now, I just have to dig out my old copies of the local newspaper from May 1980 -- just to give those of you who haven't had the pleasure a little taste of what a major volcanic eruption is really like!

Posted by: KING COMTE I at November 11, 2004 05:38 PM

Wait a minute there, buster. Didn't you tell us about that last year? No recycling allowed (in this and only this context. Please recycle like crazy in every other area of your lives.)

t

Posted by: tricia at November 12, 2004 09:59 AM

i think when ppl hear/see/read happy stuff, they just get jealous -- what right does X have to be happy? but the more negative emotions strike a chord as in "yes! i feel that!"

Posted by: vanessa at November 13, 2004 07:02 AM

Like my old English teacher used to say: "Tarantula loves company". I think he meant "Misery loves company". That's what I get for listening to a teacher of Olde English.

Our society tells us that bad can be shared, keep good to yourself. No one wants to hear if you had a great orgasm last night, but if you burn your hand - that's watercooler conversation.

It's something else if your burnt hand and great orgasm are somehow related.

Everyone knows sad. Few know happy. Those who don't know happy don't give a damn about how much happy someone else knows. But you can tell it all, the good and the bad, to your tarantula. Tarantula loves company.

Posted by: Golly at November 17, 2004 11:48 AM