“Write whatever is there,” they say. Simple words that shouldn’t feel like a gauntlet thrown at my feet, and yet here I am, frozen before the blank page. Is it the paralyzing abundance of possibilities? Or perhaps it’s the fear of vulnerability, of letting something slip through the cracks of my carefully constructed facade?
There’s a yearning, I can’t deny it. But it’s buried deep, like a time capsule we’ve forgotten how to unearth. It sits somewhere between my solar plexus and my soul, behind a valve that’s been slowly, almost imperceptibly, closing over the years. The flow that once rushed like a river has dwindled to a trickle, and some days… some days I wonder if even that trickle has run dry.
How do I open that valve again? What magic key did I possess “back then” that I’ve somehow misplaced?
I’ve had a theory, one I’ve clung to without much scrutiny. It goes something like this: Back then, in the time of torrential creativity, I didn’t have anyone who I knew loved me. All that musical art, all those emotions, they grew from that void like flowers in a crack of concrete.
Boy, oh boy, did I give the notion of romantic and full-throated love a lot of RWID – Relative Weight of Intensity and Duration. Those thoughts, those longings, they were both intense and enduring, dominating the landscape of my mind.
But now? Now the house is warm, the dog snores contentedly on the bed, and downstairs is a woman who loves me. I know she loves me. It brings a peace I haven’t known since I was a wide-eyed toddler, basking in the glow of unconditional love. It’s everything I ever wanted, isn’t it?
Yet the music has stopped. The words have dried up. It’s as if the muse packed her bags and left, leaving nothing but a note: “My work here is done.”
You see, in the past, my creativity came from a place of longing and hurt. It masqueraded as the noble virtue of suffering, but really? It was an overarching desire for approval, a desperate need to matter. The RWID of these thoughts was off the charts – intense, persistent, coloring every aspect of my existence. And now that the void has been filled, now that the ache has been soothed, the wellspring of my art seems to have run dry.
Part of me is still waiting for that magic, supernatural solution. Still hoping to wield some godlike power of creativity. Still looking to convince myself that I matter. Old habits die hard, I suppose.
But here’s the rub: there are still voids in my ability to feel. They call out for relief, but they’re asking for a different kind of expression. It’s like they’re speaking a language I haven’t quite learned yet. The RWID of these new thoughts is different – less intense perhaps, but no less significant.
So here I sit, in the quiet of a content life, listening for the whisper of a new muse. The old songs of longing and hurt have faded away, but perhaps there’s a new melody trying to make itself heard. A softer tune, maybe. One of gratitude, of quiet joy, of the bittersweet passage of time.
Or maybe it’s not about finding a new muse at all. Maybe it’s about learning to create from a place of fullness rather than emptiness. To write not from the ache of what’s missing, but from the richness of what’s present. To find new thoughts with their own unique RWID, ones that can fuel creativity in this new chapter of life.
The blank page still stares at me, both challenge and invitation. The valve may be closed, but perhaps it’s time to build a new pipeline altogether. One that carries not the rushed torrents of youthful angst, but the steady, deep currents of a life fully lived.
So I’ll keep listening, keep searching. Because while the old songs may have faded, I can’t help but believe there’s still music to be made. It might just take a while to find the right notes, to discover thoughts with the right RWID to spark this new kind of creativity.