Soundtrack of My Life

"The Silence" by Bastille

I thought I'd start off Day 1 with the song I have quoted in the bio block of my portfolio.

"The Silence" by Bastille

Tell me a piece of your history
That you're proud to call your own
Speak in words you picked up
As you walked through life alone
We used to swim in your stories
And be pulled down by their tide
Choking on the words
And drowning with no air in sight

Now you've hit a wall and it's not your fault
My dear, my dear, my dear
Now you've hit a wall and you've hit it hard
My dear, my dear, oh dear

It is not enough to be dumbstruck
Can you fill the silence?
You must have the words in that head of yours
And oh, oh, can you feel the silence?
I can't take it anymore
Cause it is not enough to be dumbstruck
Can you fill the silence?

Tell me a piece of your history
That you've never said out loud
Pull the rug beneath my feet
And shake me to the ground
Wrap me around your fingers
Break the silence open wide
Before it seeps into my ears
And fills me up from the inside

Now you've hit a wall and you're lost for words
My dear, my dear, my dear
Now you've hit a wall and you've hit it hard
My dear, my dear, oh dear

It is not enough to be dumbstruck
Can you fill this silence?
You must have the words in that head of yours
And oh, oh, can you feel the silence?
I can't take it anymore,
Cause it is not enough to be dumbstruck
Can you fill the silence?

If you give it a name, then it's already won
What you good for?
What you good for? (x3)

Cause it is not enough to be dumbstruck
Can you fill this silence?
You must have the words in that head of yours
And oh, oh, can you feel the silence?
I can't take it anymore
Cause it is not enough to be dumbstruck

I haven't heard another song that better captures the feeling of writer's block. A feeling that I suspect most people reading this have felt before. Especially the lines: "If you give it a name, then it's already won / What you good for?". It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you convince yourself you're blocked, the harder you try to produce something anyway, the longer you stare at the blank page, the worse it gets. You start thinking you'll never create anything again. You've lost any talent you might have had, or perhaps you never had it at all. And if you're an artist who can't create your art, what are you good for?

I spent about six years "dumbstruck" and only recently started writing again. I made the resolution that I needed to get back into writing a year ago, for my mental health, and found this site. Six years of silence may not sound like a long time, but it's long enough to feel permanent. Unfortunately, you can't force inspiration. It comes when you're not looking for it. It comes when you're walking down the street past a weird looking car and you wonder who the owner could be. It comes from a random song lyric you hear on the radio in the middle of the produce aisle. Sometimes it comes from heartbreak. Or, sometimes it leaves from heartbreak. It comes when you see new places and experience new things. It comes from consuming the works of others.

While I haven't completely gotten past it, I've found that when you're in that state you have to forget about the product and just focus on the process. Don't do it for an audience. In fact, you don't have to show anyone at all. Keep creating embarrassingly subpar works. Write LOTS of terrible, pointless, cliché, badly rhyming poems. Write stories with poorly developed characters and obvious plot holes. Write things that have been done before. As long as you're writing, you're improving. It takes so many awful works to create even ONE good one.

Anni