Confessions of an imposter

Sountrack of the afternoon:
You and me have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
It's nothing to cry about
'cause we'll hold each other soon
In the blackest of rooms

Current temperature: even brighter, but the fairy dust on the surface of the water makes it easy to tolerate

Needless to say it’s no easy feat to restart a writing practice after so many years of neglect. Fear and self-doubt are unwanted castaways on my journey toward voice recovery. Lack of practice makes me feel like a chef who can’t remember if it’s best to roux before, during or after the sauce has boiled. Procrastination and distraction are friends to my delay and enemies to my progress. Laundry, emails, photography are all tools for distraction. Even the act of writing this entry is in a small way contributing to the delinquency of my writing, so much in need of nurturing and guidance. God help me if I add food to that equation.

It’s so much easier to read something guaranteed to be of good quality. Tried and true, the real author’s words feed my hunger for imagery, poetry, song. But actually attempting to create something, risking the possibility of turning out a piece of crap, takes courage and moxy. Facing the sad and disappointing result after hours, days, even months of struggle can be heart breaking, soul tearing. So I read. I read and read and read. I memorize and I feel the words flying across the printed page until I soon become the author from which those beautiful phrases came. My greed consumes his work, devours his creation. It’s easier than giving of my own. And then when I’ve taken all I can, I feel inspired and hit the page. I move steadily into it carving out each detail, the words taking shape giving contours where they are needed. And then I see it. I see that I haven’t created anything at all. I’ve simply invoked the heart and soul of the author, breathed life into the voice that lie sleeping in the deep caves of my mind, but that life isn’t my own. I’m a fake.

And so I ask myself if the solution here, the way to avoid falsifying my own voice, is to stop reading. Stop reading? That’s just purely ridiculous. How can I stop reading if reading is the very air I breathe? I just can’t do it. Don’t make me.

What if I just took what I learn from another’s craft, sprinkled it with the style from some other favorites and stirred in the bits and scraps from my own memories and dreams? If the ingredients were blended so completely together like a lyrical puree, would they be discernible by their distinct qualities? I then call that concoction my own. Who is the judge of that? Who will ever really know?