when i began to write poems seriously, a long time ago — and most of my output was a long time ago — i was desperate to articulate my depression, and most of the feelings led into metaphorical poems, because the ambiguity felt safe. there wasn’t a compulsion to make narratives happen because i had such a problem with being authentic and true to myself. this isn’t unusual behaviour for a young, squishy-hearted person, but something i’ve been thinking of the more i make an effort to figure out what kind of writer i want to be. i used to be very faux-intense and slapdash, using a lot of big words and commonly used imagery, such as beaches and skies. it met the requirement of creating something, but didn’t really make a lot of sense. it’s sort of like building a house from non-house friendly materials, such as fries, except a person in place of a house and disjointed inner thoughts instead of fries.
a guy builds a house out of fries in the texas chainsaw massacre 2, to strip my example of its merit
for context, here is part of something i wrote when i was seventeen:
[…] you’ve left me sandy-eyed, in risk of bloating, here with my columns aching as I rest. I feel my skin; my pores are swollen and hard. I think the tiniest thought. It rests and lies as I do on the illusion of soft, encapsulating comfort, tidy tidal beaches, yellow and hardening as does the surface of my skin, the cold scaling me.
it’s definitely weird, and it isn’t something you can parse the meaning of, at least not with any ease. i was just being dramatic. but when i get annoyed at that, and try to drift from doing any similar writing, there becomes a disconnect from my emotions and the words.
there’s a song by julia holter called “betsy on the roof”, which has become something i’ve replayed over and over in the past few weeks. in it holter is singing to the titular betsy, saying she can’t make it rain for her, and then demands answers with her arms outstretched. that’s the extent of the story for the often enigmatic holter, who mentions that the song is “so much more about the feeling — desperation — than any kind of story at all… it’s just about a deep and desperate search for something. it doesn’t matter what it is”. if you listen to the vocals on the track, you feel that desperation as if there is something embedded within, despite the simple words. but it’s really a refined song, one of my favourites. when i’m not just purely enjoying it, it reminds me that my art can make progress.