your choices are half chance, and so are everybody else's

I spent last night writing. Feverishly. Poetically. Non-sensically. I have the first full-length drafts (approx 30 pages each) of 3 stories for "23", as well as the first dozen or so pages of 2 more stories for the same collection. It's exciting and draining and sub/consciously exactly what I need to be doing.

There are at least four voicemails for me to check. Three people that I really need to get back to. Two people in town that I should see. Dozens of emails for me to send. But these stories: they're EXACTLY what I need to be doing right now.

How insane is that?

I mean, really: a lot of my friends talk about being taken captive by a muse and needing to bide their every whim, but very few of them risk losing touch with friends, throwing themselves out of their social circles, getting out of sync with their realities simply to finish a story. Or song. Or painting.

The few that do risk the death of their social lives in order to fulfill their artistic credo are lucky - their social lives consist of like-minded artistic folks, so it's expected they be a narcissistic recluse.

Not so for me.

I've made it a point to make commitments/connections/relationships with people from all walks of life. And, in a weird way, I feel like that fact assists the evolution of my character and my work by immersing me in different mindsets and situations. [NOTE: Darrell Brown wrote a really interesting op-ed in the NY Times that called artists "Emotional Spies". I completely agree/empathize with what Brown says, but many people replied harshly to his candid observations, saying that the term "Emotional Spy" has a negative connotation.]

At the same time, however, most of my friends - though attempting to empathize and/or forgive my disrespectful/misplaced egotistical-artistic energies - will write me off as a less worthwhile friend.

It's a fact of life I've come to accept and understand. Friendship is a lot of give and take, and problems arise when the person with whom I have the friendship wants to take more than I can give. In this state of artistic mania, when every little whimper from my muse begs my attention, I do not give. It is a choice, though most of us artistic folk will contend that it is not a choice. Creating art is what keeps us alive, and we will die if we don't heed the call to greatness, yada yada yada.

But I'm not so delusional as to believe it's not a choice to write about a fictional person instead of meeting a friend for drinks.

On the same token, I'm not so delusional to believe that I'm the only person emotionally available to fulfill that role of drinking buddy. If there's one thing I've learned from life, it's that as special as each person is, we are also replaceable. Each and every one of us is only worth as much as the emotional investments other people make in us. And other people... well, let's just say that voids are filled with different emotions; it matters less what emotions do the filling than the void be filled.

I'm happily restrained to my home for the time being, and I'm thinking about the people I'll inevitably let down. Their disappointment will change the way they interact with me, and our relationship will be forever altered - however small or large the change - by my (alleged) mistreatment of our friendship. Then forgiveness will or won't happen, and things will go on, and everyone involved will find happiness and beauty and joy and good health... at least, for a time, before their lives descend into a dark abyss of tragedy.

When I was younger and more wreckless, I would glibly reply to writing such as this that the person was being morbid or unnecessarily emotional. I'd make a comment about what I'd experienced and rationalize that only x amount of years separated myself from this person; or that I understood where the person was coming from, so I knew better how to look at the situation; or that I was bubbly and outwardly jubilant and obnoxiously more happy - so my perspective had to carry more weight than one from a person who seems weighted down by their views.

But as I'm writing these stories, each told from the point of view of a different 23-year old person living in New York City, I'm realizing just how little we all really have in common. We have the big ideas in common - the thriving, the striving, the will and the won't - but the smaller caveats, the more personal gradations of understanding, the minor and simple that are in ways the only barrier between me and you...

A person goes to bed wearing two matching socks and wakes up with one sock hanging precariously from their foot - and that makes all the difference in the world. You read their expressions five minutes later, take note of their body language, put their story into a context you understand and assign them a role in your life. They are evil or loveable, your best friend for life or your sworn mortal enemy, your saviour or your accomplice in crime - and yet that relationship will be limited if most of your ideas and actions and perspectives don't match.

If you stop seeing that thing that initially attracted you to this person, you have to find another reason to keep them around - or you two will eventually lose contact. If this other reason to remain friends is lost, no matter how much loyalty or love or respect you muster for one another, your relationship will be a shallower, synthetic version of the authentic ideal. You will always know that they are not what you had initially believed them to be. They do not fit into the reality you meant to create.

And that's where the big problems arise. Crime. Infidelity. Hate. They're all external representations of the chasms we feel with our relations/realities. Someone reaches a point where they can't handle what's happened with their lives - the relationships they can't/don't want to foster, the persona they no longer fit, the farce they've been presenting as reality - and then something breaks. Something deep inside the fabric of our reality shatters like glass. The tenuous strings of faith are clipped until they exists no longer.

It's just what happens.

Those among us who "make it in life" are the ones whose ideals are so simple and beautiful and our wills so strong and courageous that our realities match our desires. We are victims, too, of the mismatch of chance and circumstance; we just know what we're looking for, respecfully decline what we don't need, and keep on going.

Any other protocol for action is a recipe for disaster.