At Last There Is Nothing Left To Say
2024-12-03
At Last There Is Nothing Left To Say
... is the title of a book I used to love by Matthew Good (of the Matthew Good Band, then later a solo career, then allegedly hitting his girlfriend, at which point I stopped keeping up with his releases and have complicated feelings about loving his music since). It's a collections of short stories and essays that inspired me as a young writer. For a while I tried adopting his style of extended nonsensical metaphors. Obviously, that went nowhere.
In high school I fancied myself a writer. I composed a number of short stories, poems, and essays in high school that I once compiled as a collected work titled "Diseases of the Mind". I felt infected by creativity, that these ideas were inflicted upon me, and the only treatment was to record and publish these ideas for others. Writing as a hobby led me to writing for tabletop RPGs, which arguably became writing as a professional (assuming your definition of "professional" is "does work and gets paid for it"). I did okay; I had a niche, I was somewhat known for my work, and I enjoyed what I was doing.
Something in me changed in 2006. I was entering my fourth year of a three-year degree. My plan, made in haste to appease my parents, had been to earn my Bachelor's degree and then go to teacher's college; that plan was already bust as I hadn't been able to maintain my grades. Truth is, I was barely showing up for my classes because I needed to work. I couldn't focus in lectures. I was frustrated by the seeming arbitrariness of academic essays on works of English literature. I had published a student newspaper for two years and the most memorable thing to come from that were threats of a libel lawsuit. I had struggled to publish four issues of a free digital TTRPG zine during those same two years. I was burnt out, and it took a toll on my ability to create. I stopped being able to read for my own enjoyment (something I had done ravenously up until then). I lost interest in finishing any of my ongoing projects. It genuinely felt like I had run out of ideas, like I had exhausted whatever spark I felt I had when I was young.
Avalanche is the name of Matthew Good's debut solo album, and the title track to that album. I've heard Matthew describe the song as reflective of how he developed the album: a long period of nothing, then suddenly an unstoppable flood of inspiration, like being hit by an avalanche. I experienced something like that in 2011. I had started writing again; not my own creative work, but game reviews and news items for a smaller website. I had discovered the local game development scene in my own backyard, which led to a chance meeting with Craig Adams, aka Superbrothers. Hearing his passion for this thing he was making, seeing his elation at how this thing that started as a bunch of ideas was becoming a real and physical thing, well... it started something inside of me. An avalanche came down, through the trees.
If you know my story, then you know how the rest goes. I made a bunch of games, one of them gets me fired, I get a bit of infamy, and then GamerGate happens. Three years of being harassed and stalked, of making embarrassing mistakes and losing most of the friends I had made, it burnt me out again. I feel like I've run out of ideas. It's especially hard now that I'm unemployed again. I look at my anemic resumé, a document unable to convey the kind of work I can do, forced to beg for the privilege of having my labour exploited, and I am filled with resentment that I cannot support myself by making art. Too old for entry level work, too inexperienced for anything else. The only projects I pluck away at are remakes of older work. On I trudge, one foot in front of the other. Once Again, There Is Nothing Left To Say.
I've felt like this for the better part of a decade, but it's come back to the surface with the impending death of cohost and subsequent push for folks to carve our their own internet spaces again. I've made a few attempts at blogs in the past, but they rarely got more than five posts. The main reason is that I feel like I have nothing worth saying. Even expressing all this feels pointless; who gives a fuck that some burnt-out beardo weirdo is out of ideas? What's the point of making something if even I don't think it's worthwhile? And sadly, I still want to make something. I miss the high of putting together a thing that works. If I'm being completely honest, I also miss the attention. I want to create, but all I seem able to work on are new versions of old work. Those projects, the creative choices have already been made. All I need to do is implement them. Even then, it's a struggle to do the work. I feel broken.
The song Avalanche starts like a march, one foot in front of the other. As it builds, it becomes a flood of sound, almost a cacophony at its apex. But then it comes down. It ends as it began, one foot in front of the other. The avalanche happens, and then it's done, settling back into a status quo.
I used to relate to Avalanche, but not for a while. Nowadays I connect more strongly to the first song off Good's Hospital Music, specifically these four lines:
They say the sun's still shining,
that you can feel it in your core,
but I ain't seen nobody move
that weren't going for the door.
(This post was originally made to Cohost on 19-Sept-2024 and has been reposted here for reasons unknown.)