Sucked down the drainpipe: life and the death of creativity

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“What sort of brainwashing, he had wondered, had created a world in which people worked fifty or sixty hours a week, every week, no matter how beautiful the day outside, no matter what thoughts they were having? Where would the paintings come from? The sculptures? The music?”
– Heather Rose, The museum of Modern Love

I read this quote last night and thought, “Ah, so this is where my words have gone.” Into the milieu of participation as a productive member of society. Sucked down the drainpipe of getting ready for work, getting to work, work and work and work, getting home from work, getting ready for work tomorrow. Occasionally jamming in a workout at the gym if I am very lucky and manage my time with precision.

My words swirl at a distance from my stance at the kitchen sink, shoving something in my mouth to sustain this madness. I can see them, illegible letters in a mist. Snippets of incoherent ideas. They sit next to my bed pouting as I toss and turn into fitful rounds of sleep and wake unable to rest with all that must be done tomorrow burrowing into my delta waves and jolting them away.

They come cautiously as I walk to work, enamoured by the warmth of morning light that dusts my cheek. Shyly wondering if I will carve a space for them, ask how they have been, show an interest in their life. Re-entwine them with mine. They whisper things that should be written and are quickly forgotten in the rush of swiping my pass on time. For fear that my numbered self will log as late and I will have to sit while someone tells me this should not happen. Me, wanting to scream, "do you not understand how insane this is? That I merely stopped to catch some words and thread them into ink before they ran off again to hide in the snippets of garden dotted along this concrete monstrosity?"

Instead nodding my apologies with my wiry and wayward unbrushed hair as I collect my bag, laptop and notepad and hastily packed lunch spilling at the seams into my arms. Thumping to my desk. All grace of movement gone. Weighed down by the load.

And my poor words, so sad at being unheard, pout by my desk making circles in the carpet. Waiting for 5pm, hoping they can tug and my coat and get some attention. Lost in the shadows of this thing we’ve been led to believe is a life.

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