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Complex Numbers #972848 added January 7, 2020 at 12:15am Restrictions: None
The Story
PROMPT January 7th
What skill (craft, instrument, sport, art, etc) do you wish you could do but can’t? What’s stopping you from learning?
Writing.
Okay, no... all of them.
This prompt hits upon my greatest frustrations in life, so I'm going to try not to be melodramatic about it. I will probably fail.
As I've hinted in previous posts, I've always loved music. I've even learned theory and the basics of playing a few instruments. And yet... I can't.
I see art that people make, and it's like photos of another dimension: I can appreciate it, but I can never reach it myself. My attempts at drawing are pathetic.
I read books, watch movies and shows, and while I might have some skill as a writer, I seem to lack whatever creative spark it is that lets me be successful at it as anything but a hobby.
As much as I love beer, wine and spirits, even though I have some knowledge of their manufacture and the steps that go into making booze of all sorts, I can't participate as anything other than a consumer - not that I don't thoroughly enjoy that aspect.
Okay, so I don't care for sports at all, but I have no proficiency there, either.
We make allowances for all sorts of deficiencies in people, but there is one lack that we have no tolerance for, a lack that I have in abundance - and that is the absence of creativity.
Without that core, without that ability, I will always be an outsider.
It's not that I haven't tried to learn these things. It's that I'm empty inside, soulless, creatively destitute.
Okay, fine, so I lapsed into melodrama and self-pity after all. I'd been mulling all of this over for a couple of days, actually, after a couple of prompts ago inspired me to try to figure out exactly what makes me useless at music in particular, and art of any sort in general. I still haven't figured it out. I likely never will.
So I work on the one thing that requires the least amount of resources: writing. A pen and paper, or a keyboard and some computer chips - that's all it takes to practice. I do feel like I'm getting better at it, but there's still some aspects that elude me, that will probably forever elude me. To be able to express myself creatively, to be understood at some deep level (while still being all dark and mysterious and shit), well, that's a big part of what I wanted out of life. But I can't have it.
I generally try to focus on what I can do, and all of the good things I have. But sometimes all of that gets obscured by the void.
Story of my life.
All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to
It's true, I was made for you
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