The last few days have been a battle with deep mental fatigue—a kind of malaise in the tissue of my brain. Yesterday, in particular, it was bad. I felt spent all day, trying to restart the engine.
Around 1 a.m., I found myself feeling creative again for a few hours, so I wrote until 3 a.m., and then went to bed because I needed to get a new draft of Doomers ready for rehearsal. But we ended up moving the rehearsal.
I don’t like who I am when I don’t have the creative impulse. I don’t really like who I am when I don’t have something to work on. I don’t have the energy or the wherewithal to work.
There’s a void there, so I work each day to construct myself. I don’t mean that I’m constructing a mask; I don’t think it’s artificial or external.
I mean I’m actually daily weaving and re-weaving my soul.
Sometimes I think I make a mistake in insisting on self-sufficiency with my theatre company, for instance. I’m writing most of the plays myself, directing most of the plays, and not creating a non-profit entity. We have no grants, no big donors. Every day, I have to have a plan. I have to produce.
Because we make the rent each month and keep putting on shows, we create the semi-real illusion of not needing extra help. Maybe I make people think that I’m handling it all without trouble. Maybe I should complain more, beg more—but I can’t really bring myself to do it. Self-mastery and pride are hard to distinguish, I guess. Self-confidence and stubbornness. Independence and isolation.
I can communicate more clearly in my plays than I can in ordinary conversation. I usually feel like I see people pretty clearly—and I recognize and respect their limits (as well as my own)—but I have trouble communicating in an unvarnished way—sharing my observations—because they would be taken the wrong way. But in my plays, I can put everything on display in a depersonalized way. I can share in my perceptions, self-perceptions, and moral judgments—and an audience can disagree, condemn, or celebrate... without feeling directly implicated.
As a result of this, as a result of all my best thoughts going into my work and not into my conversations, I often feel stunted and insignificant in conversation. Like someone drifting away in a boat with no tide, no wind, and no oars—just drifting, unable to really communicate or swim across.
I’m also a pluralist and a pragmatist, not an absolutist. There are very few beliefs that I can offer without qualification. I’m better at deconstructing than constructing. So I don’t feel very inspiring; I don’t feel like I have much to offer in terms of positive belief or rallying points. I have an easier time telling people where not to go than where to go.