When you're in the slumps, look around

I've been going through a writers block, or as I call it, a music slump for around 3 weeks now. By that, I mean, I can't seem to really write anything that means something worthwhile to me, I can't put anything lyrical or metaphorically moving into something melodic. It annoys me SO much when it happens, because it demotivates me to write or persist. Writing is such an outlet for me, for all things grief, anger, sadness, melancholy, and longing. So, when that outlet dries out for a hot sec, I bottle up, I start feeling agitated and restless - like I NEED to write something or just create something so it's tangible and not just in my head.

For a long time, whenever I got in a slump, I would just let it ride, and sometimes it would only be a week, sometimes it would be as long as 3 to 4 months and that would SUCK! So instead, I wanted to do research on it, because I know for a fact it happens to every creative person. There was a video I watched, and it said, when you're in a writer's block, to write anyways, and to allow your pen and paper to write utter rubbish. Because something that blocks your flow is your fear of being cliche, or embarrassing, and sometimes those feelings can come from the discomfort of being vulnerable! It's scary for us to open up to people about feelings, so rightfully, it would be scary for us to not only talk about these feelings, but in such a detail, raw, wounded, kind of way.

So I wrote (this is me talking present tense as this was like last week lol) a song about this person that I know and how I'll never be as immaculate and pretty and cool and likeable as them. I think I have said this in every post right now, only because it is so so so so true to me and I try to constantly remind myself that "comparison is the thief of joy", it is, it steals my joy, and my motivation for my passions! I wrote the song and it was so awfully dull and muted and honestly, cringe to listen to. But I wrote it anyway because clearly, that feeling was something that was bubbling inside of me for a while. I also just posted that song on Soundcloud, because what better exposure therapy than to expose rawness to the salts of peers' opinions on the public world wide web. It's called Her.

After that song, I started writing from a craving of dried figs. I love them to eat, but they're also so poetically tragic of a fruit. How a female wasp must enter the flowering fruit, knowing fully that her wings and antennas were to be ripped, never to escape, all for the purpose of giving life to something her life was born to die for. There is a ghost of a woman in each fig we eat, and sometimes I feel as though the calmness and the intent I feel from eating them is from their little spirits (morbid, I am sorry...). So I took that craving and the sad truth of the fruit, and wrote it into something that I not necessarily experience, but something that reflects the ideas of it's botanical tragedy. An exploration of a sacrificial love, a reliant life, one that'll rot like all plants do. The lyric that I wrote at 1am opening "I can't let my figs rot, for the wasp already did", then its second verse being "I can't let us spoil, even though we already did." It's called Fig Tree. Now this song, I really really liked, so I finished it. But it doesn't necessarily mean I was completely out of my slump.

At this point, I am gasping for air, for some kind of inspiration or something that'll click. Something to show up in my life that will make me change my mood or maybe sink further into it to get all of its saturated sadness. I was pouring myself a glass of wine, when I saw, at the back of the alcohol cabinet, a bottle of scotch with a post it note stuck on it, saying "for someone to drink when they turn 80! 30/05/2012" in my dad's handwriting, on his 40th birthday. That really struck a string in my heart because I know he'll never get to drink it when he's 80, I'll never get to share it with him on his 80th birthday, there will never be a perfect day again, for that bottle to be opened and drank, without the subtle sting that its original purpose had been cut short. So, again, I took that sting, the ache that I felt and attempted to write something out of it. I did, the original idea was great, but didn't like the song. And that's okay! It's okay to write things and then not follow through fully, because that's the one beauty about creating, there will never be a run out, we will never fall short on the capabilities of one's mind. If we want it to happen, it will. 

That being said, I think I've gotten out of the worst part of my slump, the waiting, the search. I've made 2 good songs, and trust me, I've written around 5 crappy quarter songs I had to stop, but also had to put down or else the process would feel incomplete. The message is this: look around you, we are never dry of inspiration, we are never without something worth telling. It is simply a matter of trying hard enough to tell a story that's waiting to be told by you. 

Tentatively yours, Mei xx