That’s it, really

Posted February 4th, 2003 by Sean Williams

I think in order to do something well, you have to practice it. I was taught early in my so called career that practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent, but I am starting to feel like that is a trick that educators use to make them feel important. The truth is, you can do it wrong twenty times, and that’s better than not doing it at all.

I wrote a musical when I was twenty or so, based on the life of King David. It opened with King Saul insane and raving and the child David comes in and sings and soothes his savage breast. Then everything else happened (including Bathsheba completely naked and a love affair with Jonathan, Saul’s son) and David tells God to go to hell and the play ends with David raving and insane and his son, Solomon, comes in and sings to him.

Clever, right?

I have written a lot of songs and screenplays and plays and even a novel which is about 600 pages long and nowhere near done. And these pieces follow a pattern that was only made clear to me for the first time today. Every time I feel the cycles start to spin and my life go out of control, I bury myself in a project over which I have complete control. People are shocked that anorexics think they are skinny, but it isn’t that, it’s control over something, anything.

A least this time it isn’t a shitty screenplay or novel. As I work my way through this, the music is starting to get good. And it is starting to come out easier, I am able to find what I want to do because the language is making more and more sense. I have started hearing music in my head, the way I hear the characters voices that I play, and…

I mean, yeah, it’s pathetic and I have built something that I have complete control over. But I feel terrible all the time except when I am writing music. So, what do I care. Sure, I could be doing more, but, I mean, I’m not, so I’m gonna do this. Better this than sitting in a pile of my own shit.

It also needs to be said that when you have a natural self destructive and cruel bent, there is a certain satisfaction in finding that inclination seen through to fruition. Nothing I can really do about the thrill of feeling hated, I wish it wasn’t there and I continue to do what I can to stop it, but, y’know, there it is, and I have to swim through it.