Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Reflections
If you've read a decent portion of what I've written, you'll know that I can write happy and sad. There are things like Pun Hell and the beginnings of Dawn which seem, to me, full of happy thoughts, of insane joyousness and my usual random bubbly personality when I'm hyper-happy. Then there are things like Dark Angel which reflect on the darkness and capability for misunderstanding that is a part of the human soul. And there are other things which are just pure sorrow. There are, in the end, an infinite number of moods in which I write, to match the infinite moods of human beings.
What, perhaps, some fail to understand is why. Why write about sadness, about sorrow? Why not write of the happy, joyous things in life all the time, giving myself the happy boost I need somedays? The bulk of my work is indeed sorrowful, though most have hopeful notes to them (not always the case). Why is this?
Pun Hell and Dawn were written during a very happy time of my life. They were projects built off of my mood and in doing so, they have taken on the characteristics of my mood then. Dark Angel and Starlight, Starbright were written during a very cynical time for me, when I truly believed there were no or at least very very few good people in the world. My work takes on the characteristics of the mood I am feeling at the time. In the case of poetry, this is easy to reconcil, there are (as you have no doubt noticed) some happy poems buried among the rest. Take 'Andarta' for instance, an insanely happy poem. Poems are short, it is what I like about them - it is easy to get my thoughts out, my feelings out and write something that expresses it all. Stories are longer. The reason I stop working on them is because the mood that is required for the story is no longer there. I stopped writting Pun Hell and Dawn twice for those reasons, though I have begun Pun Hell again (and work on it occasionally as my mood is very bipolar as of late). Dark Angel I wrote in a day, and I wrote Starlight, Starbright over the course of a weekend, thus this was less of a problem. This however is why most of my projects die - the mood that spawned them is gone or the feelings that created the ideas behind the story are gone. Dawn will never be finished by the way. The first chapter remains as it was first released, with some minor editting and I believe the second chapter is done as well. But I doubt it will go furthur.
But to return to the question - why write of sorrow and of sadness.
It is human nature to feel sorrow and sadness, along with joy. There is cause for both in many things, always a silver lining or a bright side to life. Some revel in the suffering, some revel in the joy. I revel in both, as they come and go depending on which one is stronger. I believe that to truly be human, we must accept the bad as well as the good - a life full of joy would have no reference to know what joy is. I write of sorrow and of sadness to express it, as a means of handling it. And I allow this to be seen because it too is a part of the human experience. There is no shame in feeling sad or crying. There is no shame in feeling a sense of loss or in missing someone you loved dearly. Let it flow, my friends, let it flow.
- Dep
// posted by Dep @ 11:11:00 p.m.
