Sometimes I get sad and I don’t know why. This happens to everyone, of course, and can be caused by anything from hormones to weather. The idea that sadness is a problem – that you are supposed to be happy every minute of the day and if you aren’t there is something wrong with you – is a particularly American mania, and a destructive one at that. I try to ignore it.
Still, when sadness persists, and no cause from my life or psyche rise to the surface, I start to wonder.
The first clue was music. I’ve been voracious for music lately. This weekend found me on the floor surrounded by gigantic sleeves of largely forgotten CDs. I was going through old music and loading it on to the computer so I could listen to it again. I listen to music on the train, while I’m working, even lying in bed in the dark. When the right song comes on I feel an almost physical relief (“Thank God!”) as the music washes over me.
The second clue was the homeless guy. I was on a Bolt Bus to Philadelphia when I saw him. He was laughing and rolling on the ground. He talked in a constant happy stream to himself or some imaginary partner. Why he stuck out to me from all the other homeless people I see I couldn’t say. Maybe the real sense of joy radiating off him made the pathos more acute. Was he mentally ill? Addicted? Probably both. In the moment, however, explanations didn’t matter. All I could think was, “Somebody’s brother. Somebody’s son. Somebody’s great love.” I almost started weeping right there on the bus.
I’ve never been able to describe why I write. The real answer, the only answer that feels honest, is that I am compelled to. I need a place to put all these feelings and thoughts I have, a place to reckon with them. Writing creates that place. I am forced to be honest, even unsparing in that place, but it still remains safe. I always want to go back there.
When a long, consuming writing project ends, that safe space disappears for a while. More terrifying still, I have to take the thing I wrote in that warm safe place and send it out to be judged by the world. It is a prospect that fills me with dread. I feel exposed, a little raw.
That’s why I need music.That’s why I cry at the homeless. The world is just a little too much for me to take when I am between projects.
The next project will come along soon. It always does. I anxiously await its arrival. Until then I will listen to music and cry at the homeless, until the whole process begins again.
