At the risk of betraying one of my own ill-defined personae, I would like to reiterate again how inversely related the intensity of some versions of writer's block are to the frequency with which one actually leaves the house to walk further than the recycling cart.

If the reader will allow me to operate on the fairly simple assumption that writing is a kind of performance, it is simple to logically show that writer's block is a variation of the same stage fright that makes one — no matter how well rehearsed or prepared — lock up, forget lines, draw blanks and puke backstage.

I demonstrate a questionable understanding of concepts like "mythology," "blood sugar levels," "sleep deprivation," "me time," "motivation," "quitting while ahead," "biting off more than [I] can chew," "a hubcap diamond star halo," "fighting the good fight" and eleventh and thirteenth chords. I can play eleventh and thirteenth chords though, and as such I am often inclined to believe that the remaining concepts are well within my ability to grasp with the possible exception of "me time" which has only recently entered my lexicon in its non-ironically-used form.

By the time you read this it is likely I will be doing something that no more disrupts my ability to have a coherent thought than, say, cleaning the sink. In fact, it's possible that I will be cleaning my bathroom sink.

I frequently have an overwhelming urge to which I often give in even though I know there's no terribly large amount of anything useful gained by doing so. That urge is to start my written thoughts with pseudopreprofundities like "long ago I made a pact with myself" or "I can remember." The vast majority of the time these introductory phrases are patently false whenever possible. (The usefulness of assigning them "truth" is sometimes complicated by their intentionally introducing fictional statements.) Less frequently but perhaps more usefully, I coin words that I think have self-explanatory meanings.

A simple admission, properly phrased, can easily sound like a revelation; e.g., I should have added "Björk" to the list of things of which my understanding is questionably demonstrated.

An epiphany is just a revelation with an also tangentially Biblical name; e.g., All this time I have been directing my frustration with my inability to trust my understanding of such nebulous concepts as "love" into a more concrete refusal to understand Björk! (Note that while epiphanies needn't be exclamatory statements, it is encouraged in some circles. Particularly those operating on the fairly simple assumption that writing is a kind of performance.)

A refusal to acknowledge something is predicated on the existence of something that can be acknowledged. Long ago I made a pact with myself to refuse to be fascinated by logically impossible statements like "This sentence is false."

what's on:
"I Would Hurt a Fly" (Built to Spill - Perfect From Now On)