19. Why I like to write…

“Why do you like to write?”

Yeah, why do you like to write, big boy?

Oh it’s you again, brain?

Greetings!

Hello. What are we talking about? Why I like to write? Anytime I’ve gotten that question, I don’t know how to best answer it. Do I like to write? Yes? No? Maybe… NO! Hell yes! Can all of those be right? They all feel right. They also all feel wrong. I don’t feel like I have a great answer to whether I even like writing at all, let alone why I write in the first place. I never have. Not when I’ve been asked that question by others nor when I’ve asked it of myself. All of those answers feel right. They also all feel wrong.

I guess let’s start here; I’ve always loved both reading and writing, so in some sense, I don’t honestly know of any other way to be as a person than as a writer. So perhaps better questions would be “why don’t I write more” or “why did I ever stop writing and why for so long?” Those latter questions feel so much more painful as an entry point than thinking about why I, Matthew McKibben from Houston, Texas, like to write. Those pathways seem long, winding, and perilous. I’d need a map and a good flashlight.

Do I like to write, though? I don’t know. I’m staring at a blinking cursor and am already dreading where answering this question can possibly take me. What am I even doing with this? Why did I have this idea? Why did I feel compelled to write about why I like to write? Can anything be any more fart sniffing and navel gazing than someone talking about why they like doing something? I should do another post where I dissect a movie franchise or where I reimagine Wu-Tang songs as nursery rhymes or something. That’d be fun! Do you know the Method Man, the Method Man, the Method Man? Do you know the Method Man who lives on Drury Lane? I like writing those. TA-DA! And there you have it; I do like writing. That was easy. Essay over.

Oh, this should be good. Already deflecting and trying to get by with cleverness. Let’s see how long you can keep this up. You’re good at avoidance. While you’re rambling I’m going to come up with more Wu-Tang nursery rhymes.

You do you, brain. Why do I like writing? I love creativity. I love the imagination. Everyday life is filled with non-stop commitments and duties. You take on a massive debt just existing as a functional human being in this society, and it seems like we spend all of our waking hours paying off that invoice. Everyday life can be busy and can be tiring. I wake up. I get the kids ready for school. I go to work and try to put in an honest day’s work. I crack a few jokes. I sit in traffic and listen to podcasts. I get home. I exercise a bit. I jerk off. I go to bed. No bullshit, I do all of that willingly and joyously (especially the jerking off!!!!). But it can be monotonous and can feel like a never-ending treadmill. And it can feel that way because it is that way. At least it is that way up until it isn’t. So for me, any spark of anything that isn’t that makes me feel more alive. It reminds me that we aren’t just computer screens and rapid rewards points.

I like to think our creativity and our imagination come from places deep within and are only revealed when we calm the waters enough to expose the thoughts and feelings lying on the ocean floor. I believe that creativity and imagination can be a form of connective tissue if we allow it to be. Because this stuff comes from the deep recesses of our souls and brains, when you’re showing me yours and I’m showing you mine, it turns my soul on and I feel connected, both to myself and to other people.

There is nothing more intimate and stimulating to me than shared creativity. When I’m in a headspace where my creative juices are flowing and I’m translating to paper/screen exactly what I want to say in the way I want to say it, my heart and soul vibrate. If I’m in a collaborative environment where my creative juices are flowing with other people? Fucking forget it. My whole body, at the cellular level, feels like it’s ascending. Those moments can be few and far between, especially if you don’t work to create them. So I write. I write because I need that creative space in my life and fostering that for myself is a form of self-care of the highest magnitude.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but now tell them why you don’t write. Tell us about your mental state when you aren’t writing. Mr. “Vulnerable.” You’re more wall than door. That’s the Matt we know.

Weren’t you supposed to be coming up with Wu-Tang nursery rhymes? Yeah, yeah, you’re right, though. You always know best. I guess we should just get into it now. When I’m not writing or when I’m in a period where the well is dry, it’s probably because I’m not super connected with myself. Everything seems out of balance and I… what was the term you said?

More wall than door.

Yes. I allow the daily rituals of life to become rote and I shut off that access to my…

NO WAIT DON’T FINISH THAT SENTENCE! It is I, your Ego, coming to your rescue!

Oh, thank goodness. Okay, yes… the ego. Talent! Much smarter people than I have discussed talent and where it comes from. I co-sign the general consensus that our aptitude at being able to do certain things comes from somewhere within and that it’s just built into our wiring, either by DNA or by some kind of spiritual manipulation. Michael Jordan was the best basketball player we’ve ever seen because he worked harder than anyone to become the best, but if he didn’t have the right hand size, the right muscle type, the right body frame, the right brain, and the right tongue, he’d probably just be like every other guy who wanted to be great at something but didn’t have the right ingredients to get the job done. And people like that burn out quickly. Whether all those traits Jordan has come from some kind of divine entity or comes from genetics (or a mix of both) is anyone’s guess, but talent is either something you have or something you don’t. I do think people can overcome a lack of talent with hard work, but take heed of those last two words; “hard” and “work.”

When it comes to me and writing, I know I have talent. I’m much more of the “just some other guy” side of that equation than the Michael Jordan side, but I know I have talent. I know that because I just know it. I know what makes for good writing and I think I have some of that just built into me. I also know I have talent because people tell me I do. They might just be blowing smoke up my ass. It’s possible. It might even be probable. How often are people legitimately honest with that kind of thing? But I know I have talent and have been told as much by teachers, friends, and, on occasion, random strangers. I’ll be gentle with myself and take everyone at their word. Thank you, everyone.

Yes, thank you!

YES, IT IS I, THE EGO, AND WE THANK YOU!!!!

Both of y’all need to pipe down. So yeah, there is a part of me that enjoys writing because I know I’m good at it and I know that some people like reading it. And sometimes, I write for that very reason and that very reason alone. Most of the stuff I write (like 95% or more) comes from some idea I had, or some thought I have to express. But on occasion, I’m Michael Jordan doing a 360 degree dunk when I don’t have to and am just showing off. It feels good to know you’re good and to be told you’re good and it’s 100% ok to write for that very reason alone. You think John Lennon was into every song he wrote for the artistic merit alone? You think I Am the Walrus was an actual artistic statement and not a dude at the peak of his powers just showing the fuck off? Okay, fuck it, I guess I did just compare myself to Michael Jordan and to John Lennon.

Yessssss yessss YESSSSSSS!!!! Let the unchecked ego floweth.

I AM A GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!

Ok, settle the fuck down. You don’t work hard enough to be Michael Jeffrey Jordan. You don’t even work hard enough to be Michael B Jordan. You’re more Michael C- Jordan.

Fuck! … fuck. But you’re 100% correct. I don’t work hard. I’m 1/3 lazy, 1/3 busy, and 1/3 wracked with impostor syndrome.

Dang, now I feel bad for making you feel bad. But in all seriousness, dude… please go Google how old JRR Tolkien was when he wrote The Hobbit or how old Boris Pasternak was when he completed Dr. Zhivago.

Awwwwwwe… you DO care about me.

I may be mean to you on occasion, but I still got your back, boo boo. How about this one: Cappadonna had a farm, E-I-E-I-Hoe

That needs work

Okay I’ll keep working at it, but please proceed…

The main reason why I like to write is because… well… it’s not always easy being me. Or more accurately, it’s not always easy for me to express my wants, my needs, my fears, my hopes, my … everything, as a person unless I’m doing it with written words. Face to face? I’m a mess. But me, alone, with my thoughts and a computer screen? I feel at calm and at peace. Maybe I should replace my face with a computer monitor and just start typing everything to everyone. Might help people get to know me better. Feels very David Cronenberg…

If you see me out in the wild, the Matt you’re seeing with your eyes is a Matt who was shaped by a lifetime of chaotic and (often) turbulent variables, most of which felt like they were never under my control. Divorce. Death. Birth. Separation. Alienation. People always say life is like a roller coaster, but it’s always felt more like one of those Haunted Mansion-style buggy rides at Disney World where you slowly drive from scene to scene. You’re looking here, the cart turns, then you’re looking there.

Anyone who knows me know I’m a pretty openly emotional person who laughs as easily as I cry. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but I wear my emotions pretty openly on my sleeve. Sometimes that can get me into trouble, especially as a boy who came of age in the 80s and early 90s. Things have changed a little (thank god!) but it wasn’t easy in the 80s and early 90s being this way. We didn’t have the understanding, let alone the language or tools to work with emotional boys in the 80s and 90s, even though we were slowly coming to the realization that we needed to start trying.

But it was hard to be this way. It was extremely hard. Let’s say you had just spent the weekend with your mom and your siblings and were back to school on Monday. Let’s say you were on the bus and were just thinking about the good times you had and were now stewing in the sadness at how cruel all of this felt. Where does that sadness go? For me, it came out as tears on a school bus. Everyone’s getting off the bus and I’m just staring at the window trying and failing to keep it all… in.

Like a lot of kids before me and since, I was shaped heavily by my parents’ divorce. But more than the divorce itself, I’m a person who was shaped by an inadequately constructed and ill-conceived post-divorce living situation in which my brother and I weren’t given the tools, room, or space to fully express the who/what/when/where/why/how of what we were feeling. My dad and stepmom were so great at so many things, but helping two young boys work through the pain of a divorce and separation from their siblings wasn’t one of them. In fact, they were downright bad at it.

So I bottled a ton of shit deep down. I buried it. I buried it deep. Then I poured sand on top of everything and poured concrete on top of that. You have to go to school today and can’t be breaking down in tears as you’re getting ready for an algebra test. Chernobyl that mother fucker.

Ring around the RZA? Pocket full of GZA?

I kind of like that, to be honest. Anywho… On top of everything else, I have a speech impediment that comes and goes depending on how addled with information my brain feels at any given time. If my brain was spinning at a thousand miles an hour (which was most of the time as a kid), I c-c-c-couldn’t speak in complete s-s-s-sentences without feeling like a “hey look at that idiot” spotlight was on me.

I didn’t dress in cool clothes and wouldn’t have been able to afford them had I wanted to. I came of age in a generation where peoples’ eyeglasses were half the size of the faces wearing them. I changed schools a lot and was bullied by a number of kids all throughout much of my young life. So you have an overly emotional, overly empathetic, overly sensitive, stuttering kid who dressed in poor kids clothing, who had glasses that took up half his face… What does one do with such a kid?

They call kids like us “fags” or “pansies” or “pussies.” I think my dad thought I was gay. I know the thought at least crossed his mind once or twice. He probably assumed as much by how I was as a person, but then certainly thought that of me when I started to gain a political consciousness and would push back against his biases.

As great as he was, another tragedy of him dying when he did is I never really got to discuss “what it was like to be me” with him in any real way. I’m much more honest with myself as a 45yo man than I was then, and I’ll always regret not being able to show him the disencumbered me.

But when I would write, all of that shit… all of that mess… it would melt away. I didn’t have to care what others thought of me. I didn’t have to feel like I was choosing the words that would provide me the path of least resistance to just surviving as a human. I didn’t need to put on a tough guy disguise or pretend to not be happy or sad, I could just be either-and/or-all of those things in all of their hues and shades. I could be as silly or as imaginative or as punny or as bitter or as goofy or as whatever as I wanted to. Writing, for me, was as freeing as flying.

And best of all, I discovered a great secret; you don’t even have to do it to be doing it. If you’re a writer, you are a writer, whether you ever put pen to paper or not. I bet the same is true of photographers or painters or musicians. You think a painter paints every idea that crosses their mind? Does a photographer see the world as a series of unsnapped photographs? For as long as I can remember, I’ve constantly turned the events of my life into stories in my head. Sometimes they’re seeds of ideas. Sometimes they’re the idea itself. Sometimes, occasionally, it goes beyond that, and the story gets fleshed out in my head or even via writing itself. The storytelling and “wouldn’t that be cool if” is perhaps my favorite part of being a writer. It’s fun.

I don’t know, sounds a little delusional to me. Remember how you said without the talent and physical traits, Michael Jordan would have been just another guy who had all of this drive but none of the skills to get him there. Also known as, just another guy. That sounds like you, right now.

It does. I acknowledge that. While a writer’s brain exists whether they’re writing or not, why keep it all inside? I get that. At the end of the day, I write because… well, I write because I want to.

I write because I have to give a voice to the stuff in my head, whether or not anyone ever reads it. I write because every time I do, the sinewy knot of nerves that has kept me alive all these years feels less tight and more receptive to the goodness happening around me at any given time. My heart, mind, and soul are all in conversation with one another. And at 45 years old, that conversation feels more harmonious than it ever has before.

You can be pretty mean to me, brain. But the truth of the matter is …I’m writing now.

I’m sorry. Genuinely. But hey, you’re writing now.

Indeed. Indeed I am.

I’m Ol Dirty Bastard, short and stout…

Here is my handle, here is my spout.

I love you.

I love you, too.