He sits at the monitor, keyboard at hand, music gently caressing his ears, attempting to regain something he has lost at a point within the boundless limits of time.
A sense of calmness overpowers him as he tries to find his lost path back into the stream of conscious creativity. He has spoken with esteemed friends, revered friends of many, about the future he sees ahead of him, and he now has an idea of what to do.
But of course, there needs to be a first attempt.
The ambient notes contained in his ears gently reverberate around his empty head as he tries to make Sense of things. This music is a recent discovery, and he can’t understand why he never heard it before. It has so much power. Power of tamed chaos.
His equipment doesn’t work properly, and this causes him mild discomfort, but he will push that aside and concentrate for the sake of the story as it begins to unfold before him. He can’t help but write in clichés, but there is nothing to be done. He will make them his own on his sacred quest to discover the path to his future.
His own personal existential crisis began the day before this one, as he sat within a classroom built to appreciate the words of the remembered dead.
As the teacher cast his and his classmates’ attention to the words of some great poet (for all poets are great, no matter how remembered they are) He hit a wall of comprehension, or rather, a Wall of Incomprehension. Those words staring up at him from the page failed to connect with the feelings within him. No matter how hard they struggled to do so.
He beckoned to them with all his heart and they called and called and called back. But alas, even their calls were but incomprehensible whispers to the lonely explorer. He grew frantic as time elapsed into the end of the lesson. All around him those words meandered into the minds of the young adults surrounding him, the words’ voices were carried loudly by swift winds of creativity into his classmates’ minds, and were answered, just as loudly, back. He was immersed in a beautiful symphony of dialogue, yet he could not add his own bars to the harmonies around him.
The winds of creativity did not flow for him; what was left was but a disconsolate barren expanse, with distant echoes – not even barely heard, but barely even felt – only just reaching him from deep within the enclosing horizon. He called and called and called into the distance in desperate hope for a reply, but the only sound that reached him was his own dull voice bouncing off that Wall of failed comprehension.
And suddenly, a magnificent gale whipped up within his lonely desert, causing the sand to dance around him. And with it the wind brought a sweet-sweet sound from the distant horizon.
One word.
And such a beautiful voice it had carrying it. The call for harmony radiated from his ears, softly nuzzled into his entire body. And he called back, as loud as he possibly could, for He had the compulsion to let the sender know, already a long lost friend, that he had received his kind word of greeting.
His returned salutation boomed into the distance, intermingling with the ecstatic echoes that the sound waves had left in their wake, making such a beautiful harmony, it brought tears to his eyes. Gratitude streamed down his cheeks, shining like the shooting stars the moon weeps every so often.
Then, the messenger-wind, full of mercy, was gone.
The echoes died away, and he was left kneeling on the ground. He had fallen at the intense power of the call, and now he was unable to get up. The weight of the barren desert, completely empty of any moving air, pressed down upon him once again.
He ached to hear the voice of creativity once again. He desperately cast his gaze around himself, looking for any difference in his surroundings as testament to the magnificence that had just engulfed him only a moment ago.
There was nothing. Not one thing to stand as a shrine to the beautiful winds that had joyfully played around him.
Remembering the utter beauty of the calm storm, a tear slowly made its way down his cheek, traversing the still-wet streaks of its predecessors, like a monk descending a gently winding mountain path. And when it reached the end of his countenance, it momentarily swelled, as if gathering courage, before it gracefully dropped slowly towards the sand, revolving like a microscopic Earth on its axis and ending its glorious life as a shimmering wetness on the ground. A tiny oasis in the desert.
And out of that minuscule lake a shoot, pure and green, emerged radiating so much hope and enthusiasm for such a tiny plant, that He began to weep again at the sight. He too began to hope, for if a tiny plant could have so much vigour for life while only starting out its life in the middle of a desert, it was up to him to intensify that hope with his own. That tiny little stem needs as much hope as it can get.
And with every slowly revolving tear, the tree received life to be stored away as part of its process of growth.
That was the past.
The present will consist of his attempts to recapture that blissful moment of pure beauty as the winds of creativity answered his distressed call.
He knew that with every attempt to slip his voice through the cracks of that treacherous wall, the wind will succeed to break through more and more. With every new word his old friend will bring tears to his eyes, gradually twisting tears that will nourish that tiny shoot, and will cause further growth.
In the future it will grow to be a majestic tree, tall and intricate, standing in a constant, steady breeze. With every gust of wind, each of its slender leaves will sing a melodious tune and the individual songs will intermingle together, making their own beautiful harmonies, unique every time.
And a man quietly sits under the tree, gently humming his own tune, deftly creating now what once He couldn’t, a part of the music once again.
And the wind of creativity carries the sound into the distance…
This is his first attempt.
Innocent musings flow into his work now, each struggling to contain the overflowing life of their own.
Is this how those sage poets truly wished to be remembered? Remembered not for their personalities, but for their onetime inky-handstrokes?
No, their personalities are those lettered souls. Every time they committed a glyph to paper, parts of themselves dripped onto the paper with them. Every session was a ritual of Greatness.
He writes out of order.
It is the end for now, he must sleep.
