The Pen Artist

Funny, I only realized that after my puberty was over, there were only two things that persisted: (1) my acne and (2) the fact that my best days of impassioned writing was over.  Yes, I still do write poems and essays such as this every now and then.  But I know not how I managed to conjure up an obra maestra of letters and verses in one sitting.  Where once I could sit and write a love poem in less than half an hour inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Maningning Miclat, I am now resigned to squeezing my brain to write even a single verse for my wife or to type a blog entry that probably only a couple people will read anyway.

I did not know when I lost the passion for writing.  Its slow but inevitable death probably has started when my mom told me I will not take up Creative Writing at UP Diliman.  She told me poetry and short stories will not feed a family.  You will live and die by the poverty that the pen can only bring.  She told me to pursue my passion for the arts yet remain grounded in the fact that too many artists died starving before a Picasso becomes priceless.  Keep writing she said, but make it a hobby not a career.  Now that I think of it, she made sense but it did bring the near-death of my writing passion.  I don't think I would have been recognized as a great writer anyway, a good one yes, but not good enough to be great.  I don't think I can play with words as well as Patricia Evangelista or Conrado de Quiros.  My essays are pretty much decent, but even I don't think they are special.

Yeah, yeah and you give me the litany of believe-in-yourself-believe-in-your-dreams-keep-dreaming-and-someday-you'll-achieve-it bullcrap.  There are hundreds of thousands of people told to follow their dreams no matter what other people say or no matter the odds.  Almost all of them died with eyes wide open and skin pressed deeply against their ribs.  Those who didn't die chose a day job way different from their first passions.  To think of  it, how many people try and try again and fail to produce a Michael Jordan or a Michael Phelps or a Michael Jackson? There are literally thousands upon thousands of cabaret and bar singers who at one point in their lives really thought they stand out and that they would make it.  The world is hard on artists, that is a fact, and when the truth comes crashing down it dawns on you that you have been strumming that guitar for twenty years now, writing that novel for fifteen years now, or playing in some random rundown theater for ten years now and still the break that you were looking for is far from your grasp.  How long will it be before you realize that nobody listens to your songs anymore, or your graffiti which drew oohs and ahhs from way before remain that?  How long before reality breaks you down and poverty transforms your creativity to despair?  At one point in their lives, artists of pen or brush or song will struggle. 
Struggle and the triumph over it is what defines each artist and will engrave his legacy.

Ah, but how wonderful it was when I was an impassioned writer.  How I miss the magic that my heartbreak brought or my desire to save the world can do.  Pain is what drove me.  Pain of an unrequited love.  Pain of adolescent rebellion.  The passion that rages in your chest and flows in your blood to the ink of your pen.  Life seemed more... vivid then.  And now I just chill.  As I stare into this entry that wasn't supposed to be an entry, I wonder what drives me now.  Now that the pain is gone and the heartbreak has healed a long time time.  Where do I get that fire? Where do I get the itch to pick up a pen and write down a story or a poem so spirited my blood will roll again into my canvass of letters.  The moment is now.  The time is now. But like all has-beens do, I'd say nay and put off the obra maestra till tomorrow or until probably forgotten.