Perhaps this is my greatest reoccurrence of masochism. To each week, for approximately three-quarters of a score of years now, stare down this blank page and attempt to wring something worthwhile from the seemingly empty void.

It isn’t the lack of ideas. Not for your humble narrator, at least. Quite to the contrary. It is more the difficulty and stress of attempting to wrangle the never-ending stream of thoughts and confine them to these lines, these pages, and subsequently toss them into the technological abyss where anyone at all could either indulge or ignore them. But to, as I am about to steal from a history currently being read- to ‘reduce’ these ‘ideas’ down to words, that is where the trouble comes in. Because it isn’t the ideas that are hard to find. They so often surround the active mind like a plague, and have, for centuries and millennia and probably as long we’ve been going about with abstract thought on this planet, and for however long in the who the hell else knows in this mind-boggling big universe we find our spirits stranded in.

And yet, in the audacity only known, as far as we know, to this human species- here I am again, reducing universal thought and woe and worry and wonder, down to a few hundred, or thousand or so words. Or, I suppose I should say we. Don’t want to exclude the official and ultimately anonymous Bruce Duluoze fan club. Without you, I would only be a raving lunatic on the internet. Which, is still essentially what I am. And damn proud of it. But on with it, right?

That same history that I just possibly misquoted had another line that jumped out at me. Talking about the period in which so much of what is considered now to be modern and Western thought was founded, the line was that ‘human thought got free’. Forgive me, but I just find something insatiable about that. The prospect that something innate within us begs, or really, demands this constant inquiry, yet structured around us is so much denial, that only in rare moments are the constraints removed and this idea churning and burning machine is allowed to go about unhindered and revel and revolt and revere itself and all around it for what it is, while playing with the thought of what could be.

It isn’t void of humor, to me, that those few short words in a history written over a century ago, referring to a time period two and a half thousand years ago, is wildly relevant today in this chaotically technological driven world that seems to never relieve us of the constant flooding of belligerent madness. A world where the malevolent harvest of our attention is driven by monetary profit while most of what was built to bring good and, whether you want to admit it or not, the longest period of greatest peace this species has collectively known, seems to be crumbling all around us, while plenty seem to applaud that as progress. That simple phrase, of human thought getting free, seems to both whisper and shout from the ancient echoes of time into all of my senses at once. So, what is an aging millennial to do? The same thing we do every Monday, Pinky- we write it down in our blog.

While writing, a friend just informed me that she has returned to this nation of our birth, after the better part of a year across the pond. And goddamn, was it a year, for both of us. Truly horrible and tragic and guttural and excruciating. Yet, here we are, somehow, still standing. I told her I was writing, which she knows I do every week on this day.

She told me I ‘must capture the muse’.

I told her, I wondered, ‘at this point, I think the muse is holding me hostage and I just have Stockholm syndrome’.

She also told me to write about how awesome she is, but I’m totally not going to do that. Just know that it’s true.

But that idea of a muse, personified since at least that aforementioned two and a half thousand years ago period, it still lingers about this day. Who knows, perhaps there is some entity lingering about all these years, prying and trying hearts and minds to make something beautiful out of all the pain and ache that seem so inherent in the human soul. I’m picturing a flowing toga, big beautiful eyes- you know, basic dude stuff.

But again, it is that otherworldly yearning that invokes the soul in ways that the tactile and realistic incentives always fall short of attaining. Same sort of thing that makes billionaires miserable pricks also allows the hopeless bum who can play the fiddle and sing like a dream to find a strange, but true peace. The difference being that the latter embraces the inexplicable, while the former attempts to categorize and confine it. The difference between trying to put lightning in a bottle, or knowing that the electricity is there already and you only need to let it out.

Of course, I say all this as a recovering technological addict. And in a world where the dealers are just as out to get you as loan sharks and narcotics distributors, all while being allowed an overall societal acceptance for such behavior- breaking these habits is a constant and uphill struggle. But you can manage to occasionally feed better into these constructs. Fix the algorithm, a bit, as it were. And within this current bout of rectification, a video in midst my scrolling emerged into view. A lecture, from one of the members of my favorite, if not the most iconic British absurdist humor troupes. And so, he spoke of creativity, and withing that was thus that follows-

‘Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.’

And winding back to the thesis initially proposed, that speaks directly to that apprehension of the blank page. When there is seemingly nothing there, it is so easy to picture failure. Now, sure, in the dopamine release of touting ideas, talk of success comes easy. As it also comes cheap. But when confronted with the actuality of the act, the ‘blank page’ both symbolically and literally, it is appearing impossible to view anything ahead but failure.

But that’s just it, isn’t it? It is the risk that lets all this make sense. It is the risk that makes life make sense. It is so easy to forget, especially in this modern age, that all of this thought and life is not guaranteed, and really, is rather unlikely to begin with. That the very chance to exist is so small in the vast and perceptibly empty universe, that the very idea of being a, well, a being, is so absurd that the very insistence upon it is a massive risk of defiance. So easily, ensconced in our vapid surface cultures and limited attention news cycles, we forget we matter little and on this unlikely rock wrapped in a fragile gas bubble hurdling through space, it could all cease so easily and in some wild instant. But in that chaos, I think, is that place where ‘thought gets free’. When, ultimately, nothing matters- why, it is then you are free to create or adhere to the purposes of your desire and dedication. And to take the risk, even when seeming slightly insane or impossible, because to dust you shall return. But if that thing, that thought, that idea, that creativity- if it speaks to that itch for truth that has survived for generation after generation, at least since the beginning of recorded history, that ‘reduction to word’, and likely far before we figured out that cheat code to the accumulation of knowledge- if it speaks to that, it matters beyond yourself. And that, is the sort of thing that truly matters.

One last line, from that same book I’ve been plucking from all evening. ‘Take hold of your lives. Most of the things that distress you, you can avoid; most of these things that dominate you, you can overthrow. You can do with them as you will.’

And that, seems as good a place as any to conclude. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll be depressed and despondent come next week. Guess we’ll all just have to tune in to find out.