Existential Angst

This one is for my pal, Mark Terry. But though I've put his name there, I could have put hers. Or hers. (Gotcha!) I could have put any number of my writer friends. In fact, I should just put a link to every writer I know and those I don't out in the blogosphere.

First, two definitions:

Angst: A kind of fear or anxiety; Angst is German for “fear.” It is usually applied to a deep and essentially philosophical anxiety about the world in general or personal freedom.

Existential crisis: A concept in existentialism describing a state of panic or feeling of intense psychological discomfort about questions of existence. It is presumably more common in cultures where basic survival needs have been overcome.

Is there any profession, any hobby, any way to pass your time . . . that involves more of "head . . . meet desk" than writing? Why do we DO this to ourselves? We love writing with a passion, most of us. Give us a good writing week and we are practically dancing. Give us a bad one, a case of I-Suckitis, a day when we can't seem to write a SENTENCE that is servicable, let alone a paragraph (my yesterday) . . . and we are having a full-blown existential crisis.

Now, in reality, I don't have a lot of ANXIETY about writing. It's the rest of my life that sends me careening down THAT particular slide at the playground. But there is often a sense of WHY am I doing this? Am I any GOOD at doing this? It's a profession that invites people--total strangers--to have OPINIONS about you as writer. Your work. And if you get famous enough, like J.K. Rowling famous, opinions about your life.

This is fun? Writing something and asking people to JUDGE it? Over at Book Roast yesterday it was a fun free-for-all. And then . . . ONE commenter (you can read through to his) made a seemingly innocuous comment. "Interesting excerpt."

My first thought was "interesting how"? Interesting as in you see an ugly baby and say, "Wow! That's some baby."

Then the commenter said the excerpt was "raw." I thought "Raw how? Raw as in unpolished? Raw as in it needs an editor?"

Now . . . this really isn't about that commenter (who said nothing unkind at all). It is about how angst-ridden a writers' mind can be. It's about the oddity of it as a profession.

So . . . what sets you off on an existential crisis? Do you ever wonder . . . why do I do this? What's it all for? Or in the immortal words of Dionne Warwick, "What's it all about, Alfie?"

Working Through

I recently became a fan of this musician. I have bought several songs for my iPod, and turns out I had a few of his songs on compilations--and didn't even know it until I loaded the compilations onto my iPod. So off I went to Google him, and discovered, in nearly every bio or review that critics said his lyrics were "harrowing" and "autobiographical" and "an attempt to work through tragedy."

I have an acquiantance I used to spend time with who is an artist. On weekends at his beach house, we played charades and drank way too much wine. And I found him very witty, but when I saw his installations, I found them dark and intense and funny and morbid all at once.

I know some people create simply to entertain. There are popcorn movies and popcorn books. But I also--strictly based on my pals--know a lot of creative people are working through some process through their art. And while I can take art for art's sake and music for music's sake . . . and a book for simply a book, I do find the ones that have some undercurrent fascinate me more.

What am I working through? After the death, funeral, and assorted stuff of the last few weeks, I think I am squarely going in some existential direction. The beauty of life . . . which ALWAYS ends. As the character Lou O'Connor (named after my late and much-loved godfather) told Cassie in Spanish Disco (paraphrased), "You're angry that people leave. Whether they abandon you or they die, in the end you either leave first . . . or they do." It's the human condition.

So . . . care to lie down on the couch? Is there some bigger current in your work you feel yourself groping toward, fumbling toward some deeper understanding? Any artists that draw you in because of that? Music?