Monday, July 02, 2007

Hiatus from Poems

This is a strange occurrence. Till date, I find that I best express myself through the wonderfully compact form of poems, yet suddenly I realise that when I sit down to write a verse, I end up staring really intently at the blank screen and have no clue whatsoever what to write about. The only word that seems applicable now is just "amazing".

Looking back on the 400+ verses that I wrote over the past few years (yes, 400+ verses spread between here and here), I seem to have discovered a pattern of sorts. It appears that I am at my most productive when I was in some kind of emotional turmoil, be it a crush, a rejection, despair, moroseness, euphoria, any form of emotional agitation will end up being some kind of poem being written and posted.

It will seem that the old adage of writers being tortured souls is somewhat true, at least for my case.

I might be a musician, but for a long time, I found that my musicianship skills were sub par, despite the fact that I have mastered most of the skills necessary for the correct playing of my instrument (which you may all recall, is the 笛子). It had nothing to do with my technique; it had everything to do with my state of mind. Apparently, I was not emotive enough in my rendering of the pieces, which of course resulted in a sub par performance as compared to someone who has less technical ability but has more emotional content in the presentation. Now, after being exposed to wonderfully emotive pieces like those sung by Teresa Teng and Sarah Chen, it would seem that my playing skills are no longer as mediocre as they were before, and it is quite true in fact.

The bottomline? Despite my claims that I am "not-quite-human", I am, after all, a human. A human mind in a human body living in a human society. I may strive to understand the machine, but in the end I need to realise that I am still a human, and the machine is a human construct, and that there is a serious need to understand myself before even attempting to understand the machine.

If you haven't realised by now, I'll state it really frankly—I'm in love. The woman I love, is one who loves me too. To say anything more here... will be indelicate. I am, as I stated, blissfully content with this. Emotionally, I am much more stable now than I was before. As such, writing highly emotive poems start to become harder and harder as the days go by, and until I find a new source of energy from which I can draw inspiration from, I will probably have a much lower level of activity with regards to writing poems (and the updating of this). Between having the ability to update my blog of poems and the chance to love (and be loved), the option is obvious—I'd rather not be able to write another poem than to be one who is forever tortured by the feeling of loneliness that stems from the constant lack of love.

It is with this mentality that I intend to take a hiatus from updating my blog of poems. Meanwhile, I will of course be working on other writing projects, for I am still a writer and musician before a computer programmer; these projects will be released when the time is ripe. To those who are loyal followers of my flagship blog, don't fret too much, it'll only be a while before I manage to find a new source of inspiration for a new breed of poems. The_Laptop Says will still be utilised whenever I have something to talk about, be it a rant, a social commentary or anything interesting that I have found, and the schedule for update is still as ad hoc as it was.

As long as I still draw a breath, I will never cease to write. The media may change, but I will still write whenever I can.

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