I decided recently that I would post four blog posts a week at JohnLacey.com. The thing about that this week is that I didn’t want to do it. I felt such amazing resistance to doing it. I couldn’t think of anything I didn’t want to do more than that. But here’s the really curious thing – the blog posts were all but done. I added a line to each of the two posts remaining, added some tags and hit the publish button and they were done. And I think they were great blog entries. I can’t for the life of me understand why I procrastinated over doing them for four days. It makes no sense.

Today I made a video and it was amazing – the process of creating it, I mean. I felt really good while I was creating it. I got caught up in the process and lost all track of time. It was a lovely sensation. But once it was finished and uploaded, I sat around anxiously, reluctant to start anything else. I had produced this thing and it seemed I was waiting for some feedback. I wasn’t taking a break or resting on my laurels, I was actively protesting against the part of me that wanted to create something more, something else. And the point I would like to make here is that it feels horrible because you feel torn. There is a part of you that wants to make something else but it is fighting with another part of you that is scared, and you’re very conscious of this inner conflict and it fuels its own extra source of anxiety.

It seems as though I spend half my time creating stuff and half my time resisting creating things, feeling awful about not creating things. I think it has finally dawned on me what it means when writers talking about needing to write every day. I think I finally understand the benefits of having a new project lined up before you finish your existing one. It is just too easy to get bogged down in rationalising things when you’re not creating things, it just becomes so easy to get lost in all those unarticulated fears and existential angst.

And when you’re really in the flow of creating something that means something to you, it’s truly magical. Because when it happens you really have to take a deep breath and think, “I put this off for four days? What the hell was I thinking? THIS is amazing!”

The trick of course is taking all these understandings and boiling them down into a set of practices, really working them into my life so that I follow up on things even when I don’t feel like it. That’s the next step, I suppose.

You know, it’s funny when I was working on this memoir I was writing I was secretly always looking for a moment in my life where everything would be resolved. Something that lent itself to a hopeful ending for the pretty tragic tale. And in my heart I think I was always expecting a happy ending. Infact I came to expect this so much that I would hang all my hopes on whatever new thing entered my life. Of course doing this usually meant I was a basketcase and that whatever new thing had entered my life was quickly doomed. And I would try something once and think, “Oh my god, this is so horrible. I’m never doing this again.”

And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes a holiday romance is just that and nothing more. And if you sort of know and understand those things you can appreciate them for what they are. However if you have convinced yourself that this is your ticket out of misery and into happiness and abundance – of course you’re doomed. I guess what I understood while writing bits and pieces of the memoir was that it wasn’t really that big a deal. To a normal person it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. I think a normal person would’ve brushed themselves off, uttered something about more fish being in the sea and got on with life. Increasingly I had a sense that what had occurred wasn’t that interesting. What made it interesting to me was my very pecuilar worldview. I thought the only way the story would work would be to allow people to see inside my head. This wasn’t really about unrequited love, rather it was an epic battle for love. I didn’t think I was lovable and I was searching for some evidence to support or challenge that expectation.

I tell you all this really just to say that you never know what the moment you’re having is, or what it is going to mean in the broader artwork that is your life at large. Because it takes time to reflect on the experiences you have and contextualise them – and sometimes, recontextualise them – just to see how they go together. I have this growing sense on this my 28th birthday that some of the things I thought were gravely important were actually not. When I reflect on certain friendships that evaporated into nothingness I am amazed at how frequently those friendships were just jumping off points to other friendships with other people, more enduring, more meaningful relationships. I used to lament that horrible things had happened to me and I only had a song or a blog post or whatever to show for it. But I am starting to think that perhaps far from being a consolation prize, that perhaps the artwork was the point of the whole thing all along. Because, honestly, being drawn back to writing and painting and singing has delivered me back to my own hand with a renewed sense of who I am. Once I took all the energy I was pouring into begging for acceptance and approval and affection and put it onto the page, things improved dramatically.

I guess I believe you can because I know people who lead amazingly interesting and rewarding lives. (I confess I frequently watch Sunday Arts with envy because it always showcases talented artists who are doing what they love and somehow deriving success and income from that…)

I know I’ve written about this in religious terms before (predestination versus free will), but I wanted to think about it more practically. I pulled out my notebook and wondered if I could have my life the way I wanted, what would that look like?

I identified the following desires:

• The desire to be creative. There are things I want to do and other things I want to do more frequently. And I want to learn, I want to study… I want supportive teachers and mentors.
• The desire to be social. I’m lonely. I think my trip to Brisbane made me appreciate just how lonely. I am connected with the world and I can have great conversations and exchange ideas with lots of people at any hour of the day or night, but I still have no one here I can grab a cup of coffee with.
• The desire for independence and freedom and distance. I don’t feel like I can be myself here. I am too busy fulfilling roles within different contexts.
• The desire of companionship. This differs from the social desire mentioned earlier in the sense that here I am referring an intimate companion, a lover, a partner…

There were a lot of other things on the notebook page too about scheduling (my Sunday afternoon coffee ritual, for example) and specific things I want (video camera, my own apartment).

I guess the next step is building towards those things… somehow.

Today I’ve been musing over this song – Sophie B. Hawkins’ The One You Have Not Seen.

And of the dreams inside you, I am the one you have not seen

My thoughts have been preoccupied with the unseen lately. I’ve been strolling through this town looking for some strand of narrative thread that holds this town together, that makes it make some sense. Somehow. Or just looking for some inspiration. I want to create something. But what? That is the dilemma.

I’ve also been reading up at a website titled The Meanings Of Life. To me, in this moment, life has no clear rhyme or reason about it. Meanings where they exist are created (by individuals and traditions), not uncovered. I am without direction and without purpose. I wish there was some cosmic flashing neon sign in the sky telling me where to go and what to do. But that is just me being indecisive and shirking my responsibilities, I suppose. I watch Sunday Arts from time to time with a great sense of envy. I watch artists just have an impulse and they follow it down a rabbit hole of possibilities and just see where they end up. How I long to do that too. I want to be infatuated with a subject matter. I want to develop a discipline. I want to produce and showcase works of some description. I want to be an artist. Is that a lofty aspiration? Lots of people in my life have indicated it is. And yet I remain so desperately unhappy that it seems stupid not to at least try something that might resonate with me, even momentarily.

Michael Jackson is dead. You probably already knew that. I never really thought of myself as being a big fan of his, I only own a single album and a couple of CD singles (mostly for the remixes). But the news filled me with such a profound sense of sadness. I heard someone suggest he was ‘our generation’s’ John Lennon. It is difficult of course; Lennon was gunned down, Jackson died of natural/medical causes as far as anyone knows pending the coroner’s report. But for me this is the first time I’ve really connected with a public figure who has died. I suddenly feel like I understand in some ways how people felt when Elvis died, or JFK, or Kurt Cobain or Jeff Buckley. I really admire the contributions of a lot of now deceased individuals but invariably I’ve discovered their works after they have died. This is new, this is strange. To me, at least.

And Twitter… oh, Twitter. Twitter, moreso than any other technology, embodies everything about humanity. It is us at our best and our worst, our most trivial, our most flippant, our most philosophical. Everything, really. So many people dismiss the service as a triviality but it doesn’t speak for itself, we speak via it. Just waking up and seeing the way these rumours of deaths (Farrah Fawcetts’, confirmed, and those of others besides Jackson that were all apaprently hoaxes) perpetuated the service was interesting. We know that we can’t blindly accept anything at face value, we need evidence. Half the world complains that journalistic interests don’t research their stories thoroughly enough, the other half complains that they take too long to report news, to be current. It is a balancing act, surely?

It seemed more and more certain that the rumours were true over time. And for me Twitter sort of embodies such a wide range of people that on any really topical issue you get the full spectrum of responses. A lot of flippancy and jokes about Jackson, people who were really passionate and distressed, people who weren’t really that interested at all.

I’ve been listening to Michael Jackson’s Blood On The Dance Floor album all day. I’ve really enjoyed it since the day I first heard it, but only actually bought a copy of it earlier this year. Some part of my psyche was searching for changed meanings in songs – perhaps Ghosts would take on a different significance for example. But, no, that song isn’t really about ghosts, it’s about jealousy. I am just impressed by the musicality of the songs, and also the raft of social issues present in the selections.

Jackson was 50. That Motown Records is also celebrating their 50th year this year is not lost on me. Indeed lately I’ve been enjoying their Motown 50 podcast, and just a few weeks ago I was listening to one episode featuring the Jackson Five, themselves just children, talking about their musical inspirations and which Jackson was interested in which girl at school. And then somebody mentions that actually for African-Americans 50 is a fairly typical life expectancy age, and this saddens me and angers me, and like the song goes it does make me wanna scream. And I think about Jackson in a larger context of African-American singers singing for equality. I think about Nina Simone and Billie Holliday, and how I had studied their plight briefly at university and how I understood it intellectually at that time but how I didn’t understand it emotionally until I connected with that music, that work. That is the function of art – to make us feel. [But then I stop and realise that the plight of Aboriginals in this country is at least as bad, and that their life expectancy is disgusting low. And the whole thing levels me feeling bewildered and sad.]

I guess that is why he is so dearly missed, because he did make us feel. He made us dance. He made us think. He made us sing. He mastered the art of the music video, staging elaborate theatrical masterpieces to accompany the musical ones. I don’t really think I can say anything that hasn’t been said already, but I did want to say something.