on the verge
Posted By Jon on November 10, 2009
Did you ever have a word on the tip of your tongue, but just can’t get your brain to send it to your mouth? You know that feeling, where you know the information is all there, but you just can’t get it to come out right?
I get that now and then, but now with just a word, but more with entire ideas. I feel like I have a entire novel in my head and I’m just about ready for it to come pouring out on the computer, but somehow its being held back.
I get the same thing with music too. Somewhere in there is an amazing piece of work, but its blocked up in my brain someplace. I can’t seem to even make the sounds that I have in my head. The notes are there, but I can’t express them.
Sometimes I can feel that music or novel very very ready when I’m doing particular things. Sometimes I dream about them! I wake up with the whole thing in my head, and I tell myself to remember it, but I never do. I know I had the whole book idea just a few days ago. I’m really certain, it was all there. I wish I had been awake enough to get up and go write it down. One time I had the melody in my head and I hummed it so I would remember, but it all went away in the morning.
I also had a dream about a place. I had dreamed about it before, but I also think I had actually been there before. Like it wasn’t so much a dream, but a dream about a memory. It was an old maroon colored building, like a barn or a big shed. Except it had a low overhang, and there were old picnic tables under it, with the same maroon paint. It was set near the road, with a gravel driveway and a field behind it, with large trees that shaded entire building. And there was some kind of summertime, outdoor, kids program that happened there. Like a day camp.
I remember that it felt like it was very old, and that I had been there a long time ago, like before it became rundown. But there was still a program going, just smaller and with fewer kids. I remember the contrast of the clean papers and art supplies on the old dark tables with peeling paint and dry rot. I still see the whole thing very vividly.
There’s a building I see on the way to work as I pass through the rural area of my drive. It looks very much like the building I remember/dream about. I may stop and get a picture and post it here. And try not to get shot by a guy with a banjo.
You live on the edge of greatness, Jon. Many do. How does one tap into it?
“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”
– William Dement
Better get with it and keep your writing tools handy……you’ll be doubly famous ;)