Why I Write Reprise

“I thought I already heard this song,” Janice said. On our toy CD player, we were listening to a Book of Love CD.

“You have,” I said. It's a 30 year old CD, who knows how many times she'd heard this song.

“No, I mean today,” she said.

“I don't know,” I said.

She picked up the CD case, flipped it over and started to giggle. “You know, this was recorded in the days of the reprise.”

“Reprise?” I asked.

“There's like four versions of every song on this.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” I said. 1980's electronica, yeah, as soon as she said it, I remembered that remixes and reprises, etc were the norm.

It prompted me to look reprise up in the dictionary. I know what it means musically, but what else?

These where the two meanings that meant something to me” 1. A return to the original theme and 2. A recurrence of an action.

The latter meaning especially rings true for me. I suppose there are fifty things going on in my life currently, none of which I care for, or care to discuss. The daily events, of course, cause me to reflect on things that I also do not care to discuss.

When it comes right down to it, and for as long as I can remember, there is only one thing I have ever wanted to do. I've only ever wanted to write.

As a kid, and at an early age too, I was either reading or writing, mostly because either exercise kept the adults from fucking with me. I also spent much of my childhood alone and any characters I may have written were as good as friends.

These characters still are as good as friends. Growing up to be a writer gives you permission to keep all those imaginary friends you had as a kid.

Fast forward to today, some 30 years later, and I'm still writing. I've grown resentful of anything that keeps me from writing or my writing hours. I would never say that I have sacrificed anything to write or to have the time to write. I don't have many things or the things that other people often have. And if I didn't have a family, I would probably have even less than I have. I would never consider myself a minimalist nor austere. The thing is, I would rather forgo many working hours and have those “finer” things in life that are so costly.

Be that as it may, this is not why I write.

I write because I'm an introverted person spinning on this rock with 7 billion other people. I write because there is a quiet in me that cannot compete with the noise of the world. Right now, for instance, there's a fat man outside with a leaf blower. He's not really accomplishing anything, he's burning fossil fuel, making noise and just blowing the shit around. Pretty pointless. And internally, I'd love to write something bucolic or even something of rusting industrial decay. But the view in my chest is quiet.

I write because I just see the entire process of life to fall somewhere between futile and pointless. Day to day carrying-ons are nothing more than the fat man and his leaf blower. It really is this: the hours turn to days, the days to decades and the decades to dust. I write because there are so many ways to fill up the 24 hours of the day. There are so many ways to fill that yet to be determined amount of time between this moment and death.

So, there it is. I write because there really is nothing else to do. And of all the other things like demands, well, they pale by comparison.

I write because I feel like I've got another thirty years to do it. I write because I've done it for the last thirty years.

I write because I feel like writing is a bit subversive. I feel like it's a bit subversive only because when you write, you are not spending money, or watching tv or watching ads. When you write you are not participating in the system. When you write, it's just you, the process of creation bringing something to form from the ether. When you write the concerns of God and country, social welfare or commercialism do not exist. When you write you are not operating a fossil fuel leaf blower. When you write you're quiet. The outside world, noise, has dropped away and you have reached the silence of yourself.

This action is a return to the theme. This action of writing, when done daily, becomes your reprise, your recurrence of action.