It seems all my inspiration is going. In the past year and a half, in nearly every avenue of creativity I work in, I've found myself making something really brilliant, something that helps me process and deal with something fairly big... and then that's it. There's no more. It's almost like I make something brilliant and that's my last thing. I mean, it's great that I'm ending on a high note, but... why am I ending at all? Life goes on. Isn't there more to process, more to learn? I'm certainly not done yet -- am I?
But it feels that way. Even though I have written another novel after Kyrie, Kyrie was truly my magnum opus. Ghost Of The Heart (the one that came after it) certainly shows promise, but it meant nothing to me. I would have been exactly the same person if I had never written it. For all intents and purposes, Kyrie is the last thing I've written.
In ballet choreography it's the same thing. Just after National Choreography Month, I wrote a heartbreaking duet in which I basically distilled my entire friendship with Brittney, including her death, into one three-minute dance. It was sad and gorgeous and tragic. The characters were the most fleshed out that I've ever created for the stage, and the story was likewise the most cohesive I've ever done -- especially as it was an instrumental piece and I usually tend to rely heavily on lyrics. It was without question the most beautiful dance I've ever written.
But that's it. I have nothing left where that came from. I've tried several times to choreograph a ballet piece since then, and nothing happens. I don't even have much of a desire to choreograph songs anymore. There's just nothing. They're all purely technical exercises now. There's no feeling, no hook to draw the audience or even their creator in, nothing to capture the soul of the viewer and stay with them forever like the music of David Meece and Terry Taylor has with me.
Is this it then? Is this all I'll ever create? Is this my going out with a bang? I've hardly just begun. That ballet dance was the first piece I've done where I really felt I knew what I was doing. Do I only get to have one? Have I peaked so soon?
This is particularly scary because tap choreography is all I have left now. I'm significantly less mature in that (in comparison to ballet and writing) so theoretically I have a larger window of time before I peak and die there too, but... what if I don't have as time there as I think? This in turn has made me more hesitant to choreograph tap even though right now it's all I have left -- I don't want tap to end too. I'd rather quit while I'm ahead and still have something left in me for later than run myself absolutely dry and live the rest of my life emotionally dead. I can't bear that. I need to know I have something left in me.
Is it just the fear of not being able to measure up to the likes of Kyrie and the dance that's made my brain shut down? If so, how do I get over it?
If this really is it, where do I go now? I've spent my life working toward this. Is this really all there is? Is this the end?
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