Tuesday, November 15, 2011

What Would Freud Say?

I've been reading a lot of my old poetry lately and writing a lot of new material...and I have to say, there is a definite theme to my writing...even to my novels, actually. I like to write dark stuff.

This is really puzzling to me because I'm a really happy person and I'll come right out and say it, I don't have anything "buried" in my past, so I can't figure out why I have this fascination with death, crimes, criminals, psychopaths, etc., but alas, I'm intrigued... and most of my material has some thread of that in there.

It's interesting because if someone were to find my creative writing (not my journals or anything) long after I'm gone, they would say I must have lived this dark existence, much like we think about Edgar Allen Poe (I'm on a Poe kick right now) and even many classical musicians who wrote tragically brilliant material, but did they really? Maybe they were just like me where they lived these perfectly normal lives and writing was their complete escape where what they wrote was completely antithetical to their own lives.

Maybe they weren't deeply disturbed or hiding anything at all...maybe that is something we fabricate in our own minds because we want them to be more exciting than they actually were?

Perhaps they were even better writers than we give them credit for because they WERE able to tap into those emotions without ever having experienced them.

All I know is that I would love to see what Freud would have had to say about my writing. Unless there is some past life that I'm unaware of, I couldn't have written a better childhood for myself and that goes all the way down to the very last detail, especially the "main characters," my family.

So, I'm not quite sure where this theme or fascination comes from, but I'm just acknowledging that it's definitely there in the stuff I produce and it is definitely making me think if perhaps we've been too quick to jump to conclusions about the personal lives of those who came before us based solely on their CREATIVE writing...

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