On the inadequacies of an umbilical cord

She is beyond peer, for her kind,

the last great naveled mind

perhaps.

Yet we wonder, what if this great lady

had been reborn with a more perfect body,

one without umbilical flaws,

one without Eve's curse,

tainting and twisting its course?

I've been trying to figure out why writing for this blog has been so difficult for me. After all, I started blogging about politics, baseball and other things a long time ago, so all of this should pretty much be old hat.

However, I was realizing that one of the reasons is that my blogging style is a lot sloppier than my professional writing style, and while I can be at peace with that while writing about hobbies, this particular blog is cutting dangerously close to the arena in which I'm trying (somewhat unsuccessfully thus far) to make a living. My mind takes this information, blows it up, and the next thing I know, my entire future is riding on my next post for a blog that only a few friends are going to be reading at this point in time.

Crazy, right?

Well, no, that's where blogger's block comes in, and I know it's not a unique phenomenon. It's of course a similar problem almost all writers face at some point or another (only I'm told they have another name for it, something much more creative than "blogger's block" because writers are imaginative like that.)

This insecurity is useful for the libretto, however, because in a story about the downfalls of vanity, feelings of inadequacy can be a very effective foil. In my story, the vain characters, Chloe, Joshua and his clones, are seen in contrast to Dr. Liri, who likely once was young and vain herself, but has become humbled by her life's experiences. This doesn't prevent her from making mistakes, she will be the one singing the lament that the composer's been fine tuning her lamentation skills for, but it does allow the character perspective to weather whatever strange tides my twisted mind may bring to her.

The libretto and story also reflects another insecurity both of us have felt caught in a Midwest wasteland as artists, as we struggle for attention far from the United States coastal cultural epicenters. The clones in the story, better, stronger, faster, supposedly have advantages that the naveled characters lack. After living in Los Angeles for some time, and then leaving and observing how the other half lives, I've learned to appreciate the networking and resources cities like that, Chicago and New York are able to afford their artists.

I've also learned how the vanity that self-supporting network develops blinds them to their own flaws. That's probably another can of worms worthy of another post, but you can probably already tell that while the original story was a metaphor of religion, that's not the only allegory that's going on.

The snip at the beginning of the post is from a draft of what the chorus (in the opera, the chorus are resident interns at a teaching hospital) will sing as an introduction to the first act.