Jeffrey Benzing

Anytime the pen goes to paper, there’s isolation. Either you’re shut out and lonely or bored and have to put something down to feel like it’s worthwhile. Or else you’re in a crowd, and you’re trying to block the noise so you can get a thought together…and then go over it again and again, trying to build something out of it.

Anyone who spends time watching people – learning how they act, what they sound like – knows isolation. You see parts of yourself in them, things that draw you in, and things you don’t like. You see that fundamental recognition of humanity. But then if you want to do anything with it, you have to pull back. You have to spend the time by yourself and figure out what you want to say and why it’s worth saying.

Being creative means doing something your own way – or trying to anyway. You put something down you hope people understand, but you hope it’s also something they’ve never seen. Something they might not get the first time. Or something you might not have said clearly.

Then there’s the isolation when nothing comes – when you feel like you have to drag it out of yourself, and until you can, you’re nothing but out of touch. Time goes by, and there’s so much to see and miss. But if you want to get something together, you stay shut in, and you let it go. You put the pen on the page, hoping you can at least say how that feels.

Writing for most of us seems like a way to connect. Sometimes that means saying something light and amusing, or something nostalgic. Sometimes it means getting deep into what it means to be downhearted or lost and alone. It takes a hard stare in the mirror, and it takes a stare out the window. In both places, you see the things that set you apart, and the struggle is to keep out from the world long enough to write something that breaks down that wall and shows that even something like that isolation is something we go through every day.