There are varying degrees of writer's block; the inability to translate thoughts and ideas into (coherent or otherwise) words.
One school of thought, that taken by medieval sculptors, suggests that creation and fluidity is frozen within the self. Only by working away at the block of marble, or at the reticent, unwilling meat puppet, can the as yet invisible beauty be released.
A modern perspective, based on an endless cycle of renewal and replenishment, would argue that when there is nothing left to articulate, then the end of the road has been reached. As the scientist who challenges orthodoxy once too many times is eventually shunted into obscurity, so the writer with nothing to write similarly violates his terms of service. Until the glorious, frightening spark returns, the dispossessed should take up paper-folding or gambling.
There are varying degrees of writer's block, extending from the insufficient internal consistency of an idea, to having nothing whatsoever to say. I suppose there is a further breakdown of communication possible in the event that I forget the rules of English syntax and grammar, or lose the ability to write altogether.
From that point of view, then, I am merely halfway down a slope at the bottom of which is an enforced and eternal silence, a living death. Even automatic writing, the last throw of the dice of a desperate man, and yet its most natural expression, is a distant consellation requiring extraordinary levels of talent.
Oh, to be able to automatic write, and to unwrap the many layers until whatever miserable secret that drives it is revealed! Is it really so simple, and yet so outlandish - wrenching the key from the soul which would do anything to repudiate this one event, and then standing back in disgust and astonishment when the whole game is up?
I long to write disjointed, in order that meaning is clouded and opaque, describing order and chaos, sublime yet outrageous, uncomfortable and difficult, natural yet the heart which drives it is manmade.
