For the past three weeks, a drought has descended upon my being which renders me largely incompetent to write essays. I trust that the drought is not a permanent condition but is a transient affair. In the long time that I have been writing essays, droughts have appeared from time to time.
The title of this essay comes from a song written by Guy Clark, called “Sometimes I write the songs; sometimes the songs write me.” In the lyrics to that song, Guy Clark makes it clear that when a drought lands upon your soul, there “ain’t nothin’ you can do about it.” For a songwriter like Guy Clark, this is a serious consideration in view of the fact that he writes songs for a living. If he writes no songs, he suffers a reduced or non-existent income. So when a drought-like situation occurs to a songwriter, it is a matter of great concern. In my own case, the drought-like situation has far fewer consequences. But this case, it causes me to wonder about whether I will ever write any more essays. The fact that I am writing one here is a testament to the fact that the drought has let up a bit.
I like Guy Clark and I subscribe to his philosophy that when a drought descends upon your soul, your ability to make words into an essay or a song is severely hampered and there “ain’t nothin’ you can do about it.”
During the time when this drought has descended upon my soul, several events that offer likely material for an essay have developed. On one hand, we have, for example, the case of Anthony Weiner. He is a former Congressman from New York who has now launched upon a campaign to make him be mayor of New York City. If I may say so, Mr. Weiner is emotionally incapable of being a dog catcher in New York. From what we have seen over the past couple of months, it is clear that Mr. Weiner is an emotionally distressed individual. The last thing we need is an emotionally distressed individual running the affairs of the greatest city in the United States. But be that as it may, Mr. Weiner is hot on the campaign trail, even though it is clear that he is an emotionally disturbed individual.
So that is one case I could have used to write an essay but the drought that descended upon my soul has prevented me from doing so.
A second case comes to mind that also occurred while I was suffering from the drought situation. The mayor of San Diego whose name is Bob Filner, has a penchant for violating the code of conduct that should prevail between the male and female persons. For example, there were several occasions when he and the rear ends of his female help came into contact. There were other cases when he had his hands up between the legs of a female who worked for him. As a matter of fact, there are eight cases of females saying that Mr. Filner was guilty of some sort of offense upon their persons. In one instance, he applied a headlock on one of his female workers.
So this is a second case where I could have, absent a drought, launched into an essay about the shortcomings of the mayor of San Diego. But as luck would have it, I did no such thing, preferring to wait for some juicier details.
The third case involves George Zimmerman, the defendant in the trial that was broadcast over all of our television stations recently. I have a reasonable understanding of the law and I conclude that Mr. Zimmerman literally got away with murder. It is clear that part of the law is vague, leaving six women on the jury which acquitted Mr. Zimmerman to take matters into their own hands because they had no precise definition of what he had done. But believe me ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Zimmerman got away with murder.
Well, here are three cases that I should have turned into essays. On the other hand, I am quite certain that Mr. Weiner will be back in the news, perhaps as soon as this week. Similarly, for the likes of Bob Filner, the mayor of San Diego, I place no trust in the two-week period that he claims he is undergoing intensive therapy to keep his hands off of females.
Mr. Zimmerman on the other hand has been stopped for speeding in Texas. He showed his firearm to the policeman who let him go with a warning. Like Mr. Weiner and Mayor Filner, I have no faith that George Zimmerman will exist quietly with the rest of us.
As things now look, I believe that this drought will soon pass and I will be back in the essay-writing business. But as Guy Clark wrote in his song, when a drought happens, “Some days you write the songs; some days the songs write you.” Unfortunately I am not a songwriter but I wish I were. But if Guy Clark can survive dry spells, I am certain that before long the dry spell will pass and Mr. Weiner, Mr. Filner, and Mr. Zimmerman will be brought to account.
Before I launched into Weiner, Filner, and Zimmerman, I had one other big failure in an effort to break the drought. That involved writing about something that I knew. So it was that I came to write about my blindness. As happened on at least two or three other occasions, the blindness story cannot be condensed into one essay. It would take several volumes. So I failed.
And so in the final analysis, you have the notorious three and my effort to deal with blindness. Unfortunately, none of these essays ever resulted in my producing plausible material to break the drought. In this essay, I believe that I am back on track.
E. E. CARR
July 27, 2013
Essay 758
~~~
Kevin’s commentary: Pop is highly prolific. If you’re ever bored while you’re waiting for new essays I would encourage you to read the 250+ that already appear on this website. If you’ve done all that, then the good news is that I post a new one every day! All this to say that while shortages of new material are unfortunate, Pop certainly deserves breaks sometime and I know as well as anyone that writers’ blocks can be difficult to overcome. That said, I’m particularly glad to see that he’s beginning to write again.