BY ROSEMARY DEROCHER
COLUMNIST
As with a lot of things, I have a never-ending love/hate relationship with the opening riff to “Shadow Stabbing” by CAKE. On the one hand, it’s catchy and I could listen to it for hours. On the other hand, its simplicity drives me nuts.
Aside from irresistibly causing head-bopping and foot-tapping, “Shadow Stabbing” casts an interesting light on the oft-romanticized “creative process”— in this case, that of a writer. The writer in “Shadow Stabbing” sounds like he is going slightly crazy in front of his work, meticulously “moving his words like a prize fighter” so that they may convey exactly whatever moment he is trying to depict. He isn’t even writing or creating something new at this point. Rather, the writer has been sucked so deep into his world of work that he is moving single words around to reach an elusive level of perfection. A man walking by is right outside the writer’s room, and yet “might just as well be” completely outside the world for all the attention the writer is paying to anything except his work.
The writer repeatedly tries to justify his isolation, suggesting that “somebody has got to say it all.” Yet, at the same time, he knows that going on in this obsessive state cannot last. He knows that he is driving himself insane with the pressure he’s putting on himself, holed up in a little white room and pounding away at a typewriter in the name of abstract truth, but he will keep doing it until he breaks. The problem is this obsessed man is not going to get anywhere this way. He is stabbing at shadows. Working endlessly in this self-imposed creative vacuum is not going to produce some great and perfect work but instead is going to end up leaving the writer drained and still unable to achieve his vision. He needs to get outside, away from all the “echoes and calls,” and, for God’s sake at least take a walk and realize that nobody can “say it all.”
While “Shadow Stabbing” presents the downfalls of an obsessive creative process, it’s not only relevant to the idea of some kind of abstract creation of art or poetry. Every day, everyone I know (myself included) is pushing himself or herself to exhaustion and frustration in the name of accomplishment and preparing for what’s up next.
I’m not arguing against accomplishment by any means. I would really like to get one of the internships I drove myself crazy applying to because I think I would enjoy it and get a lot out of it. What’s important, though, is taking a break from the “frenzied pace of the mind inside the cell” so that you don’t drive yourself into the ground. This doesn’t mean the kind of break like spending your night marathoning The West Wing and knowing the entire time that you will regret this later. I’m talking about an actual break, where you let your brain stop running for just a few minutes— however you do that. Give your head a chance to get back in the game, instead of getting caught up in the 97 things swirling around you.
Take care of yourself, everybody.
