The burden of creative genius

The greatest idea is the one that truly haunts an artist, that sticks to him like a shadow. It creeps into the space between his brain and spine and lies there, dense and heavy, locking down the body. An intruder, a parasite. It is loudest when he is silent. It is most visceral right before he rests. It is most tangible when he thinks nothing of himself nor his ability. It holds a man captive, threatens his life, threatens his legacy. This is the idea he cannot consider, for it forces him to confront that every second he is not chasing it, he is wasting away. This is the idea with which he cannot cope, for his reality is unbearable in its presence, and infinitely devastating in its absence. This idea is what makes him firstly a writer and secondly a human.

I have had this idea, yes. Oh, I have seen it. It came, once I awoke from a deep slumber, in the form of a vision so absolute and so overwhelming that it branded my feeble flesh. I have spent every day since attempting to reason with this mark seared in my mortal memory, a floater in the mind’s eye. I assumed, rather ignorantly, that it must have been a divine gift imparted upon me, making me some sorry messiah. However, as I grew around this vision, like a tree around a metal fence, my perception of it shifted. Perhaps, this was a curse, a great burden, with which a demon had plagued me. I had been made into the unwilling doll of a dark power. It pulled at my strings.

It seized my limbs when I took to the typewriter. It stole my heart when I shut myself away from my family to work. It spoke through me when I cried and wailed, collapsed on the desk of a studio filled with crumpled drafts and broken dreams. Pencils and pens arranged neatly like a torturer’s tools; I use them to extract information from the detained. I have been damned with a desire so burning and thus a suffering so crippling.

Yet, it did not feel right. No, a demon could not do this. No, not a beast of pure chaos and evil. No, no, even worse; this was a hypothesis enacted by an impartial, uncaring researcher. Someone, something had dared to wonder my purpose. Yes, I was the subject of a test… I was to my own life as was an ant to a child. A high school student in biology class with a pen, and I, on paper. An assignment, a spectacle. She draws lines around me without concern or second thought. She draws for her enjoyment with the pen! And I run! I have to run! I run, for a deep, long-inherited trait that exists within me. An impulse exploited by an unstoppable force. I evolved to be this way and now I anguish for it. A pheromone produced by ink is silly to a child, and yet to an ant, it is a prison. How ridiculous it is that I cannot break free from the pen.

How simple would it be to be an animal that does not aspire? How blissful would it be to be an animal that never learned it could end its own life in an instant? An animal that never had the right to know? Oh, how I long to be the roadkill that never saw it coming! That never had to be comprehended! The creature that could never understand the road that witnessed its final moments, that adorned it with its posthumous name. They must fear the car. Lord, I would give anything to experience genuine fear like that … to fear anything other than myself. Is it foolish to wish I was different? Is it sinful to reject this skin? Maybe it is all just biology. Maybe that is all it ever has been. 

This great vision is both my life and my death. With it, I can never be anything, and without it I am nothing.

My vision is a film entitled My Pet Rock: The Movie. Basically, it is about a rock. It will be a sensation. With your aid of $756 million, we can make my dream a reality. Attached below is a pdf of the script. Please respond soon before the bank forecloses on my house.

Sincerely,

Tuffton Buttridge

MyPet Rock Final _final.pdf

Cormac Abbey is a sophomore television and digital media production major who is saddled with the curse of multiple spec scripts. You can reach Cormac at [email protected].