Bono and his scrubbing bubbles

i spend most of my time feeling very uncreative. I just realized I've gone awhile without picking up the guitar or writing anything at all. My job has a level of creativity to it, but its more writing to sell an idea or product rather than move someone emotionally.

I guess half of who I am is whoring myself out to make someone else money. Oh well, I have no one to answer to but myself. I really don't feel very guilty about it. We're all whores in some fashion as vulgar as it may sound.

But when I think about myself as an artist I always think I must be some sort of poseur because I'm in that place so rarely. Even performing loses its edge when you play the song over and over or your mind is on the sound guy botching things up, or you're a bit nervous or some other thing unrelated to the essence of what the song is about.

That would mean that only rarely do things come into alignment, I'm out of my head and flowing along with the music. Am I only an artist a fraction of the time?

I think about my favorite artists. They cant possibly be in the zone all the time, can they? I wonder what the ratio is? I wonder if, like me, they can actually (literally) forget that aspect of themselves from time to time.

I know that the myth of the artist is very important to a fan. You want to believe they exist on a higher plane than you. They are tapped into things and take great pain to expose their nerves to the emotions barraging us day in and day out. They suffer epically but later have some nugget to show for it. Some little piece that reminds you that we're all human experiencing similar things. And we hold them so highly for being able to create it.

It's not fun to picture them cleaning the bathroom. Or doing their taxes. Or all the other things that make up the bulk of our day; the hum-drum minutia that is the exact opposite of inspiration.

Thats what gets to me. I am inspired rarely and I start to question if its because I am just not cut out for a life of creativity. Of course when it does hit, it hits hard and I have made some things that I can't quite explain but I am very proud of. But is it enough to try to make a career out of? I'm going to take a nap and forget about it for now.