The Trouble with Dave

The trouble with Dave isn't that he can't find inspiration, or even motivation. His Muse is seated in comfy chair across the room, in plain view; and she comes up with the best stuff. He has lofty - impossible - unreasonable goals for his life, because reasonable goals never amounted to more than two point five kids, a house a dog a yard a mortgage (and an eviction in today's market); and that's not enough. Dave wants more; and he knows the only way he's going to get it is by doing more about it.

The trouble with dave isn't even that he has a colony of these little brainsquids living inside his head. Though that's a big part of it.

The brainsquids feed off of guilt and repressed desire and procrastination and loneliness. But more importantly, the seek out (through their host) mediocrity, banality and repetition.

The brain squids want television, movies, video games; and they don't care - or rather, they relish - what their host has to give up to get at them.

Dave's colony of brainsquids is already too big for his head. He's fed them well over the years; and now the normal methods of brainsquid extermination just won't work. He's tried outthinking them; but they're a hive-mind - the more of them there are, the smarter they grow. Also, they live in his brain and they can "hear" the impulses of his thoughts before he can think them.

Study and application through self-improvement won't work now. The colony has established enough of a foothold that they inevitably lead the man to simply repeat what he's already studied, but never mastered until they've gorged themselves on the repetition, grown fat and happy and allow him to stop - thinking he's done good; but knowing he's fooled himself into quitting yet again.

Sleeping only seems to give them more purchase in the oozy grey lands of their struggle.

Pounding on his head never seems to work. They just move to the other side, or swim down the obdula Oblongata to get out of the way. He's considered putting them into a stupor by obliterating himself with Scotch; but (while that may be fun), it puts a damper on the writing skilz, and almost always sends the muse over to her mother's house.

Dave's muse detests a drunkard.

Only in rare moments like these - when the colony sleeps - does the man feel he can escape the pop-culture prison he's locked himself in, and attempt (however feebly) to make contact with the world.

The muse in the corner eagerly wrings her hands. The only way to kill the brainsquids is to fight them, she says.

The trouble with Dave is, he doesn't know how to fight the brainsquids. The muse tells him he must drown himself in things the brainsquids don't feed on. He must find a way to access his inspiration and motivation, he must write and dream and compose and draw and paint and sculpt and build and fix and study and style and all the ten-thousand things that make an unreasonable man grin.

But the brainsquids are waking up again. Already they've stopped him from being to work on-time, without aid. Already they're whispering that there's another episode of Lost on Hulu. That Yellow Beard is probably still funny as hell and so easily accessible. Or hell, what about Urban Dead? Does Rotten Stan have enough energy yet to break down another barricade and drag another hapless survivor out into the street? Maybe Dave can finally beat Alizon's score in this round of Bejeweled Blitz.

The muse slumps back in her chair, not defeated; but exhausted. She'll have to wait until they're dormant again. Maybe next time she can get through to the man. Maybe one day, he'll break through to her. Until then, she sits in her chair in the corner and laughs and loves and longs for the words yet unwritten while the brainsquids grow and multiply and crowd themselves out of Dave's head.