When you don't hear the music anymore

I used to be a songwriter. I'd like to say that I still am, but I have only written one song in the past year. Two in the past year and a half.

They say that great art comes from pain. Songs, stories, poems, paintings, dance, and I'm sure many other expressive mediums. And that's what I used to do with my pain. I put them in poems. I let it flow into my hand, out of my pen, into ink-filled notebooks that encapsulated my soul's deepest hurt.

When I learned the guitar, I transformed my art into songwriting, combining my two loves of music and poetry. Every emotion could be put into a song, and those songs were my rock: my evidence that I knew, that I learned, that I grew, and that I lived. 

But my soul's deepest hurt has gotten deeper. And I can't hear the music anymore. 

My favorite thing used to be driving with the windows down and the music up loud, singing along to every word. But now, the wind just makes my hair a bird's nest, and the music doesn't speak loud enough for my heart to hear. 

I try to play the guitar and sing to songs I once loved. I used to be able to do that for hours and never tire. But now it feels like a chore, and I don't even like the sound of my own voice anymore. 

I can write again, and I am so thankful for that. There was a period of time that I couldn't even do that. But now the music is gone. And I wish that would come back, too.

I know I can turn this pain into art. I have had ideas upon ideas upon ideas that have piled up for a year. But how can I do that when I can't hear the music anymore? 

What do you do when the music has faded? When the only sound you hear is the distant wind, sweeping up all the remains of your brokenness and carrying them away to a place where you can't even try to put them back together?