I notice that there has been a recent spate (probably not all that) of authors of blogs I follow and enjoy, reflecting on why it is that they write, and what they think they might be doing by writing…in the current upheaval of things I needed to make some additions to my “About” page and provide a brief bio for another project and in that process stumbled across an earlier writing of mine that seemed to accord or converse with you other creators, so I’m reposting it here in case it adds anything…
It was never difficult to see the way, it’s the getting there that problems. The paths unique to our movements. We tend to think it’s the setting out – that getting going presents the obstacle – but we’re always going somewhere. The millions of streets and alleys, those are what throw us, what keep us from the end. How do we know, in constant diversion? Oh I see a way, but not the destination. I’ll move as I see fit. As will you.
Consider, then choose. But always keep moving. There’s no other way. Keep your eye on the opening.
In which case, he writes, for life. As if asked about nothing, in general. There never has to be a reason, what is called illusion or delusion, he can’t remember which. He is at a loss, that much he knows, unsure if “at” is place or time, so often hand in hand.
Writing.
He could just as well be painting, singing, creating some other cultural artifact, and all offered up in an aether, but he’s not. He writes, for life, in this case, as if in general, about nothing. Which is everything also, for him – writing, at a loss – the nowhere now here is.
The words, like images, serve. Serve to draw out and reflect. Like actions or encounters, self-portraits or redundancies. In other words, those would be. In writing he extends his veins and neural works, outstrips his body into text – an alchemy of sorts – and then relates to them as if an other, at a loss, in what he sees, or reads, as the case may be, words as much an image when inscribed.
Which are now here, which were not, because he’s writing. Which, in fact, he does, at a loss – moments so much like chaos, say “entropy” – for the offering of something indicative, external, outside – as if verifying a place and a time, i.e. organizing a disorder, finding a nowhere.
Similar to nothing, in general, become something, in particular. Like an idea, or an atom, an interpreted emotion, or a god. Each action a creation like an assortment of patterns on chaos. Like nothing in general, or everything in particular.
“No bird has the heart to sing in a thicket of questions”
-Rene Char-
“There was something tragic in fighting the borders, the heroism of shortcomings, the panic of passion”
-Bruno Schulz via Jonathan Safran Foer-
It may be raining, very gently, while whispering its verdant perfume, just behind me, just outside my open window. If it’s not, I’m pretending it is, and the world is agreeable.
I’ve been reading an older essay by Susan Sontag entitled “The Aesthetics of Silence,” an article from which I feel a chiding exposure of invented artistic double binds, a renewed challenge for integration and expression (the ways rain shares), and primarily the pleasure of yet another perspective.
Like “the heroism of shortcomings” from Bruno Schulz as carved out of pages by Jonathan Safran Foer in The Tree of Codes – the powers of self-negation and its failure in the likes of Kafka and Kleist, Jabes and Joubert, Artaud and Rimbaud, Blanchot and Beckett and so on. Those great unsilent successes of botched commitments to silence.
As emptiness might only occur in a context of fullness.
Being so glad that I am writing this by hand, as I do with every document I create, usually quite uncertain of what is inside each letter until the systems of nervous muscles begin to work. The quotes above, for instance, copied from handwritten notecards copied from marginal notes and underlines copied from the midst of other authors reworked texts, and then copied again here with the proviso that perhaps in forming it yet another time, by hand, something missed before gains another change to arise.
I am thankful that writing is quiet.
Although I used to use the typewriter’s beat to edit my lines of poetry.
And I’m sure the background music, passing cars, and sounds of squirrels and wind and children all have their effect.
I also appreciate seeing the whole page, battling mood-related or arthritically scribble script versus partial views on-screen and standardized formations of fonts. I enjoy those bloggers who scan their manuscripts and writings but don’t trust your powers of vision compared to the particular words I end up selecting by the time I reach the machine. No need to add difficulty to difficulty, in this case.
Still, you’d probably know something more (or at least differently) were you opening up an envelope gathered from your mailbox with this folded up inside.
Like silence or a thicket of questions, rain or a grumbling stomach, everything comes round to context. Persons embodied, embedded in an active variable surround expressing through media, tools, machines, to wherever, whomever, however you are reading, deciphering, translating, decoding, interpreting, creating yet again in another contextual universe of another time.
Such a dynamic endeavor. Our artifacts, messages, calls and displays.
Panicked passion, tragic fighting of borders, heroic shortcomings these. Aesthetics of silence. All.
All my Words are Silent 