Sunday 28 August 2011

while risking being a bit too technical...

  Too many references lately on how writers write, how does the idea incubator develop into a story and so on. Risking being too technical does honestly satisfy the reader? Just wondering. I mean, the written thing is there to be read. It is already there, ready to expose you. Why bother on technicalities?
  I think I have the answer, it came to me this very morning. It's not the reader, man, it is the writer him/herself! As if writing about themselves is not enough, they always think a little extra is needed. How did you start writing and all that. And I do understand the challenge, mind you. I know how writers need the world to evolve around them, since they bother creating worlds in the first place. No no no, it's not mere vanity. It has to do with communication. You see, they think they write for themselves, but they know they write to have that conversation that was never allowed to them, some sort of ''welcome to my world'', my world, which needs at least listeners, but most preferably, needs inhabitants, to exist.
  When my writing touches you, I am happy. I am happy to have shared this vast inexplicable but nonetheless, expressed, world with you. In plain English, I feel terribly alone in here, and although it is a fun place to be, without you, I am nothing.
  Modern psychologists could call it codependence, if it weren't so self expressive and free as an act. That is, if it weren't inviting you in, on your free will, instead of making you feel sorry or guilty or whatever mechanism codependents use to drag you in to their worlds. Because you can choose not to read that book, move on into the next, in a book store.
  But, secretly, they do want you to waste time on technicalities. How did you ever decide to write? What was the first book that simply made you choose to express yourself in words? Are your created worlds real, or are they fictional? Are your heroes existing people, or are they fragments of your imagination? Or, more to the point, are they sides of you? And the list gets better and better... How do you write? In the morning? Late at night, when everything is dead and silent? Do you keep notes of dreams to use into your stories? Do you start on images you imagined, or on solid ideas? How does the story structures itself? Do you start in the beginning and finish in the end, or do you write as you feel and then unify the parts?
  They questions are endless, some very distinguished writers do actually still mention the ''how I write'' thing into their prefaces or most extraordinarily,  in separate books (!?), which forces me to ask a very stupid ''why?''. Why bother? The book is there! You do not trust your own readers to decipher it? (Same goes for critics - but that could take tons of MBs to analyse.)
  Dear writer, you do not trust your loving audience? Or is your ego so very inflated that you do not think they can understand? If they cannot understand, that means you did not explain well, spare us your 600 pages and start all over. And in the end of the day, your stories is what matters the most. Not your ''how I managed to write this masterpiece'' attitude.
  And if it is a masterpiece, it will need nothing more than its own words to persuade us, and most importantly, to speak directly into our souls!    

   

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Image of you

  I had a pretty strong visual, this morning, of teenagers in suburban fish bowls, masturbating in chat rooms, smoking dope, dreaming violent dreams, reading too much Burroughs and Huxley and Crowley, determining themselves through the purity of the wasted.
  It's a familiar image of the past, of course, but its appearance, this very morning, a bit of a mystery to me.
  Why now? This is the very question I had been asking myself.
  For a very special reason. You are nowhere to be found, you have disappeared from the face of my middle earth, or, my common earth, rather, for I was as dark as you, a thousand years ago, but darkness was not my natural habitat. I was a very common person, darkened by childhood. Darkness was never a natural residence.
  But, there in the dark, we met one fine winter afternoon, the familiarity of the oppressed and the regressed, like fireworks in the night that surrounded us. Us? Me, I mean.
  Lately I tend to use this very hopeful term 'us', while forgetting that some stories are meant to stay undone and rot in the solitude of forever, undone and wasted, undone and abandoned. But, hey! 'Not yet ', I say.
  And everybody knows I 've done it all. Addiction, obsession, breakdown, desolation, terror, denial. I 've done it all, so the story will not be abandoned. As if my life, as if my heart and soul depended on it.
  Never to abandon what never was and will never be - some form of a reminder of my failure. More than a simple reminder, rather the Manifestation of my Failure. Framed, hanging in my bedroom wall, refusing oblivion, worshipped every night until the early morning hours.
  Failure is cosy. It is safe. It tells you, girl, you don't even need to try - it's hopeless. Stay where you are, windows shut, books, music, art, these uncomfortable silences do not need to be repeated, they broke you in two, they smothered you, you don't need to go back there, you don't need to feel, you don't need to expose your feelings, you don't need to relive the unfortunate conduct of your inactivity, of your inability to tell and take what your heart desires. Close your eyes, and the desire will pass, you will wake up into the world of futility again, just shut your eyes for a moment, and everything will be OK.
  Failure is lazy. The risk-less world. Worse than 'disappearing here!', you can live forever.
  Strange, uneven thoughts, this morning. The image of you. Or the image of me, for all that matters. I sometimes, really wonder, if you ever existed, but in the landscapes of my imagination. I can't say the trip was not worthwhile. It was a great great ride. Its hopelessness made it so -how to say this - obligatory.
  Since I was not allowed to actions of love, I indulged in actions of destruction. Destroying the self is far more risky than loving it - but I wasn't aware of that truth. I was young, I knew shit. I had the image of you, I had a mirror in my eye holes. I had the mirror of a thousand failures and a thousand abuses instead of a clear sight.
  I even wrote a book about you, a book that will soon be over, the book of the undone. The book of a story that was never written - or something as futile as this. When I was younger, I believed that when the writing will be over, your image will fade and disappear, your memory will fade and leave room in my head for less intense thoughts.
  Now, the book is almost done, and I do know, that you will never fade away. You are my past, you are my memories, and as painful, as wasted, as undone as they present themselves, they are my memories.
  The image of you is the image of me. Letting go was never an option. There was love there, there was too much love to be contained into a frail body, into a terrified heart, into an unconnected soul. There was so much love, that formed me into who I am.
  And that can never be abandoned!