Last night I had a dream in which I was wandering alone around a large tract of land.
Thirteen weeks will go by lickety-split, right? Thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine...
I've been thinking lately about talent. It's interesting to me that some people get into things, like ballet, when they are very small and are able to maintain the drive and focus it takes to be very good at it as an adult. Drawing portraits, writing poetry, playing the flute, ice-skating. I wonder if it takes a lot of pushing from other people. I wonder what it takes.
My own interests have waned and waxed during my life. I think that writing has been my most solid area, though. It's not that I have a noticeable drive to be successful at it, I just do it all the time like a compulsion. Phrases and words float around my mind for days until I put them into a paragraph. I look up nearly every word that I am unsure of when I come across a new one while reading. My brain systematically spells out longer words when I hear them in speech. I re-phrase what people say.
I have also been thinking about talent without audience. The link between being a writer and being a famous writer seems to be muddled in things like marketing and being in the right place at the right time. One can no longer gauge their work's success by receipt. It doesn't matter how much you write or what you write about. That's fine, I guess. I am happy to use what I know for naught. It keeps me in pleasure just to write it down.
Of course, everyone imagines what it would be like if their name held heavy weight. Luminaries, all of us! But you have to ask yourself, is admiration where value lies?
Probably not. As much of a misanthrope as I am, probably not. And aren't most writers, anyway? It's how we silently catalog the experience of being human. How we put intangible emotions into words. We can't relate so we write.
(All photos by Stephen A. Scheer, who said, "It is our deficiency if we cannot explain something that we can see." Via.)
2 comments:
I'd say there's a pretty constant tension between two very closely bound yet diametrically opposed motivations in writing -- one is:
"look at me! look at me! look at me!"
and the other is
"here's what i have. Don't like it? Fuck you."
In the end I would say that writing is a means of relating, not an alternative to it.
Good point, agreed. I think I was trying to say that in lieu of relating face-to-face, writing sometimes seems to be a better way for me. It's my process, anyway.
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