being one who write more than work memos and to-do lists the process is as i imagine it might be for a synesthete ... or perhaps an autistic person. All this stuff comes in and what do we do with it? How can we process the information, the feelings, the reactions to it all? How do we deal without enlisting more craziness than we already have?
I do not plan to write -- do you? Is it a conscious effort for some, most or virtually all people? Were it a conscious effort I guess I could say, ok, now it's time to write and then write on command so to speak ... flip the switch and there shall be light. WB apparently can do that ... I came across am autographed copy of the timbered choir and really i bought it because it was signed and not because any of it spoke to me really.
My best writing really is in the car ... hurtling down the freeway at 60-75 mph and the words, the thoughts -- i can't really call them thoughts as they are more intuitions or senses coming from seeming nowhere ... driving is a great place to let the brain out to do as it well, that's why I love road trips.
I keep notebooks in the car and when they're full or i can't find one there are scraps of paper here and there, all over, anything to write on will do the job. Sometimes a lot comes to me, cascading over me from i don't know where or why, and then if i can i'll pull over to write for longer and maybe its disjointed, diarrhea of the brain and the pen.
Sometimes its not, it's more coherent.
I don't edit any of it.
Mostly I keep the notebooks though several have hit the recycle bin.
That's a lie -- we don't have a recycle bin and the City won't give us one so it's just mashed in with the regular nasty household crap ... potatoes that rotted, kitty litter, dog poop from the old one's living room accident, snot-filled tissues...
Its a process, an experience.
I have never taken anything from those notebooks and paper scraps and moved them elsewhere.
Ironically the more writing the less I have to show for it here ... it doesn't seem right to take something from there and dress it up, make it prettier, pretend it's something more than it is (rapid scribbles) and pretend i wrote it ... these things write themselves.
Do you think it's all a bunch of hooey? Maybe so. Certainly i'm no purist and i hardly have the right to even come across as though i have airs but the real and simple truth is that I just don;t know where it comes from, the things I write. They are somewhere inside and while I might have an idea or two about that, those ideas will almost certainly confirm as totally nuts the one writing.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be viewed as totally nuts if at least I could write worth a darn.
Speaking of which until i get a grasp of what the next inquiry ... where yr sense of what poetry is/must be/should be comes from ..." i imagine i will continue floundering.
Help me out here -- do you just want to know if I'm nuts? If voices whisper they want me to express for them since they have no voice? is it a trick question? How cna I know what poetry is if I've never had the slightest clue? If you say it is then it is - that's as far as I've gotte with that over several years of wondering.
After Rilke
10 hours ago
2 comments:
i don't think the urge to write is craziness ... somebody somewhere said it's language languaging ... it's us being languaged .. it's language being us ... sure this is wordplay but these figures are trying ... just like us ... to stand apart ... it's late
but doesn't that beg the question, for what is language without men to manipulate it? "symptom" is not the right word, but if it were, i would say that language is a "symptom" of being ... perhaps manifestation is a better choice
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