With no end in sight.
I simply type, but I never know if I am right.
I just feel compelled to type; to write; to set things right.
When your modus operandi is negative empiricism--you prefer falsification over confirmation--the writing life is full of life (hat tip to Dave Lull); it's the spice of life. Your active searching through mythologizing never ends because those unexplored tunnels of opacity seem to diverge even further (hat tip @SkylerTanner) once you shine some essay-spirited light upon their dark caverns and reveal new insights:
"The literary essay, as she saw it, was a moral exercise that involved direct engagement with the unknown, whether it was a foreign civilization or your mind, and what mattered in this was you."--Alexander Chee on Annie Dillard
This is why I write. It's why we all write.
Because we feel like artists when we type; artists who write music with lines of (n=1 / m=1) insights:
"I do have a sneaking suspicion that part of the charm of music lies in the fact that we don't know what it means. ... That's why it is so refreshing to enter into the presence of great art, and why the greatest works of art always contain an element of ambiguity. A masterpiece doesn't push you around. It lets you make up your own mind about what it means—and change it as often as you like."--Terry Teachout, 'The Mystery of Music' (thanks to Dave Lull)
Which is quite a mythologizing insight; given the updating-function, ever re-editing nature of our iterative narrative guiding lights.
It's an ancestral tradition: telling stories that explore the unknown; that tell higher truths. Through time, these stories have passed through pictures, dance motions, drum beats, resounding words, and eventually, much more recently, through mythologizing essays.
That's my preferred medium; it's how I mold my thoughts as I write.
Because all I know is that I must type.
I know that not everything is right.
But I continue to write.
It's an n=1 / m=1 fight.
Because essays seem to, eventually, set things right.
That's why we write.
To good health,
Brent
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4 comments:
I love to write, and I hate to write. It's kind of like dating that way. The exhilarating anticipation that accompanies each new essay/date. And the tight knot at the pit of my stomach. When it's over I feel a sense of inner peace.
When I write, I hope I get it right.
But sometimes all that's left is wrong.
Thanks Aaron and Jim.
Good insights.
The writing process is a challenge--in a good way--that exposes us, makes us vulnerable--we open ourselves up to the world--and often shows us that we need to write some more to get it right.
Best,
Brent
Yep. My new insight is that, perhaps, writing is like mental hormesis (or it IS mental hormesis). Looking forward to coffee w/ you tomorrow.
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