Water the root, not the fruit!
Foray 009: Meditations on a Quasi-Monologue
Please excuse me, I’ve been neglecting you. It’s not without good cause yet it’s rude nonetheless.
If you know me personally, you know I’ve been busy. I packed up my whole apartment in London and shipped everything to Paris, turned 24 and hosted a 40 person Bossa Nova themed birthday party, then flew to Tokyo for a month of travelling in Asia - all within 72 hours and all things I’m incredibly grateful for.
If you don’t know me personally, you probably think I’ve disappeared or, perhaps, put Substack to the side for the meantime. I haven’t forgot about you or writing, I haven’t forgot about it for one moment. In fact, it would probably be better if I could forget about it sometimes.
It’s funny with writing, it never leaves your mind. It lives like a crick in the neck or a pinched nerve, always waiting to resurface.
On Naoshima Island I was asked by our host why I write. We were staying in the spare bedroom of a local photographer’s home, an incredibly warm and gracious man, and he, in his kindness, had decided to host a dinner party for us. English and Japanese were moving in lockstep across the table, words were mulled over before being abruptly wiped away in one sweep of comprehending laughter like dominos. It was fantastic.
Our host was making fresh takoyaki (fried dough balls with pieces of raw fish or octopus in it) on a circular griddle, we were all gathered around the table, cross-legged on the tatami mats. Someone had brought fresh sashimi, another bitter melon while we had contributed a big bottle of sake. Simple and to the point.
Normally, I desist from questions about writing. When they are put to me I often get thrown off by some spare reflection, some attitude or simpering smile. I stall or shrug it off, look around and sense that there isn’t the time nor do the listeners have the patience to do the subject justice, fair enough. Or perhaps I just don’t feel like sacrificing this special little bit onto the altar of small talk. Not everything, I’ve learned, is made better by selling it wholesale.
Yet, our host was a special person. As warm and wonderful of a person as possible, as was everyone else around the table. It was also later in the evening and I had drinken a fair amount of plum wine by this time. I could feel my cheeks getting warm and as he put the question to me, I knew the gift of the gab was coming in hot. I began with a simple fact.
“It follows me like a second shadow.” I walk into a room and it walks in with me. Writing with a capital W is so much more than just putting pen to paper. Writing is a euphemism for digging, discovering little chunks of truth, for living twice, three times, maybe forever, for listening to nature, for caring about the plight of strangers, for thinking about the innocence of villains and the indignation of victims. It’s a special hall pass to be both the worst idiot and the wisest man in the room once in awhile.
“I don’t think I could live without it.” Writing has never just been writing to me. It’s shorthand for a whole collection of actions, states and ways of being. There is thinking about writing, a pastime in itself. Thinking about the writing you’ve done or want to do, thinking about the writing of others, thinking about the different ways the medium can be stretched, moulded or dismissed. These mediations can take up hours, morphing from acceptable goal planning to outlandish daydreaming and back.
Like a scavenging magpie collects little pieces of glass or shell, the writer collects bits and fragments, words, turns of phrase, scenarios and objects on their way through life, anything the hits the distinctive funny bone. Every writer is different but every writer knows with the ring of proper rhythm when something is right.
There is the mental storyboards, the false starts, the ‘wouldn’t it be funny if?”, the imagined titles and twisted scenes. Histories set straight and accounts made erroneous. Then there is the sorting through stray sentences and scenes that lurk in the back of your brain, filling them away, seeing which matches make that funny bone ring.
“Even if I was never to publish again, I would still be writing.” That’s why I can never forget it, or you by extension. Even when I haven’t typed out a scene or Substack in weeks, my mind is still whirring. Lying by the pool, I play with different scenes. Bringing them together before pushing them apart, skewering words like plump green olives on a toothpick, seeing how it all tastes. You can do all of this without writing but you can’t truly write without doing all of this, even subconsciously.
Whether it be the journals I run through or the amalgamation of certain key words, the processing of that which I experience; writing is a life saviour and a drug. It makes everything bad good, and everything good even better. Nothing is wasted, nothing is a loss, nothing is a failure. You have the privilege of making use of it all, of deciding where the silver lining lies, of creating the best from the worst.
People who write do not write because they like the alphabet or are especially good at grammar, people who write do so because they believe there is a special whisper in the wind only they can hear. That the world is blind, deaf and dumb yet they can see some truth following on the moon’s coattails, that there is something yet to be found. It doesn’t matter whether it is a silly notion, narcissistic or naive, what matters is that life, as far as I can tell, is better when you have some kind of secret belief to hold close to your heart. Whether it is delusion or insight, I see so many people sadly devoid of it. I don’t think it can be helped, you must be alright with looking like an idiot when the stars wink at you
It requires you to live life with a question constantly ticking in your brain, being none other than the innocuous-sounding ‘what is this?’. What truly is this? That is a question so few people ask of themselves and their surroundings, once you do you begin to see how special anything can be once it is recognised.
“I don’t know how others live without it,” or something similar. Something that no one told them to do and no one cares if they do it. That exists like a secret second world in their lives, one they are free to populate, build, provoke renaissances in or destroy. One that mirrors their own development as a person, that tracks, aids and abets them throughout years and life changes.
I find so much comfort in the fact that no one, besides me, truly cares if I write. No one truly cares if I finish editing my novel, if I finish writing this piece or the next. Sure, my loved ones support me and encourage me but if I was to turn around tomorrow and cease, the only person whose mental state that decision would affect is mine.
I cannot express how much it means to me, my fanaticism borders on religion I know, and perhaps it is a sort-of religion for me because God and writing feel inherently linked. “I don’t know if other writers or artists feel similar.”
Our host in Naoshima did, he understood this, as a photographer he felt similar towards his art. He asked me how I got started in writing, what was the beginning of my journey. Having barely ceased a monologue before the next began I hesitated but, with a quick glance around the table, I had the distinct impression of having everyone’s rapt attention so I took it as a blessing to continue.
“I’ve been writing since I was 8.” It’s true, I have an annoying origin story, the kind which parents love. It was a your-first-grade-teacher-thinks-you-are-a-writing-prodigy, a winning-the-same-writing-awards-as-truman-capote-did-your-age kind of thing. At this point, I’m sure a lot of people who still write in their twenties and beyond had something similar in their childhood (though not everyone does and no bones about it!).
That is perhaps when my fanaticism became indoctrinated, when I began reading books once for the pleasure and twice for the secrets. When I would give a wide variety of answers to the question ‘what do you want to do when you’re older?’ but only one true answer lived in my heart. Like a personal mantra or prayer I held onto it with tiny clenched fists, accruing thoughts and tangents, ideas of how it all should go.
When you spend so long worshipping at an altar, you begin to guard its god quite jealously. It ceases to be a living thing, no blood or pumping organs, and instead becomes a fragile golden ideal. Beautiful, divine and so deeply important, untouchable and omniscient. It is more than a second self, writing begins to feel like a heavenly mandate.
Dramatic I know, but God forbid we have some meaning in our lives.
Sometimes, like now, I quell a bit from writing. When you care so much about something, it is easy to get scared off. Time and momentum play large roles and they swing in whichever way. That is one of the paltry reasons I have for not writing to you sooner, why a week turns into two then three. It desists my hand and then I start to wonder if I can. I begin to second guess myself, the style, the form, function, purpose, the what? I think about Hemingway. The classic image of him standing atop the Paris rooftops, thinking to himself: “Just write one true sentence. You’ve done it before you can do it again. One true sentence.” I believe I am paraphrasing, not that I care.
Its hum in my ear is constant. Like the buzz of electricity building up inside a house’s walls, it begins to set one on edge after awhile. It begins to sound like you are not doing the right thing. It begins to sound like an anonymous caller, a broken phone line, like if you don’t do the right thing, if you don’t meet its demands, something will soon explode. Sometimes a hostage situation might arise and you, lousy poker player that you are, begin bargaining with excuses. These are the beginning stages, well-worn territory to anyone who harbours impulses or aspirations. It’s grand.
There is something to be said then for bringing it off the pedestal, for placing it on the ground and kicking it around. For making scratchings, for writing thoughts and stories, putting them out there for the sheer sake of it. Removing the endemic need for it to be special, treating it like an exercise, an action. It is the car and you are the driver, no inspiration has to hit the gas pedal for it to get moving. Only you do.
It’s funny then the cross roads we arrive at. We pursue writing because we feel there is something special out there to discover, that our specific viewpoint and way of linking things could be just the way to ensnare it. We get into flow, we feel power over narrative, we create and connect and detail to our hearts content. We find purpose, we create our own meaning and in the process validate it all as real. Yet, the exact thing that guides us also binds us. We fall prey to idol worship, we send all our prayers and thoughts to writing (or any other medium), ignoring the bigger sun behind it.
Watering the fruit, and not the root, is no way to make a peach tree grow. When we focus so pointedly on our specific medium we can begin to neglect the waters from which it flows, damning it up so it becomes more akin to a pre-packaged product than any art. We think about what writing should look like rather than where it’s coming from, we think about how we can emulate our favorite artists in our music without digging for our own style. All we do is block ourselves. The harder we work and deeper we dig, the more unique, special and truly original our work, so the more dangerously vulnerable it becomes as well. I think of someone ripping their own heart out and holding it beating in the palm of their hand; it is authentic and unique, and also potentially fatal. But it is this bleeding edge which is so salient, a single glance at a painting or opening melody and you can tell whether or not it’s present. Whether, in my opinion, it’s truly creative.
Creativity is a sweaty beast, or maybe a Cerberus type dog. We make so much of it, we redo our school curriculums and embark on long breathing exercises, we say it separates us from animals and then watch a new AI auteur’s film. We say all these things yet we neglect to say what it really is. Creativity is a way of being, a set of eyes, a strange belief. That and no more. That and much else. Stray from it at your own risk.
On the hamster wheel of small talk, I hear so much self-denigration when it comes time for those who work in finance, business, consulting, engineering (a long list of etcs attached) to share their jobs, kowtowing with a ‘I know it’s not creative’ and ‘I wish…’ and ‘I want…’. It is crazy to me what we have convinced people of, that creativity is the sole providence of the Arts (capitalised and proper). It’s incredible what you can get people to think and widely accept when it makes no sense. Creativity is simply creating.
Whether you are creating a legal document, organising a meeting, building a company - you are creating. The only difference is the mental process behind it, something that is so deeply within your own control and power. Don’t let other people tell you whether your job is creative or not, don’t let them take that away from you for the sake of their own sense of self importance. I’d argue construction workers are more creative than the vast majority of art school graduates. I’d argue a lot of things that probably sound like losing arguments yet lie on untouched truths.
On the topic of things I’d argue, I’d argue writing about writing is one of the surest ways to deal with writer’s hesitation. I am categorically against the term ‘writer’s block’ (the term has come to be half the issue itself) but understand with personal experience the hesitation and uncertainty a blank page or even new sentence can produce.
In addition to all my apologies about having been away these three weeks, I also am now offering, for a limited time only, a whispered reasoning for this week’s letter. In my bid to get back on the Substack horse, I found myself mired in so many potential subjects yet unwilling to wade through more than a few sentences of each. Thus I decided to write about this wading as a way to turn against it and hopefully entertain a few people along the way. If that is weak writing so be it, I don’t mind bringing a knife to the gunfight.
Next week and the weeks to come you can expect essays on Japanese museums, the Paris Olympics, leaving and perhaps the Humane AI pin. Maybe Berlin and bars too. We shall see.
Lots of love xx
J
Wow wow wow another incredible read! Can't wait for what's to come :)
Relieved you’re back on the horse! Looking forward to Japan treat