Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart...
-- wordsworth
i'm thinking of writing. and the sudden inability to have little to say onto the page. i'm thinking of the idea of an audience, someone or something or some mass of people that will collectively gather their consciousness together and wander through words i created. i don't know if it is the sudden lack of audience or the sudden interest of an audience that has made my writing heart wince, clench up into a ball, roll over defeated and whimper noooooooooo...
and it's not that there is nothing to say. there is much to say. there is one really big thing to say and yet and yet and yet...
nothing.
in other news i went to shopper's drug mart today and bought a pair of $13 reading glasses. it's a terrible thing to be a writer and a reader and suddenly feel your vision seeping away. joyce wrote the last part of the wake almost completely blind, on huge sheets of butcher paper, in crayon...i remember when i was told that story how deeply it affected me. that a man, with such a gift, such a story to TELL to transcribe suddenly becomes completely without the ability to do so, and not because of his hand, not because of the instrument which MAKES the story, not even the mind but because of what SEES the creation in process. it's a bit like the audience thing...maybe i'm having trouble seeing what i write, really SEEING it...dr. penelope used to talk about the 'writers' eye in this weird kinda eastern buddist way, the kinda third eye the writer has or has to have as audience in the creation...when you feel it slipping, i think you'll do anything, butcher paper and crayons to hold onto it.
the thing is...gravity has always been beyond me. and as a rule, i don't know i'm slipping until i've fallen head first and limb splayed outside on some massively populated parking lot.
do any of us really have anything to say? really? it's the whole those who came before me have already said it. how many love stories can be told? the fear of failing in comparison isn't as strong as the fear of creating something that has been created before.
ohhhhh my little writer's eye is squinting...
-- wordsworth
i'm thinking of writing. and the sudden inability to have little to say onto the page. i'm thinking of the idea of an audience, someone or something or some mass of people that will collectively gather their consciousness together and wander through words i created. i don't know if it is the sudden lack of audience or the sudden interest of an audience that has made my writing heart wince, clench up into a ball, roll over defeated and whimper noooooooooo...
and it's not that there is nothing to say. there is much to say. there is one really big thing to say and yet and yet and yet...
nothing.
in other news i went to shopper's drug mart today and bought a pair of $13 reading glasses. it's a terrible thing to be a writer and a reader and suddenly feel your vision seeping away. joyce wrote the last part of the wake almost completely blind, on huge sheets of butcher paper, in crayon...i remember when i was told that story how deeply it affected me. that a man, with such a gift, such a story to TELL to transcribe suddenly becomes completely without the ability to do so, and not because of his hand, not because of the instrument which MAKES the story, not even the mind but because of what SEES the creation in process. it's a bit like the audience thing...maybe i'm having trouble seeing what i write, really SEEING it...dr. penelope used to talk about the 'writers' eye in this weird kinda eastern buddist way, the kinda third eye the writer has or has to have as audience in the creation...when you feel it slipping, i think you'll do anything, butcher paper and crayons to hold onto it.
the thing is...gravity has always been beyond me. and as a rule, i don't know i'm slipping until i've fallen head first and limb splayed outside on some massively populated parking lot.
do any of us really have anything to say? really? it's the whole those who came before me have already said it. how many love stories can be told? the fear of failing in comparison isn't as strong as the fear of creating something that has been created before.
ohhhhh my little writer's eye is squinting...
posted by Faint faint faintedink at 2:42 p.m.
