Upcoming Vacation and My Brain
Dec. 10th, 2002 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksFor some reason, something in the back of my brain has decided that I am, in fact, already on break, and that the semester is, in fact, over. It is not. The only thing that this mental decision has accomplished is ensuring that it takes me six times as long to do anything and that I spend all my time making myself work. I am not behind in anything, but I feel like I am beating the inside of my head with a wet noodle, and I have taken to carrying around uninvolving mystery novels to read on the shuttle.
This is especially weird-feeling since there is also a substantial portion of my brain mixed up in my own novel. I am feeling quite odd about it, for reasons previously mentioned. The advice I've been getting is 'Write it, and you don't ever have to show it to anyone if it turns out to be something you feel would be damaging to its readers'. This advice does not work. Why? Because I write to communicate. That is not all of, but a great deal of, the point. If I were creating things solely for myself, I would never have to write anything down, because I can tell myself the story just as easily as if I were reading it on a page. The stories I do write just for myself (once there was a woman with blood made out of roses... once there was a plum which could change itself into a thousand purple dancing girls, their golden eyes glistening in the twilight, in the garden to the left of paradise, and they cry plum-juice...), these stories I do not write down at all, unless, as just now, I want to share them with somebody. Consequently, committing words to page in fiction-- and fiction is more true than nonfiction in the ways I want to write about-- is a serious thing and one that frankly terrifies me. Nonfiction, well, I could write all of the details of my life down, in this journal, on the Internet, and every detail perfectly true, and that knowledge wouldn't tell the reader as much about me as I think those snippets I just put down do. A writer can control what of herself she puts into her non-fiction, but in fiction, the reader has far more power to read what is not actually written. This is what frightens me about my novel: what I may not actually write down.
Which sounds pretentious as hell. My roommate has taken to calling me Captain Pretentious. I am not sure how I feel about this. Pretentiousness implies falsehood in some way, I think, and yes, the way I behave can I am sure seem overdramatic and improbable, but everything one sees is true, it's only that I am in control of what is seen. Maybe it's that control she senses.
I mean, over half my life doesn't make it into this journal. Not because I am editing, but because it just does not occur to me to write it down. I write about moment-by-moment things, mostly centered around my one deep obsession, art in all its forms. I don't really write about what I had for breakfast, or how well I slept, or how I'm feeling unless it's really unusual, because I don't particularly care about those things, and sometimes am not paying attention; and I don't write about sex, or politics, or religion, or the manifold complicated intersections between them, because I do care about those things, and so pay attention to them in the way I live my life, so that they are internalized to the point where I don't need to externalize them, like the stories I entertain myself with in jag-ends of time in waiting-rooms, buses, beds at night, libraries where I read in a trail of bibliographies looking for something. (I sometimes feel like I could write a roadmap of the cultural theory section-- That way lies nihilism, over there lies overconfidence, the performance artists may only be seen by standing on the ceiling, and here, where I am reading Greil Marcus and Avital Ronell, there be dragons, who are comparing Catharism to punk and the telephone to totalitarianism (the first comparison I will accept, the second not). Sometimes one gets nihilism, overconfidence, and performance art at the same time, and then the whole geography falls over into humor, which the unwary traveler might think was unintentional. Nah.)Besides, talking about politics is a thing I only do if I want to start a fight, and, with ninety-nine percent of the universe, so is talking about religion; talking about sex is a thing which I do when I have Intentions of some kind, otherwise what would be the point in conversing. Grant you, those intentions are sometimes to find out what the other person thinks about sex, but most of the time, not, and, around here, I am surrounded by many people who don't think about sex, really, or don't seem to; why bother them?
Besides, anybody who really knows me probably does know my views on politics, which goddesses I have been known to worship, and how old I was when I lost my virginity, and it really isn't anybody else's business.
Still, it impresses me how much this journal has gotten to be devoted to analyses of art. Am I boring anybody to death? Not that I'll change, but it would be nice to know.
This is especially weird-feeling since there is also a substantial portion of my brain mixed up in my own novel. I am feeling quite odd about it, for reasons previously mentioned. The advice I've been getting is 'Write it, and you don't ever have to show it to anyone if it turns out to be something you feel would be damaging to its readers'. This advice does not work. Why? Because I write to communicate. That is not all of, but a great deal of, the point. If I were creating things solely for myself, I would never have to write anything down, because I can tell myself the story just as easily as if I were reading it on a page. The stories I do write just for myself (once there was a woman with blood made out of roses... once there was a plum which could change itself into a thousand purple dancing girls, their golden eyes glistening in the twilight, in the garden to the left of paradise, and they cry plum-juice...), these stories I do not write down at all, unless, as just now, I want to share them with somebody. Consequently, committing words to page in fiction-- and fiction is more true than nonfiction in the ways I want to write about-- is a serious thing and one that frankly terrifies me. Nonfiction, well, I could write all of the details of my life down, in this journal, on the Internet, and every detail perfectly true, and that knowledge wouldn't tell the reader as much about me as I think those snippets I just put down do. A writer can control what of herself she puts into her non-fiction, but in fiction, the reader has far more power to read what is not actually written. This is what frightens me about my novel: what I may not actually write down.
Which sounds pretentious as hell. My roommate has taken to calling me Captain Pretentious. I am not sure how I feel about this. Pretentiousness implies falsehood in some way, I think, and yes, the way I behave can I am sure seem overdramatic and improbable, but everything one sees is true, it's only that I am in control of what is seen. Maybe it's that control she senses.
I mean, over half my life doesn't make it into this journal. Not because I am editing, but because it just does not occur to me to write it down. I write about moment-by-moment things, mostly centered around my one deep obsession, art in all its forms. I don't really write about what I had for breakfast, or how well I slept, or how I'm feeling unless it's really unusual, because I don't particularly care about those things, and sometimes am not paying attention; and I don't write about sex, or politics, or religion, or the manifold complicated intersections between them, because I do care about those things, and so pay attention to them in the way I live my life, so that they are internalized to the point where I don't need to externalize them, like the stories I entertain myself with in jag-ends of time in waiting-rooms, buses, beds at night, libraries where I read in a trail of bibliographies looking for something. (I sometimes feel like I could write a roadmap of the cultural theory section-- That way lies nihilism, over there lies overconfidence, the performance artists may only be seen by standing on the ceiling, and here, where I am reading Greil Marcus and Avital Ronell, there be dragons, who are comparing Catharism to punk and the telephone to totalitarianism (the first comparison I will accept, the second not). Sometimes one gets nihilism, overconfidence, and performance art at the same time, and then the whole geography falls over into humor, which the unwary traveler might think was unintentional. Nah.)Besides, talking about politics is a thing I only do if I want to start a fight, and, with ninety-nine percent of the universe, so is talking about religion; talking about sex is a thing which I do when I have Intentions of some kind, otherwise what would be the point in conversing. Grant you, those intentions are sometimes to find out what the other person thinks about sex, but most of the time, not, and, around here, I am surrounded by many people who don't think about sex, really, or don't seem to; why bother them?
Besides, anybody who really knows me probably does know my views on politics, which goddesses I have been known to worship, and how old I was when I lost my virginity, and it really isn't anybody else's business.
Still, it impresses me how much this journal has gotten to be devoted to analyses of art. Am I boring anybody to death? Not that I'll change, but it would be nice to know.
