Two statements initiated this piece: one by Louise Adler; the other by Joan Didion. The first was in a statement explaining her resignation from the position of Director of Adelaide Writers’ Week that was printed in The Guardian today, Tuesday 13 Jan 26. The second piece was a statement that has lingered with me ever since it had been seen some weeks ago. On checking this source, it is discovered that one must have read the book review, for the remembered words are the tile of Joan Didion’s latest publication.
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Perhaps this tale already needs correcting. Could it be said that three pieces began this pondering? Yet another Joan Didion ‘saying’ seems to sum up this beginning. These words are the first line of her essay The White Album and the title of a collection of her work. It is what is now described as ‘the famous quote’ – We tell ourselves stories in order to live. Is this what I am doing? It is not a surprising explanation as it does hold some sense of reality in the same way as her other memorable quote does, the one that remained with me: I Write to Find Out What I Am Thinking. This is the title of her latest collected nonfiction book. These quotable quotes hold an odd aura, standing alone and admirable like pieces of packaged Zen wisdom that remain inaccessible to ordinary living, but describe something about it, its aura, as it were, for I do write to find out what I am thinking; to clarify and articulate one’s thoughts is another, less quotable, more mundane way of understanding the situation: to give them some rational status in their standing and reasoning; to establish their sense and context, and to reveal the implications involved; their rationales and inferences.
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The Louise Adler text that caught the eye – well, the thought that drew attention – speaks about why writers matter.
Writers and writing matters, even when they are presenting ideas that discomfort and challenge us.
We need writers now more than ever, as our media closes up, as our politicians grow daily more cowed by real power, as Australia grows more unjust and unequal.
Both the these ideas on writing seemed to stimulate this summing up of why one writes. One is always questioning oneself; doubting, checking. Might writing, sitting alone mulling ideas, scribbling notes, or tapping a keyboard – sometimes all three together in a jumbled haze of attention, action, and inaction – really be just too indulgent; too much of an ‘ivory tower’ position? Is one seeking attention; counting the readers; wanting opinions known; establishing a ‘scholarly’ reputation effortlessly, without the rigour of review; wanting to claim an intellectual footing? Is it time to stop this pure, private indulgence, as no one really cares? Is it only self-satisfaction, an anxious pride, that keeps one going, making one reluctant to give up?
The writing of Marie Le Conte in The Guardian, also today – synchronicity or happenstance? – formalised this query in her critique of X:
Most of those justifications were, of course, nonsense. Humans are creatures of habit and ego. If there is an app you have used every day for years, it will be tough for you to quit it, especially if it provided you with both adrenaline and dopamine. If you have a number of followers on that app, and that makes you feel important, it will be hard for you to willingly leave.
The strange irony here is that this story will indeed help one ‘live’ by defining one’s thinking about why one writes; explaining this act to oneself in order to minimise the questioning. Is it really the adrenaline and dopamine that keeps one going; the habit and ego? These are significant questions, for if this is so, one should stop this silly indulgence and move on to something more productive, less preciously reflective in its attention-seeking drive.
There were other pieces in today’s The Guardian that clarified this need to write, that drive that even stirred the necessity to now write about writing. There was Peter Greste’s piece that touched on the significance of the writer in this era - intellectual integrity; and there were all the news items that catch the eye as a fleeting glimpse: one studiously avoids them to not be caught up in the web of self-centred attention seeking of narcissistic power. These news snippets gave these texts their core context; their necessity - the need for rigour.
If writers can be disqualified from public forums based on past statements and changing political winds, then participation becomes contingent on institutional nervousness rather than intellectual integrity.
While these words all helped one to understand why one wrote, illuminating matters in the wholesome way quotes seem to do, there was still something more to writing. One sought to use words for their logic and delight, to piece them together like a jigsaw to capture a thought, to assemble an ordered image in letters to express an idea, a flighty reflection, a pattern of feeling in all its particular subtlety and finesse; to define a concept, perhaps to highlight a deficiency, an issue, a position, a relationship; some association . . . and something else too, all to seek to clarify, explain, expand, as matters emerge and evolve: anything and everything. Gurdjieff comes to mind: All and Everything. Then there is the precision of punctuation, how marks matter. Auden called them pauses for breathing: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-homeopathic-critic.html. Yes, there is the layering of cross-referencing other writings that is intriguing too; an intertwining; a knitting; a knotting of thoughts, texts, and references over time that highlight unexpected connections.
The question is often put by oneself and others too: does anyone read this material?
Yes, the numbers can be checked, but one tries to take no notice of these as bots and other strange digital unknowns interfere as ghostly auditors that change the counter into 1000s when one knows it is more like 10s, or even just 10, or less, with the record becoming a meaningless clutter of ad hoc numbers that must be a little like the random variations in the Post Office transactions in Britain. This is as it should be - irrelevant - (but, alas, not for the Post Office!). One does hope that the writing is seen by some, and enjoyed; appreciated; but this is a bonus.
It is not attention that one is seeking, although attention is always interesting; sometimes surprising. It is the writing that drives; that physical need to sit and piece together thoughts as texts – as black fonts in lines on white light, in different sizes and formats, that can be carefully structured, reviewed and amended, with that pulsating cursor that anticipates the appearance of the next idea, letter, word to visually shape the sound in the silence of thought – always wanting more, encouraging action, waiting, watching, like the PC itself that repeatedly ‘corrects’ in interesting and frequently revealing ways; such is language and its wonders – the stuff of writing; of thought. Meanings and synonyms are one’s guides, a useful and fascinating part of the package of tools.
It is a strange and hackneyed cliché, but writing does drive itself in a strange way. It appears; sometimes a whole piece can be recited in the head and be captured if jotted down immediately or soon; but it can be easily lost, to become a struggle to put back together again, like a spilt jigsaw, taking days to achieve what a few minutes put together with such immediate, fluid clarity. In a similar way, a text can be ‘finished,’ but still develop over the next few days with bits and pieces added, words changed, and images included, ideas extended, perhaps amended, slowly infilled, as the words flood through the blank, distracted mind almost as a testing, a review, to check their feel; their rhythm; their inner logic. Rigour is critical. One begins again by looking at the words as though reading over one’s shoulder as Robert Graves explained it.
The times when the text comes complete with images, all falling into place to be finished in a matter of an hour or two, one finds oneself wondering why it was so easy, and asking what might be wrong?
Errors are the issue. One has no editor. The writer’s eye misses so much in the re-reading, so easily, seeing what was intended when it is not there. Sometimes a misreading is useful to better express ideas. No matter how careful and attentive one might be, even after years, words and subtle meanings still need correcting, modifying, when revealed again with the distant eye. There is the embarrassment of wrong spelling; poor punctuation; a missing word. How did I not notice this?
The task of writing itself is enjoyed; in this sense it is indulgent, but it seeks nothing but its own integrity; that grappling with the complexities and varieties of rigour. It is the resolution of this richness in itself that is critical: that the thoughts are properly expressed in a compositional wholeness, supported by the illustrations that are not there as sundry decoration, but to add other different layers and references to the ideas – a visual thinking to expand concepts. This can be exciting, revealing surprising little disclosures that blossom as feelings and thoughts that enrich.
This is why I write – but there is still more. When the piece is ‘complete,’ it stands alone, ready for more; strangely solitary, still needing additions, like this one, ready with the cursor of the mind pulsing, wanting to do expand and explain the interrogation. The writings on brochs have been the most persistent with their demands that one keeps returning to the subject: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-its-intramural-stair.html.
I leave the PC for ten minutes to make an iced coffee, then it comes: yes, writing is a discovery: (I come to record this) – the discovery of oneself; ideas; thoughts that one never thought; of connections one never knew about; of meanings and parallels never anticipated; of associations never perceived; of certain ways of unexpected expression; of clarifications never considered. It is a revelation that keeps one seeking, knowing that, in the best Buddhist tradition, if one finds the answer, one must ignore it: c.f. kill the Buddha; and be prepared to accept that the seeking is the journey that is the destination, as Cavafy wrote in his poem, Ithaka; just as T.S.Eliot wrote in Little Gidding in Four Quartets:
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
- alas, all words that have now become a set of clichés as we ‘move forward’ into a far better, faster, cheaper, easier, more 'creative,' etc. unknown; whatever this might be, but it is always an improvement that tramples on the past, or uses it for its own profit.
Still, in spite of all of this pondering, one writes. It is a huge delight that is a struggle with the vagaries of sense and meaning; in talking to oneself, listening, to know what one might be saying, with the aim of, well, seeking; discovering; revealing. The problem is that knowing what we seek changes how we seek; and knowing how we seek changes the discovery. This is the importance and significance of the proverbial ‘blank sheet of paper’ that is essentially both as a physical and emotional matter: of ‘not knowing.’ How one comes to a situation, whatever, is as critical as anything else. The sense of discovery leads, not the ambition. It is not me – yes, another cliché - but it is. There is that touch of Zen in this act.
One soon finds oneself back into quotable quotes that seek to touch on matters clearly, but remain as isolated adages, untouchable, useless, but revelatory – stuff for a writer to avoid as such pieces are easily collectable and become assemblages for AI’s delight. AI and its slop remains a concern yet to be managed.
One wonders why one finds it necessary to wonder about writing. Such are the travails of the writer; the constant searching, the questioning, the reading, the re-reading, the editing, the correcting, the revisions, the development, the doubting, the illustrating . . . the writing and re-writing hunting the idea; the discovery; responding to the need. It all leads to more writing; that attempt to touch the untouchable; the raw, fundamental futility of life itself.
Why do I ask why I write?
. . .
After a couple of days it occurs to me that I write in the same way that I draw, scribbling with letters as one might manipulate lines in order to reveal the visual form of a thought, with the turmoil of markings suggesting different and varied concepts and ideas that eventually coalesce.
The idea of doodling and exploring with letters as with lines comes to mind later one night.
Oh, the curse of the cursor of the mind!
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