Writing about Writing, Part I

For the last few weeks, every evening, I had been forcing myself after getting back into the house to write an essay – any short and succinct essay. Last year, barring a day in December which brought a surge of light for me, was so dark on the whole that I didn’t write in case I tempted fate further. I scribbled and made copious work-related notes elsewhere. And for some weeks I had had the gall to assume that I could just sit and whip out any piece dealing with matters about life which matter (part of my current work and workshops relate to the same after all). And then I don’t know when but I felt that I’d be wasting time if I wrote an essay. I wanted to write and felt guilty at the same time and my snapping-self said sharply, ‘And what possible good will your writing do?! Just work on your work and keep knocking on doors.’ In the evening there were no doors to knock on. I can’t play any musical instrument and while I do listen to music and read, even after doing some of the latter and walking and thinking and reflecting rather deeply in bouts and being unable to solve more than a few puzzles, I’d feel restless. I’ll stay quiet about my few visits to one local pool. Some very late eves I worked or gathered or hunted down material for work, otherwise I’d sit and scribble in my diary and talk quietly with Fimh – away from snapping-self’s words, which I couldn’t completely dismiss.

But Fimh would remind me that since I had to keep walking on with what I carried in between my two ears essentially and in me – it was useful to actually keep typing out an essay every now and then. It would keep my mind sharp, alert and watchful, for one thing. It would help to organize my mind and order my boxes of thoughts. I grumpfhed with what fimh pointed out and felt he was trying to make me feel better and said, ‘I’ll write later. I know what I need to know, don’t I? And others have written about these matters very clearly, haven’t they? I remember what I need to. I just need to put it into a different format. That’s my job…well, a good part of it. It’s about the mind, isn’t it? Mind and…behaviour.’ Fimh innocently nudged me to think about the mind since it fascinated me so much – something like ‘the mind matters and why’. I had ideas then and all the bits and pieces read and remembered and experienced fell rapidly into place and I started typing with gusto. But then the thoughts got jumbled and questions of old arose. Suddenly. For there were two thoughts I’d started out with – and suddenly the soul and the spirit had clambered into the picture. Fimh patiently said, ‘well, write about the soul and spirit then…they’re not disconnected.’ And as I started upon that and typed a few pages, I flung my hands up in the air, ‘how is this going to help any? I keep digressing. And quite frankly, the part about the Spirit and Soul sounds barmy...it comes across as fiction! And I haven’t even talked about why the mind matters. This isn’t working.’

My pesky-self however was malicious and had started telling me that I didn’t write because I had no thoughts anymore. That I had become stu-pid. My pesky-self chortled, ‘you’re becoming a walking-talking-doing vegetable!’ To which I retorted with, ‘I am NOT a vegetable!’ and upon pesky-self’s widening grin which threatened to split pesky-self’s face, I said, ‘Vegetable – gah-bah.’ And my pesky-self told me through a song that I was a sour beet and something about how I was a grum, irritating and utterly humourless bore. Sadly enough I couldn’t really argue with that for some very sharp and sad images of my being an irritating, very solemn, grum beet and a humourless bore who neither laughed upon an amusing line in the middle of a solemn conversation nor could get another to laugh with a repartee…rose to my mind. Fimh stepped in then. I won’t go through the whole exchange between Fimh and me however. But there are some realizations that emerged from the pot and so I’ll put a few on record.

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Writing – the ability to write – is something that I’ve never quite valued in myself. I’ve enjoyed writing – here and there and sometimes in my diary. But to enjoy something and to value something are not exactly the same, I think. Valuing implies and involves a more conscious process of thought. It’s only when across these last few weeks that I could not write anything that I started getting alarmed. I won’t go into the mixed reasons for my rising alarm. I have loved reading some of what I do and I’ve loved thinking and going ‘aha’ with bizarre connections and upon being able to see effortless connections made by others. I have felt the deep and evocative feelings (which sometimes go beyond language) which are conjured up by human beings in grand or great or insightful or interesting or stirring or vivid writing. I don’t mean these words in any casual sense. I know the kind of writing I am talking about. I have liked scribbling while on my own – of course. But I’ve never persisted in writing about matters unless it came to me very easily and without any hitches or when I’ve simply rambled along (and there is nothing endearing about rambling when it’s like an uncontrollable tic). But one of the things I realized upon long bits of reflection without losing my temper is that writing is an art. Of course I’ve known that. Yes. After all I can rattle off from memory substantial parts from a piece on ‘why we read and write poetry’ and I carry the rest in my head for one clear reason, at least, that before I read that piece I had never really known why I read (and even felt guilty sometimes for reading and re-reading some stuff while neglecting other stuff and for also not reading enough!).

I can say at this point in my life that I most likely had an affinity and even an aptitude for writing and language (I have never had an aptitude for Maths). I have had a strong relationship with writing but I never quite saw it as some sort of an ‘ability’ that I possess. I wrote because I could. I’ve noted in my mind and diary some of the things I cannot do and that is a mighty long list indeed. Yet I never quite comprehended that writing is a skill that I do have – to an extent – which I also love. I loved extended academic writing only during one phase of my life (and the topic had all to do with it) and enjoyed writing a few term papers when I got immersed in them for brief bits and I’ve not written more than a handful of stories. But I have loved writing about or writing in response to ideas and about parts of life which matter (and do not matter), events and incidents and ways and manners of humans (not excluding myself) other beings, great and small, and so on – for I have loved reading about the same. Such ideas and parts (which matter) resonate within me and get me thinking and reflecting and banish the dark and dreary mushrooms and sometimes give me room to smile and sometimes laugh and connect the variety of various experiences (with what I read) and to ‘hold on’ while walking along. In a few of the most important junctures of my life, writings by others which I have read and re-read has kept my head above water and has even got me to shift my course of flight, among other things. It isn’t reading alone that has done this for me – but it is certainly one central part. Reading and writing have more often than I can count kept my mental motors whirring.

In spite of the above, for all this time I never really equated my own ability to write as some sort of a creative activity as I would have say if I could paint or sing or sculpt or play the piano with a similar level of skill. On some very late evenings I had felt ridiculous because I could do none of those things and felt I could have come across as a being a better and more developed human being if I could have. Thinking, I have valued and enjoyed, loved, even felt guilty and angry and sad and confused about and even banished it sometimes. Writing as an activity that I can do – did not make me feel the same way unless it involved writing letters during a couple of light-and-shade filled periods of my life. And it’s considerably bizarre to have felt this way when among all the creative activities I’ve valued – magnificent, superlative and very high quality writing by others, to me, expresses an ultimate level and form of creativity. There are reasons for this which I know of and some of them I sense but I shall not get into them here. Not for once am I saying that I do not value the other creative activities; I value them extremely highly as well.

The whole bit of the sudden and somewhat slowly emerging realization made me wonder why I had such a mindless non-valuing of any writing skill that I possess. I knew one reason or a couple immediately but they do not need to be discussed here, personal as they are and most likely unique to me because I’m abnormal. But a few of the other general ones that came to my mind can be put down here.

Writing about Writing, Part II appears here.

Writing about Writing, Part II

Writing about Writing, Part I appears here

As I thought about the matter I realized that I had absorbed, somewhat unconsciously, the strange place that writing seems to occupy in the world. All literate people feel that they can write. All literate people at some point or the other have had to write a fair bit – if nowhere else at least in school and in college. Writing even formal or informal letters is something many literate people do (or think they can do) and there are others with a bit of education who write here and there (how well is a completely different matter and the same goes for hundreds of blogs and websites of folks who successfully conduct ‘personality development’ workshops or are ‘certified life-coaches’). Writing does have a utilitarian purpose in the regular world. No other creative activity occupies such a strange place, I think. All people do not have to sing and can get away without ever singing a note in public (if not in private). Nobody has to paint on a form or formally in the regular world. One can note that about most other creative activities. So writing and the use of language occupy an odd position. Almost any person who is not an absolute dullard can imagine that s/he can write while people are less likely to say that they can paint or sing or play a musical instrument (one can extend the list) unless they attain a particular level of competence or finesse. The few people of reason in this world who stand against these absurd and stupid ideas comprises most likely, the minority. In this demented age of ‘instant gratification’, writing is probably looked down upon by most or seen as being useless or having a purely utilitarian function and even people who claim to like it cannot endure it for sustained periods (among the general population) unless it’s floozy or casual or la-la writing like on facebook and God only knows of all the other instances which exist out there. Indeed regarding some of the things I’ve read: it revolts me to call that ‘writing’ – in terms of either content, ideas or style. And among people in universities and colleges I had noticed for years while being a member of academia and continue noticing as an outsider (working with clients from academia) an overwhelming reluctance to write their thoughts or about their experiences or feelings or of any connected ideas. Indeed many people assume/d it’s a waste of time to write unless there is some particular material utility to it – either one is getting paid for it or is engaging in academic writing for publishing more and more papers or it is directly related to the ‘job’ one does. And so if writing brings no material utility – it is seen as being ‘useless’. Some people honestly admit they cannot write and yet others do not see any purpose to it. I knew of more than a couple of erstwhile friends who had written very good essays once upon a time and yet graduate school had rendered them utterly unable or unwilling to write essays unrelated to their little fields of specialization. I’m not above reproach for I would have ended up the same way in graduate school and I know I had for not a few years in the middle but I know exactly why I didn’t end up the same way.

Also I somehow think that writing is a little different from painting, singing, playing a musical instrument, sculpting and dancing. Unless one ‘sees’ the whole picture in one’s mind and simply writes in a sudden trance, it is a process which intimately involves the mind, involves thinking, the process of ordering and arranging and selecting one’s thoughts and feelings and expressing the same through language suitable for human life-form. By the very nature of the activity it cannot involve the suspension of thought and it cannot simply involve only a rush of ideas and feelings or remain as intuitive insights and flashes of realization (which aren’t always experienced through words or normal human language). And there isn’t much bodily engagement in the activity….in fact it’s more of a disembodied experience. Folks who sing and dance and engage in playing a musical instrument experience something similar. But my point is that writing about ideas and about life requires the very active and very involved process of thinking clearly before the task of writing and sometimes while writing. It requires a certain predisposition towards wanting to unravel or being interested and in an enduring way about certain universal questions and issues. Even the writing done in a trance is sometimes so because of all the stuff that has happened and been processed and felt deeply by the mind and insides for a long while before that. Inchoate thoughts, all the co-existing ideas, the disjointed or strongly contrary and contradictory and even paradoxical boxes of thoughts and emotions might well all be in the head somewhere – from one’s readings, reflections, ruminations, experiences, memories and so on, and all of it might well flood through the mind at different points of the day or night and one might even know that all of it is there but that knowing is not the same as writing or even ‘being able to write’ about it or even speaking about it clearly. I’d felt this to be true some years ago. This is why even I have said upon reading a piece or even parts from pieces, ‘oh, that’s how I feel!’ I have had to say to myself later: but that is not how you think; the thoughts have been clarified, the doubts or the misgivings or the confusions have been cleared or the nebulous clouds of feeling have been dispersed to have illumination shine through them by the piece that you read while also raising other questions and because some exceptional writer with an exceptional mind has expressed in language and words to make the thoughts and the feelings real. This is why writing as compared to thinking and even focused thinking or idle thinking is so much more difficult. One has to decide on what to include and leave out and to voluntarily circumscribe oneself. And there are contrary ideas and feelings which are carried by the mind too – so which one holds good or do both or maybe three or more? Depending on what? And why? I am reminded of what my old friend told me and not once, ‘Thinking and writing are not the same, Shilpi!’ Writing demands a certain clarity of the mind. To write what one wishes to write. To engage in a process of selection and presentation. It is also a matter of patience, I think. Even writing about whimsical or amusing matters is not a joke and writing about matters related to emotion is not a matter of sentimental warbling. It is an art which like other creative art forms requires nurturing and it is different from the other forms because it is almost exclusively but probably not only a mind related activity. There’s something of the soul and spirit which enters – but let me not digress.

To actually write is to prepare and express the inner workings of an ordered mind. I’m not saying that thinking is unimportant. Not at all. But the act and art of writing and the acts and the arts of speaking and communicating (about which some other day maybe) require an ordered mind. They contribute towards creating an ordered mind and writing across years and taken together become manifest expressions of an ordered mind and more. Writing, I have noticed in myself time and again even though I forget or banish the thought cannot be substituted for this or that. If one has an ability to write – one should and must write otherwise one starts feeling stupid and vacuous and even becomes that way unless one is terribly careful and terribly blessed. And there is no excuse for stupidity or for being stupid. I frankly loath the idea of becoming stupid. And if I had one prayer last year apart from the handful of deepest prayers even when I couldn’t understand much – it was that I not become stupid and for countless reasons.

It is only people who think and have serious and myriad minds who are the ones who can write well and communicate well and depending upon the variations of quality – exceptionally well. Those who think intensely are also the ones to feel deeply both the shards and shots of brushing bliss and the terrible pits of pain, much of the in between and even some of the beyond. More than this I am sure now that people who think deeply are the ones who can feel deeply about another/others. I think that there are certain ways of going further along the path of being ‘truly human’ – a matter that has always been there tick-tocking away somewhere at the back of my mind through some years in a more and more conscious way than before because of one blog-post I’d read. Thinking, doing what one can and is able to, reflecting, feeling, introspecting and acting upon the various stages of the world constitute a few of these parts. And writing involves a particular form of doing. The reasons that people shy away from the same can be many but one reason is that people become stupid in the mind (or simply are stupid and never want to even try very hard not to be stupid). I have felt it and seen it in me – it’s not just a mental laziness or tiredness but a mental stupidity – and it has alarmed me. I don’t mean ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ in terms of ‘intellect’, as it is commonly understood. But then this essay is not directly about ‘the mind matters…and why’.

But to mention a bit: it is not for nothing that individuals who have fine minds and engage in life (work, relations, some inner/private world, hobbies) with a directed intensity and passion and involvement and are at high levels of self-realization have also felt the necessity to write down some/a lot of their thoughts and understandings and feelings and ideas and what-have-you. Not a few of such outstanding individuals have continued the same through their very long or short or medium life-spans. Even folks who have distinguished themselves in different fields of life have also sometimes felt it worth their while to write about their experiences and their insights.

I used to deeply think in a conscious way in college that the individuals who stand out from the crowd are the only ones worth admiring while I could with every neuron in me (for starters) attempt to reach better heights as a human being. And quite honestly, even as a mid-school girl, I couldn’t see anything good or noble about comparing myself to dullards and mental midgets and saying or even feeling that I was better than they were or that we were the same sort so I didn’t need to better myself as I saw important. And it is pertinent to note that across these 40 years, there is only one human being who has urged me to write. Yet I had never before even articulated the traces of guilt that used to hover when I used to write here or even elsewhere because there was the holier-than-thou-self (or would that be the materialist self?) saying, ‘is this really useful to anyone?’

I have many flaws and defects and carry even abnormalities. But I don’t and have never seen anything remotely nice about being mentally vacuous and stupid or common. It disgusts me. I strongly object to the line of ‘ignorance is bliss’. No, it is not. Even though the Old Greek teacher’s words of ‘the only thing I know is that I know nothing’ has not merely perplexed me but I know I have felt rather content in a doddering, senile grandma like way at certain phases of my life (imagining I knew all of what I needed to know and had nothing new to learn). I have also felt something similar to the Old Greek during periods of my life and I have also had to ruminate over the priceless distinction that my old friend made between knowledge (external to the self) and realization (happens within). And it is important to watch oneself and others and discriminate between the bad and disgusting and the truly beautiful and worthwhile and see why they are different and why the bad or disgusting repulses. It becomes vital to leave what is ugly behind and often without a second glance so that one does not fall into the gooey mind-numbing trap oneself by becoming dim or careless or because it takes too much of effort, persistence, unsentimental honesty of feelings (no matter how contradictory that sounds), ‘razor sharp perceptions that sometimes cut a little too deep’ (that’s from The Counting Crows), a refusal to become common in the mind or in behaviour while not losing one’s wit(s) or one’s lighter side and while walking on one's path. It is not an easy thing….

I’ll conclude this with a couple of thoughts about writing. Writing, as a personal activity – quite apart from the strange pleasure it brings – is one of the means towards self-development and is an expression of the same. If life has meaning and I still cannot and will not believe it doesn’t, I cannot see it as being divorced from genuine and continuous self-development and from genuine love, which to (paraphrase?) the Old Bard's line, unlike youth – endures.

Written between 15th May - 9th June, 2015