At any step of the way

I used to think that starting at a blank page was the worst moment in the writing process. Now I’m not so sure, I actually am starting to believe that it’s every moment after that just gets progressively more difficult. With a blank page you have the option of anything: humor, sadness, a technical description of the fittings in the underbelly of the 66 Shelby, anything. With a blank page you can ramble nonsense or fake words, you can refuse to pause and let your stream of consciousness take you away, spelling errors half thought ideas and all. No the trouble comes once you hope to embark on an idea, to fill the page with something that is be worth reading and enjoyable to write.

There’s just so much that can go wrong. As anyone who has ever written a paper can attest, it can be an aimless introduction, rogue conclusion, or any of the hopefully fluid paragraphs in the middle. Consider just how hard it is to have a coherent thought and hold it for a long time. Sure we all have our moments of focus, but how many times have wondered what we were thinking about a moment ago. Or lost our sunglasses on our heads, or forgot where we were in the conversation. Of course we have some aids, but considering the frequency with which our minds jump from one idea to the next it’s a wonder that we keep coherent ideas afloat long enough to actually discuss, learn or create anything.

Perhaps though, that is the reason we write in the first place. In conversation you have another mind helping to move ideas along, in music you most frequently have words to help the music (and vice versa) or other band mates, in art you have the unfinished canvas to refer to, as well as whatever it is you are capturing through paint. I would even perhaps put forth that it is because of these problems with our memory that we began writing (and painting, and music) at all. If we all had perfect recall, we would have no fundamental need to create marvelous passages of words, for we would have the event as it happened in all of its glory. I could perhaps seeing writing evolving simply as something to do, similar to Twitter, or Facebook or small talk – passes the time but without any real value.

Luckily for us, we do not have perfect memories. As time passes, either the rosy glow or dusty hate of memory sets in and we are left with a shell of moment to remember. But after having our peak moments (either the top of the world or the bottom of the well), be it first kiss or first beating, we are left with some desire to get back to that place, to feel as we did in that moment, or for that time. Some of us crave the peaks, and the others the valleys, but either way we need to feel (even you sociopaths, though you may not realize it).

There are many ways to touch this truth, but the ability to form concrete visions in the mind of the reader is unique to word itself. Music, perhaps my favorite sense pleaser of all time (from both a performance and a listening experience) captures different feelings, more abstract ones. Despite the effort of program music to nail down ideas (I’m looking at you Symphonie Fantiastiqe), there is an additional element of abstraction – I can hear the plop of the guillotined head in the bucket as played by the strings, but heard on its own I wouldn’t say that I am compelled to think of the appropriate part of the story (sorry Berlioz). Even in moments that can be described as “musically soaring passages” the emotion and vision invoked in the listener is more likely to be personal, and touch directly upon the emotion rather than an event.

Art as well is an entirely different mode of imagery. Photo-realism aside, the is a certain inherent fuzziness (technical term, I know) in art that I think allows for you to feel not what you see, but a stylized, idealized, oddly realized version of reality (tell the truth but tell it slant, you know?) While I appreciate art, it’s not in a like way to either the written word or music, so I won’t pretend to have an intelligent opinion; I will say though that there is much interpretation to be had as far as what is going on in most any work of art. This is a more contentious idea sure, but especially with the rise of modern art I think we can see the effect an artist has/is going for is blurred by our own perspectives.

But with writing, you can specifically capture an idea, and define it and talk about it, rolling it over and over with more words, more description, more structure until eventually (and ideally) the idea that you have end up with can be exactly the one you had in mind. This is most true with good technical writing, which strives to make wholly explicit the idea that it portrays. When I talk about the gently rolling lands out of the reception desk window where I now sit, I can say just so much: about the brick buildings as little commas in a run on sentence that ends only where the horizon begins. I can mention the way that Mississippi cleaves my view nearly in twain, but with a gentleness that can only come from a wound that was marked at least 100,000 years ago and has healed into a perfect scar, an enviable scar, one which continues its journey away from my line of sight, its true power held in the knowledge that the same scar that I see below me splits the country itself into pieces the same way before me.

I’m so sorry for the horrible, horrible run on but I needed to show an idea in a terribly condensed time frame (t-minus 2 minutes till this simply must be posted). Adding more and more art to an idea does not make it more defined painting. Adding more notes to the score does not imply a more compelling, concrete piece. But words do have that power, and thus the terror of a twist badly taken – if my idea strays from coherence, if my words contradict, if the imagery not suitable enough, the whole writing can fall apart. I would like to explore the unique contribution that each of the “creative arts” actually brings to our experience, but this is not the time. In fact, time is up, of the essence and for the birds. Until tomorrow.