More thoughts on writing

Through the years I learn that it is not up to the writer to be interesting, but merely to be truthful. For writers are nothing more than conveyors of truth when they can latch on to it, even if it meant doing it in various disguises of lies or wildly disconnected images.

In that regard, whether or not the writing is good is not to be determined by the writer, who in any case is only a messenger waiting or coaxing on the edge of the tangibles. A master of his craft he might be, his craft serves solely as a facilitator of truth echoed from the beyond, therefore the only way he can progress in his trade is in improving the accuracy at which he relay what he received. That's all any artist can do; learn the basic rules of the means - in this case, language - and learn to pay intense attention.

Then again there is this relatively new school of thought that propounds the idea of making art for art's sake; such as a door is no longer a door but a cat. In all that a writer does, his primary task is to be truthful, and then to make sense. I believe these two are one, or came from one single source. To be truthful is to be boldly honest. By making sense I mean keeping the truth in check, for we can be overly bold unto self-indulgent and forget to be truly honest.

The truth conveyed could make sense without anybody yet recognizing it, but it must make sense. The internal coherence has to be there and conform to the shared principles of reason or the whole message breaks down. To make a door a cat might sound avant-garde but is in fact dangerous. Art could be an overlooked message projected into space that never falls onto a right-distanced wall, but it isn't nothing. Art for its own sake isn't a form of art. Art for art's sake, like any meaning turned on its head, is nothing. And it is always dangerous to make something out of nothing - a task even God does not attempt.

Some thoughts on writing

I never gave much thought to the act of writing until I took up a different practice and made comparisons.

Photography (a recently acquired interest of mine) is, I think, not that much different in nature from writing - the word literally means writing with light. Except writing is more entrenched to the human experience than taking photographs, in that the artist's equipment to form his art is built-in. Photography is more like working with a very smart partner compared to writing, which is a sole proprietorship for better or worse.

But we tend to believe that anyone could just pick up a camera and take a decent photo (just as we believe anyone could write a book), it still doesn't discount the fact that a captivating image, like a coherent sentence, involves some thoughts that went on behind its creation.

Because the art is born through the artist himself (vs. a lens-mounted camera), it is easy to mistake writing as more elemental than photography. A photographer plays around with light, shadow, composition, etc. to define his artistic choices. To assist his expression he needs the knowledge of, say, the relationships between aperture, shutter speed and ISO value. But the amazing thing about the mind is that its workings - what we generally call instincts - are so ingrained in our experience that we give no conscious thought to subjects, predicates or any such sentence constructs. You would have thought it doesn't take any more to form a thought than it does clicking the shutter release to snap a photo. You don't normally see the things going on in the black box, as Chase Jarvis calls the photographic process.

If an association has to be made somewhere, then the writer has more in equivalence with the camera than with the photographer. For a person writing is essentially a camera taking off its lens cap and deciding which combination of aperture/shutter speed/ISO to engage before pressing the shutter release - all by itself. Maybe put in another way, a photographer without his camera is like a writer losing his mind!

Words, words, words

We take chances hoping the universe would somehow realign itself to advance our good fortune. And nine times out of ten that doesn't happen. But is words all that lovers have for each other? You could string together the sweetest-sounding words and still lose everything the next moment.

But to the right person it does matter. To the person the right words are meant for, those words aren't just words.

They are an acknowledgment of our lifelong search. I don't like to boil something down to its essence when the flowers are to be found in its elaboration. But to a woman the soul of the right words pronounces in effect a man's converging attention; to a man it extends a woman's exclusive invitation.

But words you can never take back. Then again you wouldn't have known. There are words that felt so right the first time you might never say them again because they had already been said... only to the wrong person. Of course it always seems a waste thereafter. But would you have withheld yourself and left those words unsaid?

If there are things to be said, say it loud and say it well. Leave heartache for the morning. It always comes whether or not you plan for it.