There are moments that make you word-scarce, leaving you not a dollar short, but a penny short, of the phrase that would pull your heart closer to the surface so that someone else could see it. Maybe we all spend our whole lives trying to pull our hearts closer to the surface so that anyone, even if it's only ourselves, can see it better.
The only real difference between a great writer, a mediocre writer, and a shitty writer is that great writers have the exact change for that phrase, while the rest of us are left short changed and shuffling our feet in embarrassment. I'm a mediocre writer, and that's usually more infuriating than being a shitty writer because being a penny short is always more obnoxious than being a dollar short, which you know if you pay attention to what goes through your mind at times like that. There is a discipline to art, and that discipline is learning to be unsatisfied, which sounds quite nice to just about everyone, including me, until we learn that being unsatisfied is a bit more consuming and intensive than we had hoped. It is a discipline, after all.
The difference between words and people is that words aren't people. People are like words though. She is, and she's the kind of word that is always meaning more and more and more, absorbing your thoughts and soaking into and through fears until all you can say is her. You spend a long time trying to say her in ways that get closer to what she means, and there you are, always a penny short, trying to get it all out, shuffling your feet not out of embarrassment but out of dissatisfaction because she wasn't said in the best way, and then you're off, trying again.
Find someone who doesn't stop meaning more, and whom you can't stop wanting to say like they ought to be said.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Tyler, I like the idea of "find[ing] someone who doesn't stop meaning more. . ." There is a reality to relationships that you are touching on that says a lot about what you want and who you are. Words are not people, but there is no description without words and you are doing a good job of that--words as a means of expressing the reality of relationship. Keep writing, good sir, and keep the faith.
ReplyDeletePeace,
John N
Disregard this if it sounds nonsensical or just doesn't pertain to your postulation, but I would conjecture that yes, there are great, mediocre, and shitty writers, but that there are also great, mediocre, and shitty readers. As I presume you were not limiting your definition of writers to simply authors but also speakers, composers, and artists, I encompass audiences, fans, connoisseurs, and of course, listeners. And I would base my categorization of great, mediocre, and shitty readers in a homogeneous way: how much extra understanding/meaning they bring to the table. To speak figuratively, great readers lend the writer that extra dollar, mediocre readers that extra couple cents, and shitty readers, well, nothing. And I bring up the "readers" aspect because I believe that we do spend most of our lives "trying to pull our hearts closer to the surface". And while here and again it is for no one but ourselves, it is chronically "so that someone else could see it." The writers are important, but without a reader, without someone to see the heart pulled close to the surface, there is no connection, no purpose, no meaning.
ReplyDeletep.s. I apologize profusely for the unnecessary use of words only found in the thesaurus I snagged from my parents library.
Thanks for the comments guys. Mike, I'm not totally sure I agree with the idea about there being no purpose or meaning in expression without someone to see it and/or appreciate it. I don't want to type it all out, but we should talk about that sometime soon, I'm interested to hear more about your thoughts on that.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing about dissatisfaction--it's what keeps you working. So in that sense it's good to be unsatisfied. But I think you have to learn to manage the right degree of it, otherwise you'll never feel confident that what you've written is "perfect"--in the sense that it's "finished." There are poems I've written that are no good, but they're done, and they exist as fully as they will. At that point, satisfaction has to lie with them being, like a private in the Army, all they can be. Love the blog man. Makes me want to start one too...
ReplyDelete- Matt