Here we are again. I've accepted another writing challenge from Jami Attenberg. The timing is never great because my dance card is always full of (mostly) exciting and creative things to do. Ironically, writing is one of those things on the dance card that benefits from a regular push. It's also weird that this solitary exercise is shared by 2,000 strangers who have signed up as well.
Her suggestion to start this one off is simple: "I'm writing today because..."
There's a song by Anna Nalick called "Breathe." Here's my favorite lyric (and frankly, most people's favorite lyric from this song):
2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to.
I resonate with the way words can torture the life they belong to.
I have described the urge to write as mental voices clamoring to be heard in a crowd. Like a tense news conference. Or during a catastrophe. Or fans at a concert. A cacophony of ideas elbow their way to the front of my brain and demand release. And the loudest mostly win, though not always. This is a violent metaphor and it may not serve me well all the time but it paints the best picture.
I'm writing today because there are thoughts that stay tangled or obscured until I pluck them out, smooth them out and sort them out. The process of clarifying is so gratifying. Parsing out issues and discovering connections and threads of commonality among expected and disparate ideas...which process leads to other tangled ideas and an endless stockpile of mysteries and epiphanies (or in my case, epiphenitas).
Perhaps that's too academic. Perhaps I am just arrogant enough to think my worldview is worth listening to.
Then there's this. Every week I read the postcards on Postsecret.com. This is a real life project involving folks from all over the world sending anonymous postcards detailing their secrets to this guy named Frank. Sometimes when he talks about the project, it feels a little self-help-y which makes me wince. But mostly, I love when a secret strikes a sympathetic chord and someone out there knows they are not alone. I suppose that's another reason I love to write. I love the shock and awe of saying things that people think but are too uncomfortable, scared or ashamed to admit. I love the idea that someone reads my words and gains a bit of courage to acknowledge shit that they have hardly admitted to themselves. I love the idea of starting dialogue about cultural taboos that only serve to hobble us.
When I was a kid I kept a diary. A big thing that I made out of loose leaf paper and illustrated card stock covers. Children are dramatic because so many things are new and raw and shiny to them. They have yet to form callouses. Of course you know the ending to this story. My sisters found my poorly concealed diary and mocked me. I don't know much they mocked me because it took just the slightest pressure to hit all those raw, naive nerves. I was what you call a "sensitive" child.
I destroyed the diary and never really kept one again. Until I started this blog some 20 years ago. But this is public and in that way, more carefully written. Words have been the way I make sense of the world, resolve conflict and tease out laughter for most of my life. Maybe I just love them and I want to play with them.
Television or movie storytelling is fraught with conflict, right? It has to be so we can be entertained by the resolution of such conflict. When I watch a show, I am terrible about people talking through it. It irritates the fuck out of me to have people talk during a story. However, how many times during a drama (particularly one that you are re-watching) that you want to yell at the screen, “JUST TELL HER!” or “HE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND” at the pivotal point where everything goes sideways and could have been turned around by the simplest of communications? How many times have you thought, all this shit could have been avoided if you just said how you felt? Or if you just told the truth about some overblown and foolish secret?
Okay, so plotlines are formulaic and people are not linear or emotionally clear in their reactions. I get it. But this is where I want to part ways with non-fictional and fictional stories. If someone tells me that I’ve stepped on their toes or I tell someone that I think they’re attractive, then maybe we can avoid years of resentment or misunderstanding because life is fucking short and what a waste! It does, however, require courage to bare one's soft underbelly.
I get why people shut the fuck up. Repress. Make pretend they are not offended or don’t have feelings. Because turmoil and untangling intent and words is damned hard. And awkward. But, for me, misunderstanding is worse. It’s the slow burn and murky undercurrent that fucks with my sense of being grounded in the world. Suppressing resolution is self-gaslighting. I can’t trust my gut reaction to a situation. Or I feel like the world is building a facade about reality because the truth is problematic. I don’t operate well with that. So I break those cultural niceties and smash taboos to get some clarity. Sometimes, it works really well but, more often than not, it remains awkward and unresolved. Mostly that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Over the years of writing/communicating, I’ve learned a thing or two about timing and patience. I’ve learned that approaching an issue with more information, more compassion and less entrenchment makes me a better communicator. Even when I say I want to burn the whole fucking thing to the ground, I have to follow it up with words that do more than hurl 360° of emotional napalm. I want to understand. I want to convince. I want to hear solutions or ideas that change the course.
Anyway, that’s why I write today.
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