“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
– Anaïs Nin
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
– Henry David Thoreau
For what feels like an eternity*, I haven’t felt like I had anything worthwhile to say. Now, I can’t type or write nearly fast enough. Worse still, my brain races so far ahead of my fingers that I’m not sure that anything I’m putting down will make sense later.
…and maybe that’s okay, in and of itself. If my only detailed memories from this period are the overwhelming elation and explosions of sensations and ideas and emotion overload, then that means that this was an age of really, truly, honestly being alive.
A writer’s voice is a strange thing. I’m still, after all these years, trying to find mine. For a long time* I had one, but in hindsight it was really just me subconsciously parroting writers that I love reading — a bit of Palahniuk, more than a little Warren Ellis, a heavy-handed dose of Vonnegut. I guess that’s a natural thing — we hoomans naturally pay homage to those who influence us, no matter what the chosen medium is for communication.
(Come to think of it, my musical playing on all the instruments I play is an obvious tribute, if you are familiar with the musicians I grew up listening to…)
I know that my shorter pieces have a signature tone. I also know that that tone is affected both by what I’m writing about, and whatever I’m listening to during the actual writing process (I’m a music-first person, rather than naturally hearing lyrics, like most people that I know do, so — fortunately, as much as I use music to help me focus past my ADD — the words to the songs don’t really creep into my writing [unless intentional, which is more than occasional]). But I wonder if I will ever settle on a set, identifiable voice, or if it will continue to shift and evolve over time?
Beautiful day. Way too warm and breezy and blue sky to be inside typing.
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
-Franz Kafka
* It should be noted for the record that I am really bad with time, and so words like ‘eternity’ are utterly meaningless at the end of the day.