Hey all. It's Rachel L. I won't type out my full last name for fear of exposing this secret little blog to the millions who have me on Google Alert. Bizness just invited me, and although I was initially certain I'd have nothing of value to contribute besides inappropriate jokes and updates on 2 Live Crew, I find myself already wanting to ask a really depressing question: what are your thoughts on writing and misery? I'm going to be frank: writing poetry depresses the shit out of me and for all of the obvious reasons: Introspection ends in the recognition of futility. Introspection magnifies and mythicizes one's mistakes. Writing often requires analysis of the past and all the bad memories thereof. Even good memories are often painful, in the way that snowfall and christmas lights and thinking about perfect fishing trips with your brother as a child make you cry. Beauty is painful. The sublime is painful. My arm is painful. Oh wait, that's because I did a cheesy aerobics class last night...or IS it? DAMN you, poetry!
Maybe this is specific to poetry and not fiction? Maybe this is specific only to me. Maybe this is specific only to people who would be depressed anyway, and writing only exacerbates it. But I feel like I remember being happier before I wrote poetry (though maybe that's because I was young and lithe and didn't have hormones). I wonder if what would make me happier is thinking about those fishing trips, watching the snow, crying, and leaving it alone.
Did I even ask a question? Oh, writing and misery? Does writing make you miserable? If so, what ever will you do about it? Anyone ever consider just stopping? There's also the entire side issue of writing making you miserable not for the personal, psychic crises it causes, but because it's so difficult not to sound like yourself...or for me not to sound like myself...which is taxing and sad. I give up. Thoughts?
Glad I can bring so much mirth to my inaugural post! I absolutely must end this on a lighter note. Hey did anyone hear that that song "My Humps" was the most successful download campaign ever...or something? I have no absolutely no documentation of this, nor can I cite where I heard it...or if I dreamed it...which would be alarming....
Love,
R
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1 comment:
"Then I realized that the inability to make oneself miserable in the context of a happy relationship is nothing more than a failure of the imagination."
Before I begin, I would like to say that I like that. After I begin, I would like to say that this points, I think, to a very salient point in this discussion. But first--after I've begun, but before I begin in earnest--a preamble:
I knew fellow in college, a guy named Tim who was from Maine and drove a very old Subaru wagon. The wagon was blue, and at first I was drawn to him because when I got back from my year off in New Zealand, returning as a Junior, he was there as a Senior who had returned himself from a year-off while I was away. Complicated, I know, but the crux: he had just twelve months previous dealt with many of the same things I was beginning to suspect I would have to deal with--to begin with, absolute shock and utter awe at my first 70 minutes back in a classroom--so I kind of began to hang around him, listen to the things he had to say. And one of those things was this:
If you don't know something for sure about someone, then what you'll have to do is assume, so why not assume the better?
[I was in the midst of finding out that one of my closest friends was a schmuck, but don't let the eventual rightness of my doubts argue against the larger point here.]
Eh?
How about this--it's all a matter of lenses, no? It's all a matter of where you're looking from, what you're looking out of. You give me twenty seconds with a camera lens and I'll make the Grand Canyon look a lot like recent bear shit. No seriously, I've got the brown magic marker downstairs. I know how to draw an oblong oval. I know how draw those squigglies that look like steam. No Grand Canyon. Recent bear shit.
Because my god, people, we all live in the same world, many of us Americans--and just about all of us on this blog here, I dare say--living roughly the same lives, misery-causation-wise, and so why is it that on the left you have people who are astoundingly happy, and on the right you have people like, well, like I was for the past four years, walking up and down streets wanting to die. Yes that's right, I've said it, on a comment string that most likely won't be read anymore, so what the hell I'll say it again: death, death is all I wanted last year, and now this is not the case and no it's not the clear blue California sky that made the difference, and no I haven't begun to take anti-depressants. Rather, I've just begun to look at things differently. I've begun to assume up, instead of down.
So no, writing doesn't make me miserable, although it used to, but that was because everything used to. And yes at times writing can be heavy, weighty, all those massy things, and certainly it's hard, something I avoid at all costs--no really--and an activity which ex-hausts me when I'm done with it for the day, but on the other hand I find it wholly liberating. It's how I digest the world. It's how I understand things, and one thing for sure that is always the case is that I feel a whole lot better once I understand something, find it much much harder to be miserable.
And what with the first intersquad games set for Thursday, how is it we're supposed to be miserable again...?
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