MOOD -----> Halfway To Sleep
POST TYPE : THOUGHT
LISTENING TO - Clint Mansell/Kronos Quartet - Winter Overture
There's something to this whole writer name that gives me goosebumps. Even without the extremely..."involved" thoughts I had about being a writer, in my previous post, I feel a change in mood, mode and general mental (equilibrium?) state when I call myself a writer.
Its that heady brew of sorcerer, conjuror, 'writer of destinies'.
Possibly.
I'm really not doing the evil-genius-mad-scientist-proud-of-his-creation laugh when I hold a pen, or face a keyboard, but there's a surge of something that combines adrenaline, testosterone and a good old chill in my spine when I know I've got something to write. Even if the written words don't give the same emotion to my readers...like I said, its a personal thing. I do it firstly, and foremost-ly, for myself.
Its the magic of written communication, that after the experience of writing is finished and relished...a second experience of reading awaits those who choose to experience it.
Its that heady brew of sorcerer, conjuror, 'writer of destinies'.
Possibly.
I'm really not doing the evil-genius-mad-scientist-proud-of-his-creation laugh when I hold a pen, or face a keyboard, but there's a surge of something that combines adrenaline, testosterone and a good old chill in my spine when I know I've got something to write. Even if the written words don't give the same emotion to my readers...like I said, its a personal thing. I do it firstly, and foremost-ly, for myself.
Its the magic of written communication, that after the experience of writing is finished and relished...a second experience of reading awaits those who choose to experience it.
Unlike spoken words, where the word is finished just as it starts..like a stillborn child.
The spoken word must rely on our unreliable, incomplete memories to have any hope of living further, of fulfilling some different destiny, other than the one it explicitly performed in its moment of birth.
And as I've said before, my words live, I love them. To consign them to such an uncertain fate, is unthinkable.Many a writer has compared writing to becoming a parent, and in overcoming the human failings that often un-writer us... they have sometimes, gone so far as to describe it as the actual process of childbirth. I am yet to have such a painful time with my writing, though whether that's a good sign or a bad one, only time, reader responses and heartless critics can tell.
I came across one of my favorite prose extracts written by one of my idols in this context - Kamala Suraiya nee Das.
This extract is originally in Malayalam, and though she herself does good English prose, and I'm a lame excuse for a translator, here goes - "As I writer, I bare all for the one who reads. I will undress myself to the state that you call naked, then strip off the flesh, revealing bone and marrow. with that final clothing removed.. I bare my soul to the one who reads."
(To someone who can offer a better translation for this identifiable extract from her writing, I will be grateful. )
It amazes one to think she existed in the 70s, a time when the movies dared not depict
any human intimacy beyond the unforgettably repetitive scene of two harmless-looking flowers making out (like they were Venus flytraps on steroids),
any human sorrow beyond copious tears and screaming mothers,
any reason for goodness or justice save revenge,
and a hundred other stereotypical depictions, most of which, have transformed and survived to this day.
This extract is symbolic of the thing she's skilled at, and the kind of thing she did a lot of - tearing assumptions apart, and attacking these cheesy stereotypes with a vengeance. Her reason for this decidedly good and just act seemed vengeful, but was far from revenge itself. She simply never allowed life to take anything she valued, from her.
Revenge becomes meaningless when you know you can't lose a damn thing.
A few years ago, this champion of personal expression went ahead and converted to Islam, adopting the new name Suraiya.
A few years ago, this champion of personal expression went ahead and converted to Islam, adopting the new name Suraiya.
A vast majority of her fans cried foul at her decision to "seek refuge" , as she herself put it. They felt betrayed by the fact that she who had advocated independence and expression, had gone into a shell herself. I say "they", because till that moment, she had simply been one of the authors in the then-eminently uninteresting array of Malayalam books that my mother chose to read.
And from that moment onward, I saw something in her, that her fans had probably conveniently ignored. She had, all of a sudden, become my apostle of free will. She never tried to tell anyone she was right. or wrong. She simply was. That was the essential quality. She was whatever she chose to be, and she simply refused to let life, or other people, tell her what to do. Without writing a word, she had torn apart one of the biggest assumptions of all.
Like laughing at someone who says, exasperated... "But.. but you're THIS person...How can you be THAT as well?", and replying "How on earth do you presume to know who I am?"
I suspect she understood what misunderstood messiahs often feel like. She also probably understood the picture of a writer as I see it - wielder of power that he himself doesn't realize. And I understood, that this figured in my plan. This -writer- thing. Yeah.
Like laughing at someone who says, exasperated... "But.. but you're THIS person...How can you be THAT as well?", and replying "How on earth do you presume to know who I am?"
I suspect she understood what misunderstood messiahs often feel like. She also probably understood the picture of a writer as I see it - wielder of power that he himself doesn't realize. And I understood, that this figured in my plan. This -writer- thing. Yeah.
But if you've read that extract, and read what I write, its plainly evident that I'm either lost, nowhere near my idol's path, or purposefully avoiding it.I'm baring nothing more than my insanities, my incapability to write without a word like "incapability", and a whole lot of adverbs, cropping up every now and then, and my self-contradictory self...atleast nothing close to my soul..
whatever that thing is.
I'm not an introspective person by default, though I believe I've done a lot more of it than the average 22 year old - to look within is as difficult as it is boring. If I'm willing to get through the difficult part, it will be very interesting, I've been told.
Again. Plainly evident. Either I don't know much about myself to share, or I'm not trying hard enough to share what little I do know. I can count on the instinctive voyeur in every one of us to be interested in my life, just as it was, in her life. So its not because I think no one wants to hear about my life. Everyone loves the Truman Show. ;)
Look at the name I had given my weblog in the first place. "Here Komes The Sun" is the cheesiest pun I could've pulled off of my own initials, and a cliche to boot...the kind of things I despise. I guess it was atleast individualistic in its being dumb. I'm still cooking up a few words, stuffing a few rabbits down my hat. Maybe someday I'll be David Blaine...or Jesus Christ..in the writing context, please.
But I'm not a strip-my-skeleton-off writer.Not yet. And that's only ONE of the many paths I might take to being a -writer-. Maybe that's why I blog- to get some company and input for the trip, and possibly clues to how my road map should look.
Lethargy and a sudden loss for words...
The same feeling that made me make the mundane pun "Here Komes The Sun", prompts me to end this post here. Its 5 AM, and I feel some semblance of sleep hitting me . Don't get me wrong, I'm unemployed, and I can very well sleep my arse off the whole day. I'm not insomniac...just nocturnal. And slightly nuts. Goodnight all.
