Thursday, December 23, 2010

On Writing

It is always the same shadow that from time to time hovers over me in circles and profusions, though I had forgotten about it for long, the inability remains fixed like a postcard, the sensuous desire to take hold of the present, in a way it could be said that the author, in particular the modern author, takes upon himself a role similar to that of the photographer, foremost the awareness that all the raw materials he's working with are nothing but dead. There's in this respect a certain wisdom in philosophy and in all articulate and normative forms of cultural criticism and it is if anything, the crystal clear knowledge that all knowledge of the present tense is immediately condemned to a framework of reference simultaneously (and at that absolutely) past and future, not one single scenario of history can be saved with only one hand, not even the Crucifixion itself.

That's the worse mistake in writing, the enamourement with things that are already dead, that are no longer in your possession and that are completely bereft of a willing ability to respond to the calls of literature, being this said, it's of course clear at this point that it's not possible to leave the claims of literature without becoming unpoetic, that is, the claim of literature, in particular solitude, the solitude not only in writing for silent and invisible witness but the loneliness of experience, the impossibility of real expression (otherwise one wouldn' t write) is precisely what constitutes the practice of literature; any breach to this unspoken agreement would mean immediately, leaving the realm of art altogether. You can't bring yourself to love and write about what's being loved as it goes through the process of turning a solid sentiment into a liquid feeling and then into mere unconscious steam reaching for the higher and higher depth that opens upwards and never recedes. The act of writing has to involve by the most sensical definition, a pure act of loss in concrete acts but with firm consciousness, otherwise the memory would play no role in the recreation of fiction.

Philosophy must be always present as it constitutes an inquiry into the thing that is being known, however art can never afford this cruel vice lest it incur in the mortal sin of forgetting its role within chains of meaning, literature can never be impatient, certainly not about itself, for it is risk about the world, its only form of reliance, and not certainty as such, otherwise there were indeed programatic assumptions about how literature is ought to be written. Impatience is a vile act for a writer because impatience in creation (unlike God and eternity) means only that you are waiting, and the waiting itself is a symptom of words, sounds and movements of the lips that have ultimately failed to deliver, thus, the waiting is an act of surrender and supplication before silence, there can be no literature in silence - there is no such a thing as an empty room, there is no such a thing as a room without sound (there's still the air), there's no such a thing as earthly space without color, without content and without matter. So correct had been Susan Sontag in saying that "I want to learn to be alone, to find it nourishing, and not just a mere wait". There's no literature while waiting (that's the domain of theology and philosophy), waiters' writing is not literature, it is just a remedy against madness.


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