There really is no need to be so freaked out over words not written. After all, they are words no one is ever going to read.
But being read is incidental to the need to write. Which is about the words that run through my head day and night, barely allowing me to sleep, crystallising into dreams in which books are read and speeches are made and letters, life-changing letters, disappear as you are reading them with anticipation. They must be continually emptied and my brain defragmented. Unlike my cupboard.
The need to write is about reminding myself that I am alive. Somewhere beneath the endless smiling and supervision and editing and showing up... I survive in that little space deep within all these external layers that I have to wear to be an adult in the world.
And as that world transforms into something I deplore, writing is resistance. Even when no one reads it, writing is resistance. It is the only form of resistance I may perform competently. But today, this kind of writing is time-bound. News happens and if you haven't outraged, written, published and gone viral in five minutes, do you exist?
To which that voice inside me asks, luckily, 'Does it matter?' Does it matter only when you respond immediately or does it matter that you do not respond at all? I am going to go with the latter, and still write all these blogposts that have been in my head, waiting for my body and mind to synchronise just enough to put them down.
If I do not write, even belatedly, I will be the weak link that lets the chain down.
But being read is incidental to the need to write. Which is about the words that run through my head day and night, barely allowing me to sleep, crystallising into dreams in which books are read and speeches are made and letters, life-changing letters, disappear as you are reading them with anticipation. They must be continually emptied and my brain defragmented. Unlike my cupboard.
The need to write is about reminding myself that I am alive. Somewhere beneath the endless smiling and supervision and editing and showing up... I survive in that little space deep within all these external layers that I have to wear to be an adult in the world.
And as that world transforms into something I deplore, writing is resistance. Even when no one reads it, writing is resistance. It is the only form of resistance I may perform competently. But today, this kind of writing is time-bound. News happens and if you haven't outraged, written, published and gone viral in five minutes, do you exist?
To which that voice inside me asks, luckily, 'Does it matter?' Does it matter only when you respond immediately or does it matter that you do not respond at all? I am going to go with the latter, and still write all these blogposts that have been in my head, waiting for my body and mind to synchronise just enough to put them down.
If I do not write, even belatedly, I will be the weak link that lets the chain down.
1 comment:
Hey keep posting such good and meaningful articles.
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