Who am I?
An (Accidentally-Too-Long) Monologue On Writing
Hi!
I'm a 21-year-old student double majoring in Psychology and Philosophy in the UK.
I've been writing for as long as I can remember from shy, infantile stories scrawled at the back of a school exercise book to piles of attempted novels hidden underneath my mattress.
I’ve always idly thought about making a blog, the idea of a corner of cyberspace being cluttered with my thoughts like the inside of someone’s bedroom, feels oddly appealing.
But then always comes the question I feel we all grapple with; what’s important enough to share?
What is important writing?
I started thinking about this when I was interning for a guy one summer and happened to meet another writer. The guy was a strict Scot, a business advisor with a monstrous reputation, which I was lightheartedly warned about.
He made men cry, I was told nonchalantly, before my interview in a high-rise office, encased in a glassy expanse of picture windows.
The view was sparkling, sunlight glistening down on a miniaturized, animated city and I wondered about the people who worked up here and how they must feel.
Their view of the world was constantly above all of us; shrunk buildings and small people in motion, like playthings, always moving beneath them. I imagined they would sit up here with expensive coffee, discarded sandwich boxes and a sense of superiority, and feel they were seeing something the rest of us on the side-pavement missed.
I was late for that interview, minutes not hours, but his demure would make me wordlessly aware of that; I felt like I’d walked in with a neon hat. It was in his eyes: Be better.
I've never dared to be late for one since, I find the best encouragement is always scathing discouragement.
It didn’t take long to change my packaged perception of him though, the man I saw was admirably ambitious and what he expected from you, he also gave back.
You want to be a writer, he said, a week later, as I was submitting articles for his website, it wasn’t a question. I suspect if I said I dreamed of being one instead of aimed, he would have looked at me like I was already half on the path of failure.
Yes, yes, I did.
When are you free? You should meet my friend, he said, She writes.
So, I met a writer in a café in the summer of 2018, a writer, a real one or one that was published, at least.
I wonder if those are still interchangeable terms, are we only real until we’re seen by someone else, when we collectively agree it’s authentic and not some faux?
She was certainly real though, sophisticated and mature, in the way I imagined writers would be and in the soft light reflecting off her glasses, her darting eyes were soaking me in: the scraped nail varnish, the masking of nerves, her book resting in front of me.
We talked for hours under the summery afternoon lull that gripped that day, over large coffees which were too large, milky brown liquid teeming over the mugs edge, and we talked; about writing, about books, about the Brontë’s, Austen, Wilde.
They all seem to be so important, I said, in awe, in masked defeat, they all seem to talk about important things. I thought about the picture windows at the office, was it not a lot like that?
But THIS is important, she said, emphatically, in its own way.
Meaning the Here, the Now. Write about what it’s like to be you, at this moment, at this time in history, what it's like to be working class, a woman, a second-generation immigrant. To be gay, I thought she might add, she’d read the subtle allusion in my work, but she didn’t say, maybe that was my story to tell.
She was softly spoken, genuine, what makes you think those stories aren’t important?
So, I suppose I ought to have something remotely meaningful to say if I wrote about reality, I know we ALL would. Wouldn't we?
But we spend most of our time escaping from ourselves, and can you really blame us?
Reality is elusive, it trails us everywhere, but we can’t quite catch it, like the whispers in the wind, fragmented words come to us and we struggle to make sense of it.
It’s the monster underneath the bed, the shadow- your shadow- casted dark on the white of every page, the cliché of skeletons rattling in a closet.
It’s identity and belonging, if only you could shed culture like dead skin, claw it off you with blunt nails and have the blood not spill.
We’re afraid, so writing becomes a costume party, a masquerade where we hide ourselves behind puppets we create, but they’re miniatures of ourselves; like a set of Russian dolls, you’d escape one to find yourself in another.
Words become slack when your writing about truth, its hard to talk about who we are.
History is the paperweight resting wordlessly on the open page, solemnly present, looming upon the now. It’s the weight pinning down the chaos of a million years like a lock on Pandora's box.
Handle with care.
If we remove it, the pages would be in anarchy, in flux, in a constant motion, so we would never be able to make sense of them or of ourselves. The pencil feels heavy in our fingers, the led blunted, and we’re hesitant to accidentally tear through the pages, have our ink leaking through.
Is that what it’s like? Have I got that right or is the history behind all our words more like a strong fragrant that hangs in the air, invisible but everywhere, the smell of life and death renewing itself endlessly?
Either way, if that is important writing is our writing still important if we don’t write about these large shadows that cast themselves on our walls, what if we, with squinted eyes, wrote over them instead?
Is it trivial to write about the way the morning light would glisten on her face, to describe the horrors of a dream clawing behind your eyes or to indulge in the sweet aftertaste of a heartbreak, still fresh on your lips?
To write about that feels indulgent; like a child with a cookie jar hiding underneath the frilly drapes of the kitchen table, the hurried passing of strangers visible only by their shoes as they dart about urgently.
To just observe the world go by, this escapism, is that powerless or powerful?
I think we all have our ways to achieve that, of escaping.
Our safe spaces so we can withdraw from the sharp reality of the real world, whether that's nestled in the pages of another book, too many glasses of wine at the dinner table, over-used running trainers on the shoe rack or maybe even a bottle of sleeping pills on the bedside table.
So many ways to escape, and we’re all running from ourselves. Though I think this one is my favorite and I suppose by definition that makes it important, to me at least.
I suppose if we keep running we will eventually circle back into ourselves.
Or maybe just far enough to go around the park and back home to the bottle of vodka hidden in our desk drawers.
*
A Silence.
"Sorry, have I spoken too much?"
"No, no that’s quite fine, we were - as a room - expecting a short introduction, but I suppose this will do."
"Oh, I really am sorry, I didn’t realize we were going for the elevator sales pitch."
"Yes, we were going for something like that. Just a hello maybe, and why writing was important, but I suppose you have certainly talked a lot about that."
"I hope it doesn’t come across as pretentious, I can’t really stand people like that. Though I guess if it does, then I am my own nightmare, really."
"That’s a really dramatic way to put it, shall we pass on to the next… who’s next? Is it you, Tom, yes its Tom next, I believe."
"Oh that’s it, no feedback?"
"Yes, I must have forgot, I think my edits would last a page, but on positives that Pandora box image for history, I quite liked that."
"Me too, I spent last night thinking about it, I suppose I still can’t seem to sleep. Maybe it’s the heartbreak."
"Over which one exactly?"
"I suppose all of them and none of them at the same time. I feel like they’re almost destinations, countries if you like, and I’ve been there once and don’t really plan to again. I’ve got the mementos."
"And your writing, I presume, are those mementos."
"Yes, is that weird?"
"No, no. Well yes, but I think it’s a reflection of your character in general so I wouldn’t worry too much about it."
A silence
"That’s a very objectifying way to put it though, I must say."
"Love tends to make me lose respect for a person."
"And whys that?"
"I just tend to find it hard to respect someone when they’re talking with a mouthful of my-"
"Well, that’s certainly enough of that. So I take it you write about heartbreak? That is our takeaway from this expansive monologue?"
"No, I guess I just write about life, actually and that just comes with it. Unfortunately."
"Yes, I believe that is a good theme, no one can quite write about life the way you do."
"Is that a compliment?"
"No, most definitely not, I would say the same thing if you carved letters with your own spit. I think everyone has their own style and no writing I have read ‘on life’ can be deemed unimportant. It can’t be deemed anything, in fact, it's just there, like the air, lingering, until someone else opens their mouth and disturbs it. It’s a cycle."
"And I guess that’s all it is."
"Indeed. Now, who's next...oh you, yes you, who are you?"
“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”