-amrit singh
Well here we are at the first detour sign. Upon re-viewing my writing in the various publications all I did was edit them. Literally, like, red pen and re-wording. Reviewing, revising, re-visiting. A lot of re's. I'm fully conscious that the work won't be re-submitted. I'm fully conscious that it doesn't really 'matter.' But some of the sentences, I just couldn't let them live that way. So instead of picking some good choices, I just went back and rewrote them. This is as lame as going back and reading a college essay, and making adjustments and grading yourself 10 years after you graduated. You're receiving the lame pointlessness, I gather?
Do I do the same with my photos? I criticize them, harshly, but I don't want to re-shoot them. And the performances, they're never good and everyone that's ever done it knows that. Unless you're not thinking. Stop thinking!
The problem ("I'm a writer, but nobody's perfect." - Billy Wilder) with being a writer, or writing, or whatever the fuck you want to call it, is that you are never done. It is never finished. You can never step back and say, there it is. Even Nabokov admitted that all you can do is try to structure the sentence that fits the best, that does what you want it to the best. "That doesn't mean," he added, "that five years down the road you won't look back and hate it, but there it is." This is fucking Nabokov saying this, man. Na. Bok. Ov.
So here we are and instead of me now being able to pound out 5/9 rhythm or sing up to 5 octaves or be able to shortcut my way through explaining how the interest rate doesn't immediately affect you as directly as you think but it does affect you (actually I guess I could if I had the time), I'm just here asking 'why' again. The answer is: because. You can, and you do. Because if you don't, you're dead already. And what else is there to do anyway.
Doubt in any artistic endeavor is death.
Remember that I said that.
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At the same time I really love that feeling when you put down something for a few months so that you can look at it with fresh eyes.
ReplyDeleteAnd at the same time, but on the other hand...
I've found alot of comfort in learning more wabi sabi. You're saying - that sounds delicious!" but it's actually this really cool an aesthetic ideal (Japanese, natch) that contains within it the notion that everything is imperfect / nothing is ever finished...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
Of course, writing can be finished. It all depends on the parameters you setup. If you have none, it's a lot harder to find an end point.
ReplyDeletePerfection is not the same as completion.
Also, your old essays/poems/shorts only look bad in retrospect if you have progressed in ability. If you can see flaws in your own work, it means you're better than you were when you created it. Or, you, admittedly, gave a poor effort.