This is why I write
(For the same reason I read: just existing doesn’t seem to be enough)
The premise
“I wish you could see this,” I whispered. “What is it like? Tell me what you see, and don’t leave out any details,” she said on the other side of the phone. In front of me, something so spectacular I didn’t know where to start.
“It’s a bunch of people dancing in unison, begging for more. They’re all wearing similar clothes. Black, they’re all in black or very dark blues or greys… It’s scary and beautiful. I feel scared and delighted, I think I might cry out of beauty,” I said, a bit louder.
I was talking about a mass of people who aren’t related. From different backgrounds and upbringings, yet at that moment, they were being the same: one movement, one mission, one place and time: here and now. The chills that human cooperation gives me is what I wanted to talk about. Nothing gets me like multiple beings acting like one.
“But you mean just people dancing in a club? You’re in a club, right?” she said.
“Yup.”
The obstacle
I guess I write for the same reason I read: just existing doesn’t seem to be enough.
Or, as Susan Sontag put it: “What is the point of experiencing anything if you are not going to tell it? But telling is always inventing.”
Which raises many questions. Do we live for the truth? Do we live for the lies? Do we live for what falls in between those two? Stories.
The will
My therapist prescribed me two weeks of no writing. “Not even text messages, Ale.” I giggled. “I know you will use text messages to write things you don’t want to forget because you want to write about it in the future. “What if someone texts me?” I asked. “You call them.”
“What if I’ve lost my voice? What if it’s loud where I’m at? What if this person…”
“You copy-paste the following: Hi! I’m doing a writing cleanse because I want to discover that life is still worth living without the narration I tend to attach to it. Do you mind jumping on a call? My therapist made me do it. Sorry for any inconvenience.”
Two weeks later, after my “cleanse” was “over”, my therapist asked about the experience. “So, how did it go?”
“I’m a new person now. The first two days it was terrible. Totally unbearable… But on the fourth or fifth day, I could see life as it is: random events happening out of causality and volatility. Beautiful. I’m in love with the world now. I’m a new person now.” Of course, I was lying. Or tweaking reality. Or writing a story.
She nodded, with a big smile on her face. The joy she felt! She had saved another neurotic from the suffering of the narrative mind!
A week later, I expressed my will to discontinue whatever treatment she thought she was giving me. My long text ended with: P.S. I’m sorry. Despite all my efforts not to, I keep writing.
The latitude
“What made you choose writing?” they* ask, as though writing were a choice and not a compulsion that usually gets in the way of living, because I need to study life through writing.
(*) They: people I barely know. I usually find them at dinner parties or social events I’d rather not attend.
I tried very hard not to become a writer. I toyed with the idea of becoming a surgeon, a DJ, a psychologist, a researcher, an actress, a 9-to-5 girlie, an unemployed bum who’s completely lost and doesn’t know what to do with her life, a model, a housewife… But try to break the news to the seven-year-old girl writing plays and short stories in her bedroom. “You never became a writer, love, sorry. I was just not committed to myself. Maybe next time, if you believe in reincarnation.”
The depth
Using consciousness to try to understand consciousness is like trying to use your eye to see your eye. You’re setting yourself up for failure.
This is why writing comes in handy. You employ a resource far more limited (language) to capture life. You’re still setting yourself up to fail. But at least you create something valuable. Purpose.