Why I Write This Thingamajigger
A few words written 30 years ago but which still speak and answer to the today. Such is the miracle of the written word.
I went through a period where I wrote incessantly in my journals. Short pieces, more essay than daily life. I called them and modeled this writing after the French style of the “feuilleton”, originating during the post-revolutionary period of France. Brief pamphlets, texts of criticism, wit, sarcasm, confession, thought.
My favorite collection actually was translated into Greek and won an award in the 90s in Greece. But for the life of me, don’t know where it is. In some box, in one of several places around the world where I keep my books and notebooks.
I recently used OCR technology and AI to digitalize one of the journals I’ve written (the second), during my stint in Corsica and the Czech Republic in the 90s. I’ll be brushing the text up and sharing here from time to time, when appropriate.
This piece is the first page, a compliment to my mission statement for this blog - What Naked And Alive Is About.
A Poet's Journal
-- to George Seferis. in honor of and against his acknowledgement of " the dreadful war nature wages to prevent the poet from existing. "
May 31, 1997
Why attempt an exercise of this sort? This is the question that throbs in the back of the brain stem before all writers begin any work. It begs the question, the bottomless question of existence and meaning itself. It presupposes the short yet so full question, "Why do anything?"
My only response is to say that this work will be an attempt to explain this question. An answer that is a question.
In the tragic as opposed to the trivial plane (and I thank Koestler for the terminology), which all poets must murkily inhabit, we find a world which doesn't offer up answers, a world free floating, with no up or down. no foothold except the feeling of aloneness which persists and squirms amid all the awareness of the trivial. A poet stands back from the trivial and "sees". Interned in this other world, he or she through voice and word attempts to answer the question of "why do anything?". In writing this quiet work of memory and observation I hope to do the same.
The journal or confessional form of writing can be said to be the true forerunner of modern literature. Once the writer sat outside himself and reflected what was true and authentic, the journal was born. I don't refer to the journal as historical antedote or witness , a form of recounting what was done, where one went - a kind of Pepysian document ... No, I refer to it as a work professing to reveal the inner life of a man, real or unreal, whatever those terms so sloppily refer to. It is a search for what is true, not what happened. What happened is only the backdrop, the mirror’s surface upon which the act of reflection and the examination of existence may occur.
In a fantastical sort of way, we can see the links between the rise of romantic love and the appearance of true confessional writing. Prior to the middle ages confessional writing was of a very philosophical or more so, religious nature. Augustine's Confessions come to mind, and though they offer profound insights into the motivations of man, they by no means are reflective of the inner turmoil and authenticity of a man.
Authenticity is the sentiment that truly swells the heart of the modern man who sits outside himself, conscious, and who searches for some truth, some sentiment that may remain. When a man looks for authenticity, he is authentic, truth filled. It envelopes both act and form --- as too does belief. Pascal in his famous retort to Descartes so pointedly knew the truth when he said, " I believe, therefore Iam." An authentic declaration of man's situation, not unlike the truth in the words, credo ut intelligam ( I believe so that I may know).
In my view it is all summed in the words, "Seek and you shall find". The authentic, be it a diary, a confession, a drunk screaming in the church, a nose blowing, tear eyed woman or a man before the rope … all entail and have embedded the truth that in looking for an answer we are finding an answer. Don’t seek, find - said Picasso.
You, you who read these words look and in looking so may find. I who write these words search too. In writing I find. Every loss brings forth something found to the wise man who can " see ".
I lose the words as I write but in thought I find that ephemeral answer that flickers ever so briefly in front of me. This journal, like a flame of love which seeks immersion in the other, seeks to immerse itself in the "otherness", the world beyond the trivial where resides both object and subject, absorbed into one. A surrealist attempt to transcend the falseness of life.
This is my sentence. These are the prison doors I open to you in these few honest observations. "Seek and you shall find, for what good does it a man to have the whole world only to lose his soul." In the authentic words of a journal, the poet offers a view of a soul, the bare and authentic view that must always be behind the brazen, ever revolving everydayness.
Come, turn the page, it beckons, it begs.
The eternal question: Why do I write, or paint, or do anything creative and dubious, that may or may not be meaningful to anyone other than myself? Why, indeed. You've answered well here: Seek and ye shall find. For me, my answer may be as long as your letter, but to jump to this gist, it may be simply because I love it, it gives me pleasure, and when it stops doing, I'll probably stop writing.