specificity and self-consciousness

I have assumed since I was little that we have an obligation when we tell stories to make a real effort to summon up the flavor of the thing. It's imperative to strive for the words whose specificity and lithe grace give over fully what it is we’re trying to say. To settle for “Well, you should have been there, it was great,” is a small but total failure. We need to offer someone attending our words the same chance to be captivated by the thing that got us so cranked up in the first place.

There’s a way of learning as you go, of punting, of reaching into the unlit larder with one hand, feeling around for that stockpiled sensation or memory, even while you’re standing there talking to a crowd in your kitchen. With effort comes mastery: right as you’re about to fess up to your empty handedness, your fingers deftly nab that can of Mushy Peas, a delicacy you were so taken with in Ireland you had to lug home proof positive to show your friends.

I’ve always thought that tuning into specificity – not just “I don’t feel so good” but “I feel the unease that comes from having bitten off too big a bite, and now I dread trying to fulfill my commitments because just the act of starting will trigger blaring reminders of how under-qualified I actually am to do this” - that specificity is of real value. It carries you deeper into every aspect of awareness and aliveness.

I suppose this could be construed as tedious – I don’t really want someone trying their utmost to tell me in what ways their nose feels differently itchy than it did yesterday. There are miracles of discernment to be had here, but by no means do they all need to be shared.

As a lover of writing and of putting to words specific qualities, I find I have a new goal: to discern exactly the place or places in me where there are voices who truly have something to say. Right now I feel I have little control over where my tapping spout strikes when I sit down with paper and pen. Sometimes a sinewy intelligence flies out, pulsing, immediate. Other times that godawful stultifying primary school teacher in me commandeers my efforts, running ripshod on the nuances, and taking pains that every line is clear, every claim substantiated, and plenty of explanatory notes are peppered throughout for the imaginary reader. I have entirely too much of that voice.

And then there is a voice that flows with combinations of words that strike sparks off one another, and with ideas that get to the heart of my questions about living. I wish I could write from that voice always. I don’t know whether I can’t because I’m still inept at finding that voice, or whether that voice just doesn’t always feel like talking. It could be both. It could be something else altogether.

Writer Neal Stephenson says he needs a “slab” of four uninterrupted hours to write productively. Two sessions of two hours each will not be as productive. A four hour period where he’s worried he may be interrupted is completely unproductive. Pianist Helene Grimaud has a simple rule of thumb for what material she will play: “It has to be something I can’t live without.”

They have already found a steady enough supply of that vital voice within; just give Neal some protected time and show Helene a piano and they have their compasses pointing the way.

I still lack the strength to write most of the time without self-consciousness. I notice it when I subtly shift keys in my writing, vaguely aware that someone will be reading it down the line. I don’t yet know how to let myself have the notion that no one will read what I write unless I act to share it with them. Julia Sweeney talks of a stunning epiphany where she realizes for the first time that if she doesn’t believe in God, then the Catholic god of her upbringing wasn’t around her, in her, watching her, privy to all her thoughts. Her thoughts were her own and absolutely no one else would know them without her volunteering them.

I wonder if this sense of God’s omniscience we carry with us stems from the apparent all-reaching power we encounter in our parents when we’re young and artless. They could divine things about us with miraculous accuracy. We grow up with the seed of that experience buried deep inside, the lasting sensation of being watched, seen through, and eavesdropped upon.

An obverse of this is how little anyone actually cares about the minutiae in our lives that our mythical god is supposedly so wrapped up in. Hard to fathom. Even paparazzi have nothing personal against the stars whose garbage they riffle through and weddings they badger. They are caught up in the illusion of fame, and that’s what draws them in. It takes getting older to realize that we are not the center of drama, that drama is not the best reason that we are here. Turns out that much of what we experience as slights and insults isn’t personal.

And so I seek to write with my ability to zero in on the alive voice inside of me being of utmost value, even while who I am - the personal me - is not particularly important.