an essay on writing
I'm going to write an essay on writing.
Part One: REVIEWS.
I feel completely unable (or unwilling) to be affected by reviews. For a few reasons.
(1) Because a person who would write a review already has a worldview that is distorted, or 'narrowed' (not all-encompassing). Distorted because they view art in terms of 'good' 'bad' 'important' etc. Which is distorting because art (to most people) encompasses everything, and everything has no rules, worldview, or philosophy. Therefore when I see a review and let it affect me (whether the person says the writing is 'good' or 'bad') it is like going to a calculator that is broken and gives wrong answers and using those answers to do concrete things in real life with.
(2) Increasingly I feel that writing has only two, or maybe three, uses that aren't anti-itself, distorting, or unbased in reality. One reason is to write alone, and read it alone, in order to dispel irrational angers or anxieties, to console oneself from death or depression, or to allow oneself to see a situation objectively and therefore become a 'better' person. Another reason is to do those three things to people you are in contact with every day and/or in a relationship with. The third reason is for money. Reviews do not affect the first two things. They affect 'money' I guess, but 'money' cannot console (in a long-term way; though life is short-term, so maybe money can solve all problems) against death, depression, or dispel irrational angers, anxieties, etc. so it comes as a secondary thing; and so you can't change the reviews without compromising the first two reasons.
Here are the other reasons that people say writing is 'good'; and why they don't make sense to me.
So I can achieve immortality.
Part Two: STRIPPERS
Strippers consume very little resources to do what they do.
They use only what they concretely own. Their own body and face. If 'ownership' means that it exists inside your own skin, that only you can feel if things are happening 'within' it, and that other people cannot 'know' it.
Ownership in literature is very strange to me. In the current moment, in the universe, if you take a photo of it, or a recording of the atoms in it, you will see many humans and many books and many poems. You cannot point at a person in this 'photo' or 'recording' of the moment and point at a poem and concretely link the two. You cannot 'tell' who 'created' what. There is nothing that links the poem and the brain.
Why is there ownership? So the 'identity' can assert itself, so that a person's consciousness can justify itself. I don't know what that means. I'm just going to type some more sentences. So that corporations can make money even off non-concrete things.
Strippers. Strippers don't use up resources. They can explain what they are doing. They are relieving pain and suffering concretely, without taking 'false' 'ownership' of anything. I don't know. Strippers are better than writers, is what I'm saying. They don't distort reality, they are able to justifiably think in terms of 'good' 'bad' or 'better,' they are able to explain themselves, they do not want to acheive 'immortality' with what they do, etc.
This essay is fucked. Just read what I already typed and don't think about it then go away. Don't argue with me. I admit most of this was wrong. It was a waste of my time and yours if you read it. Just go away quietly and go to sleep. Thank you. Good night.
Part One: REVIEWS.
I feel completely unable (or unwilling) to be affected by reviews. For a few reasons.
(1) Because a person who would write a review already has a worldview that is distorted, or 'narrowed' (not all-encompassing). Distorted because they view art in terms of 'good' 'bad' 'important' etc. Which is distorting because art (to most people) encompasses everything, and everything has no rules, worldview, or philosophy. Therefore when I see a review and let it affect me (whether the person says the writing is 'good' or 'bad') it is like going to a calculator that is broken and gives wrong answers and using those answers to do concrete things in real life with.
(2) Increasingly I feel that writing has only two, or maybe three, uses that aren't anti-itself, distorting, or unbased in reality. One reason is to write alone, and read it alone, in order to dispel irrational angers or anxieties, to console oneself from death or depression, or to allow oneself to see a situation objectively and therefore become a 'better' person. Another reason is to do those three things to people you are in contact with every day and/or in a relationship with. The third reason is for money. Reviews do not affect the first two things. They affect 'money' I guess, but 'money' cannot console (in a long-term way; though life is short-term, so maybe money can solve all problems) against death, depression, or dispel irrational angers, anxieties, etc. so it comes as a secondary thing; and so you can't change the reviews without compromising the first two reasons.
Here are the other reasons that people say writing is 'good'; and why they don't make sense to me.
So I can achieve immortality.
(This is immoral, it doesn't even take into account the pain and suffering of others; also it has no basis in reality and you can only want this if you haven't thought very hard objectively at any time in your life.)So I can be a great writer.
('Great' has meaning only in your own head. When you live your life with goals that have meaning only in your own head you are denying that other people exist, feel pain, or suffer.)So I can achieve my dreams.
(Really, you have no dreams. Your dreams are there because in 2nd grade they talked about astronauts and heroes and things like that. 'Dreams' is a word that means 'distorted version of reality.' So that sentence is 'So I can achieve my distorted version of reality.' This is bad. To live morally a person should base their life off reality, not base reality off their life. 'Reality' meaning either from all perspectives equally or from no perspective, meaning with no preconceptions or all preconceptions equally. I can use the word 'should' in that sentence because I said 'To live morally,' and earlier I defined 'morally.')So I can console others.
(This is a very complicated thing to accomplish. To publish a book you need to use a lot of energy. Books need to be printed. Books need to be shipped. Ink, etc. Corporations will profit from this. The environment will suffer, etc. No one knows if consoling one human for whatever amount of time is morally equal to or greater than killing one tree or bird. This, like the word 'great,' is something able to gain meaning only in one's own head. Therefore if you think you are consoling people (net consolation) with your writing you are like the person who wants to be a 'great' writer. Your actions show that only you exist, that pain and suffering does not exist for others, etc. And after you solve that problem, if it's possible, you then need to take into account animals, plants, computers, artificial intelligence, etc.)Okay, those were the few reasons. Two reasons.
Part Two: STRIPPERS
Strippers consume very little resources to do what they do.
They use only what they concretely own. Their own body and face. If 'ownership' means that it exists inside your own skin, that only you can feel if things are happening 'within' it, and that other people cannot 'know' it.
Ownership in literature is very strange to me. In the current moment, in the universe, if you take a photo of it, or a recording of the atoms in it, you will see many humans and many books and many poems. You cannot point at a person in this 'photo' or 'recording' of the moment and point at a poem and concretely link the two. You cannot 'tell' who 'created' what. There is nothing that links the poem and the brain.
Why is there ownership? So the 'identity' can assert itself, so that a person's consciousness can justify itself. I don't know what that means. I'm just going to type some more sentences. So that corporations can make money even off non-concrete things.
Strippers. Strippers don't use up resources. They can explain what they are doing. They are relieving pain and suffering concretely, without taking 'false' 'ownership' of anything. I don't know. Strippers are better than writers, is what I'm saying. They don't distort reality, they are able to justifiably think in terms of 'good' 'bad' or 'better,' they are able to explain themselves, they do not want to acheive 'immortality' with what they do, etc.
This essay is fucked. Just read what I already typed and don't think about it then go away. Don't argue with me. I admit most of this was wrong. It was a waste of my time and yours if you read it. Just go away quietly and go to sleep. Thank you. Good night.
12 Comments:
I agree. This was mostly stupid.
If you look at writers and writing from space it's likely that you're not getting enough oxygen to your brain. Come a little closer.
The brain is both electrical and chemical. Computers are only electrical. Electricity takes more energy than chemical reactions. My point is that if you're trying to turn your brain into a computer you may be working too hard.
The results have, so far, been interesting. But the 1st part is somewhat repetitive and then strippers? Best to delete this, now.
Also, reviews aren't for writers they're for everybody else. once you recognize that why should you be affected?
Reviews written by "reviewers"--that is, people who are primarily remorae rather than sharks (as opposed to, you know, sharks that from time to time pen a review)--are totally suspect for reasons that Martin Amis describes in the opening pages of "Experience": the reviewer works in the same medium as the author, but is "lower on the food chain" and knows it. This is even setting aside the personal vendettas that reviewers often have. And as Woody Allen said, you can't let yourself feel proud of good reviews because then you'd have to feel ashamed about the ugly ones. Okay, I haven't slept, so I'm just quoting people here. Time to work.
You use this rhetorical gambit often, Tao: taking a deliberately contrarian position on something, and then finish up by saying, "I don't know what I'm talking about--sorry I wasted your time."
If it's the case that the essay was both a waste of my time and a waste of yours, why did you bother posting it?
Just to see what would happen?
The reader of this essay is faced with two choices: to regard you as either (A) stupid or (B) disingenuous.
Either you have no firm conviction about what you're talking about, or you do, but you don't want to bother explaining yourself. Either way, you need someone to come along and give you swift kick in the head.
Reasons to write beyond the obvious ones:
(1) In literature, one has the freedom to explore those incohate, generally unspoken ideas that, in our everyday lives, one is obliged to "pass over in silence." Through imaginitve writing, human beings are give license to attempt to express the unexpressable.
(2) In literature, human beings are granted sanctuary from ideology. Writers are free to write ony for themselves, and readers are free to read purely for their own pleasure. In very few other spheres of human existence are the prerogatives and tastes of the individual priviledged over that of the masses.
(3)Literature and writing represent an attempt to create a public interiority. that is to say, once a thought has been written down and read, it has entered into a larger domain of generally circulating thoughts. All humans are free either to entertain or ignore this thought after it has been made public, however, one is loath to imagine the mental life of a society in which human beings are discouraged to entertain any thoughts that come from outside their own heads. So long as new thoughts are constantly entering circulation, and the option of thinking about them is available, individuality can thrive.
(4) Only in writing can selfishness and selflessness be one in the same thing.
Now, go take a bath, wash off all that grimy adolescent nihilism, Mr Lin, and return with something good to say.
i was talking about moral reasons, chief, not descriptive, 'here are some things that describe writing' reasons
also, i want to say that i've noticed something, that when i admit something i write is wrong people come here and say that i'm wrong
when i write something wrong but don't admit that it is wrong, people come here and say i'm a smart asian
it does not matter if the rhetoric is actually wrong or not, it matters only if i say that it is wrong or not
it is like if james tate told you his poetry was silly you would say, yes it is silly
but if james tate told you his poetry was profound you would say, yes it is profound
also this post was fucked because it contained rhetoric, not because it had strippers
i probably shouldn't have typed that you wasted your time because all time is wasted or else no time is wasted, to a person without preconceptions
in conclusion, life is great
I find Chief's post thoughtful and appealingly haughty. Chief wrote a good comment about the Departed on my blog the other day, but the post was too far in the past for me to muster the energy to respond, although I wanted to, largely because the Departed is so great I pretty much always want to talk about it.
A friend of mine was a stripper for two years. Being a stripper is like dipping yourself in other people's shit, and it doesn't wipe clean...
This is fine for other people, but bad for the stripper.
This isn't a value judgement, it's a fact. I have special training so I can tell these things.
Do what you will.
Also, the stripper is not giving people what they want, or doing any kind of service. People don't know what they want. Read Burrough's The Western Land to find out what people want. A writer can tell you...this is the true value of a writer.
this is a blog.
a blog is a thing you write in and click publish post.
there are no editors, or publishers, or agents, or anybody but you and the computer and the internet. And you writing something into that little box and clicking publish post.
it is a blog.
a blog.
it is not an article in Harper's which has no affact on reality either.
it is a blog post.
not an essay.
a blog post.
sometimes people post thoughts in blog posts.
everytime that happens some asshole comes through the internet and says something like shut up, quit thinking, die a horrible death like myself, look at my thoughts that have nothing to do with your blog post.
My book weighs more than you.
A CLICHE GRENADE IN YOUR ASS!!!
Your mother doesn't love you.
concerning strippers:
ALL JOBS AFFECT THE HUMAN MIND.
If you work at a factory you will become an automaton that is completely numb to the world.
If you work at McDonald's and are above the age of twenty you will start to hate yourself and gain weight on purpose to piss off your husband.
If you become a famous rock star you will start doing hard drugs and get into car wrecks and become really egotistical.
if you become a lawyer you will be a snobbish prick and play golf.
If you are a high school teacher you will be very excited for like three years and then slowly drift into raging bitch mode till death.
the question is begged: Was the lawyer a snob before he ever passed the BAR? Was the fat self-loathing Wendy's manager self-loathing before she became the wendy's manager? Was the car salesman shallow and full of shit before he became a car salesman?
You've made a good, worthwhile observation, Tao, one that merits a gold star.
I've also noticed that reviewers are easily swayed by the rhetorical equivalent of the Jedi mind trick.
If in the course of an interview, a writer says, "my work is about death", then, forever after, every reviewer will remark upon your work as "death-haunted" or "morbid".
the force has a powerful influence on the weak minded, I guess.
Also, since Jonathan Safran Foer is so unpopular in these parts, I thought I'd offer you guys the opportunity to find him and kill him.
He spends most mornings at a gourmet coffee shop in Brooklyn called Ozzie's, located on 5th avenue between Carroll and Garfield streets.
Surely you all know what he looks like.
He does have a wife and child, but that shouldn't deter you guys from giving him what he's got coming to him.
Order a really, piping hot espresso and then throw it in his face. If he melts, then he really is a witch!
that was a good comment about foer
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