I used to think it was because I wanted to tell stories, invent characters and worlds. To steer these imaginary depictions of who and what I know, into a creative realm to share it with familiars and strangers. It was a way to express philosophy and values, to insert self into different characters and as I came to learn over time, to learn about myself through these characters.
As I wrote more non-fiction and revealed a real world as I saw it, the story telling lacked a narrative. There was no template, not a heroes journey, villains were layered and complex or they existed in plain sight through deed, simply vile. I wanted to walk the humanist path, perhaps ideologically guided by a belief in individual rights. The sacred unique status of the individual. But what is that? Who are they?
We only learn about each and every one, by knowing them. Or, what we think we know on them. It was with this in mind that I would try to look past the demographics and statistical layers which crushes each and every one of us. The human beings who lived in the past are more than a place they were born, they ascend the colour of the skin or the faith their parents held. They are all unique, individuals. To find a human value in this character, these people. To see them as individuals and not as blobs of grey, black and white. To write that.
There is a beauty in finding the hidden nature of some people, whether this is through conversation or observation. By writing them, even in a fragmentation, they are preserved for time. Whether it’s for human or machine eyes to see those words, it doesn’t matter. The legacy of their essence is in some way recorded. They remain in a form of living memory. In writing fiction we take real people, those living and dead, and infuse the fabricated character with their traits and essence. Thus, giving unreal characters real life. Fictional beings through words to be known because in some way we know some of that person in our life.
Our relationships with others is based not on the demographic identity invented to constrain them, rather how we perceive them from afar and should we know them personally, how they make us feel. How we interupt their feelings. How we interact, intimate and share, or avoid. This is pure. It’s the human experience. One can accomplish this through words, how the writer forms those letters into sentences, turns them into a living depiction for our minds to witness and know requires practice and intuition.
The audio and visual artists, journalists have technology or a pen-brush, their vocal chords or instruments by which to convey what they see, express how they feel. To guide our own feelings through sound or imagery, what colour to use where, how to apply the right note in that specific moment, alongside the other notes or colours. What to edit from the video clip, what to emphasise, all are tricks and talents used to promote or reveal. The propaganda of agenda can be as beautiful, and tragic as the artists desire for truth. It’s for us, the audience to disseminate. The maturity of our own wits to interupt what is and what is not. For the most part with such mediums, the audience is passive. Reading is an active exercise.
Words are no different, we lie with omission as much as we do admission. We also tell truth with an absence, so long as it’s adjusted accordingly. To read words from the mind of another allows us to know thoughts, to feel and see, learn what they wish to share with us. Human beings grew as a species by their ability to shed their knowledge as much as we absorb. To tell stories and invent myths, to paint facts on a wall, as eagerly as we could tell a story about the world around and in time, the world that does not exist.
It’s with some irony as many human beings reject and avoid long form reading, and embrace other mediums, including machines to chat with, or to summarise everything for them. Those very machines were trained on the words written by human beings. The ‘thoughts’ and expressions of human beings digested with immense speed by invisible machines to deceive as ‘thought’ of their own through a theatre of artificial reasoning. Those words from humans invaluable, and dying thanks to such conveniences. The machines, word generators provide an ingratiating experience for the human reader, a cerebral hedonism that does not challenge, only affirms. The opposite of creativity and human thought and expression, though can many tell the difference?
Joseph Conrad said, “Imagination, not invention is the supreme master of art as of life.” And he went on to say, “a writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.”
With imagination we can see things beyond the obvious, anticipate and out class even superior foes, find solutions and craft invention itself. It is with imagination that technology was perceived and it was through story telling and many forms of abstract expression, art above all else, that we found answers that otherwise may have been impossible to know. Art, in it’s many forms allows for the observer, listener, reader to interrupt and perceive according to their own experiences and intuition. It’s for them to gain from whatever it is they are ingesting, it may be shallow and entertaining or deeper and invoke thoughts and feelings. For some they can not see because they have put themselves in the way, others see all they can and need to.
The tragedy is that a lot of writing has twisted away from challenging or allowing the reader to live and experience through the eyes of others, to teach the value of multiple perspectives and the balance of emotional awareness. We can learn about past, present and future from fiction as much as we can non-fiction. It’s through fiction that we may walk beyond the dates, locations and names of events and people, where they are lifeless. We can experience worlds which are impossible to visit or, experience our own through an awareness of another.
I was fortunate to have been surrounded by books, my parents read, others in my family had libraries. I grew up in a period when books held value and the written word was cherished, other mediums shared the space but had not consumed the attention of most away from words. In the pages, I was able to explore and learn much. And, when I wrote my first stories with virginal intrigue they were clumsy and over descriptive, naïve and heroic. Practice, and it is with such practice that we learn to improve. What is good, what is bad, is up for the critic to determine. We, those creating and expressing are at the mercy of those who pay attention or ignore us. That is the symbiosis of creativity.
For me it was through the criticism from other writers and those who I trusted, well read individuals, which helped me along to improve. Always more to improve, work on and refine. It’s not just to have a premise or a pitch but to give life to it. Every one has an idea, for anything, having an idea is easy. That’s not creativity. To create, follow through and give life is where creativity runs, and to convey that idea into a living entity for other minds to know, that is art. And it is with discipline that we persists, contemplate, refine and draft.
Haruki Murakami has often repeated that a writer needs a discipline and command of self in both the mental and physical. Contrary to the depictions found in the lives of talented writers such as Hunter S Thompson or Stephen King, where drugs and reckless living define their brand, there is a discipline needed to sit down and type away. To keep the mind alive and free of fog and exhaustion, to endure. There is a discipline in the research, observing the world, patient thoughts and allowing for the right words to come. It is passion. Passion in the sense of the word, to sacrifice. Not love, to sacrifice. One must sacrifice and it was only with some recent expeditions into writing where I learned what this really meant.
The sacrifice was in time, energy and money. To spend countless hours finding people and places to tell their stories. To wait, return home empty minded, to witness and hold another person as they fall apart or see, smell and hear things that can not be forgotten. To what end? To tell the human story, even for the obscene and most vulnerable. It is with discipline that one must make this sacrifice, knowing that such work and effort will only cost time and money, for little profit. Except for the profit of the artist, to know that I did this. And, in doing so, did help some people. Otherwise strangers if I had not met them and listened to their words, saw them as a human being and not a demographic or category.
Such physical command is required in order to carry weight with words, how can one write of such things with soft and perfumed hands? How will the story teller know the world of grime and violence if they have only seen it from the distance of a screen, a depiction and not a reality. The ability to push oneself as an athlete not only strengthens and conditions the body, the mind also. And it’s the mind that makes the human being, human. Without it, we are meat and bones, food for beasts and insects.
We understand that through the written word our minds developed a certain way, it helped us to grow and perceive. That is why the written word is sacred. To know this is not an affront to audio or visual media. Those most often have written scripts, those written by writers who have read and learned to command language. It is with written word that we have been able to restore ancient stories, some of which only existed by word of mouth and even then in segments.
It is with words that the censors insecurity reigns, burning books, tearing out pages, redacting paragraphs, changing sentences and deleting words. The fear is that words may act with viral efficiency in their ability to spread ideas and truth. To infect putrid belief as much as they can pure principles. It is with words that great shames and crimes are unveiled, while also being justified, or explained away. It is with words we understand the world beyond our own mirrors. The censor needs no flaming torch or black marker to blot away words, when books and pages go unread. The censorship is already occurring, the readers have walked away. It is a minority occupation to read, for children, nerds or the disciplined. Preferences indeed, but it has not improved culture, or the world.
Alas, it is said that brevity is wit and as I am all out of wit, I should at least keep this brief. It has often been stated, write what you know, write your truth or as the publicist from the film Skindeep declares, “Don’t say it boy, write it!” Here we are. Write your truth, or the truth as you see it, know it, whether fiction or other wise. Truth is revealing. To write beyond the façade of pleasantries and falsely gentrificated lies, deceptions of sugary myths and insincere content. Truth is most often unwelcome. It is there for those with courage and can read it and know it.
Hopefully some where in the millions of words I have written you feel the human beings in those pages, come to know truths about yourself and others. And, in doing so we find a better world. One, that’s not reduced to summaries and demographics. No place of slurs and depictions of simplistic falsehoods. If I as a writer can tell stories about interesting characters, give the fictional life then I have achieved something great. If I can write living and real humans and put their life into your mind with whatever dignity possible, or for those less deserving of such a word, to be known as human all the same, then I should have achieved what I set out to do. If I in some way made you feel through my words, then it was an intimate exercise. And a compliment.
…Write it.
