The blog genre. It begins to be a chorus, everyone singing in private sound-proof rooms, though all at once. Seems a good metaphor for how we live. And how we live, how I live, and how I write (i.e. explain things to myself) are inseparable. I remember playing the violin, badly. I would go into one of the rooms when I was supposed to and relish it—I could read a book, be left alone. When I would leave, I would glance at others through the glass and they were actually playing music, and I imagined the music was a lot better than anything I could make. But since someone was playing music, it did not have to be me, anyway.
A friend writes about solitude—it’s a variation on the lonely, and if you’ve ever played the violin you’d know that “variation” can mean VERY DIFFERENT. Solitude is the condition of writing; so many people have asserted that. She says. She quotes Thoreau. I’m dubious. I remember him as being quite self-satisfied and often hanging out over at Emerson’s, trading his crappy beans for the home cooked meals (nearly invisible women, their little marks) and calling it conversation that was vital to the whole history of ideas. (!) Imagine that.
But it might be that Emerson needed him. (“A friend is one before whom I may think aloud”.) I like Emerson. On that basis, I grant Thoreau his necessity, his telling everyone who would listen how alone he was and making them think about solitude (self-reliance being a variation). Okay.
Still, the interlocutor is the thing. The only non-bloated words I can think of for interlocutor (which admittedly sounds harsh, like a train) are ‘friend’ and then ‘lover’. Because no matter how much you’d like to (and perhaps anatomy confuses men on this issue somehow), you can’t kiss yourself. You cannot convince yourself that anyone is listening to you if nobody is. And when someone is listening to you, then . . . (cold and hungry) . . . [I’m listening for, keenly]
skye edwards – what’s wrong with me? (nouvelle vague remix) [try not to think]
“All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.” – Emerson
