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It’s
a common belief that the talent to write is a gift, but on
the other side of that oxidized, sock-smoothed coin lies the
fact of its compulsion, bordering on obsession; a rather unhealthy
state, as mental health professionals would see it. Perhaps.
But to he who has believed in it, who has believed in himself
as a writer, it’s a holy ritual, a necessity.
The digs of psychology
would have us analyze the reasons for this need to transcribe
thought to paper in the most basic of hypotheses:
- Is writing simply self-gratification
(masturbation)?
- Is this drive an attempt at justification,
a pre-emptive answer to an impending existential crisis?
- Does the act thrive on the propagation
of ideas for the purpose of “making a mark on the world,”
of “marking one’s territory,” of confirming
the validity, the golden nature of one’s own gene pool?
- Is this a form of self-flagellation
or repentance for a deeper idea that, after all, one may
really be “nothing”? Therefore, a desperate attempt
to be “something”?
However, true
mania needs no explanation. Roots of the compulsion aside,
every writer knows: it’s all been said / done / written
before. Reason asks, “Why continue?”, but the writer
keeps on. The nature of that cliché beast? There
is always more until there is no more. Ask any
alcoholic, any workaholic, and he’ll tell you: there’s
more—and less—to all of it than meets the eye.
Once the writer has “the
bug” and decides to take it / himself seriously, the
compulsion is malignant, out of control. Words, perceptions,
ideas—like cells—reproduce, gain momentum, with
or without the body’s consent. In times of success, the
writer is a great talent. He’s riding high with a tumor
of gold, diamond-backed herpes, a lifetime supply of the drug
he can’t put down. When frustrated, shunned, pushed aside,
he’s a burnt-out shell of a being, a pouting child, defeated.
In these times, the compulsion leaves an ulcerous void, a
phantom limb, an absence that can’t be filled but with
the writer’s own words. He’s sickly then, vulnerable—in
need of his “stuff” —his own words, his own
productivity—to feel complete, to fulfill the prophecy
of his so-called “gift”.
But there is a “bigger
picture” than the mere continuum of obsessive-compulsive
behavior. The disease metaphors aren’t enough; Schopenhauer’s
had to go and stick his fingers in, too. There’s Individuation
in the game, the drag of the writer’s development—a
progression that he can’t see because of his own momentary
suffering. Forest for the trees, can the writer note his own
progress, his own (de-)evolution, except for in dreams, in
hindsight? It’s a slow ripening (and one that can blind,
freeze him in the act, on a daily basis). It starts, perhaps,
with the jumbled, feral words scribbled down by an angst-ridden
pre-adolescent in an early struggle for identity. He sees
the Truth in the things he has written, recognizes the importance
of the combinations of syllables that have poured from his
pen. But sooner or later, he is ambitious and wants more,
wants to improve. And so he begins studying the “craft”,
trying to pull from others’ words, to learn from their
styles, their techniques. Thus comes the slow progression
away from the Self—or, what he, himself, would have
written—and into the realms of imitation, of mimicry.
Realizing one day, possibly decades later, that he cannot
continue to evolve, to unfold (lest he come undone! lest he
lose sight of himself! lest he fly so high that he never land
again!), the writer, now increasingly selective and desperate
to find his way back to what he deems to be his own truth,
focuses exclusively on the ideas and styles which he holds
to be worthy. He has learned from others, but now he both
uses this acquired knowledge and follows the instinct for
his own words, on the words that he knows to be true—and
comes full circle. He has been schooled, has been hurtled
from the Red Rover chain of his learning into a new direction
of his own making, and has thus been educated, hardened, honed,
tempered, and purged. For the first time since his adolescent
years, he has returned to his own instinct for words.
Perhaps it is at this
point that the writer can see that he’s not borne the
weight of his obsession throughout the long journey without
purpose; the trees are in view again. Now, able to (even partially)
fulfill his own expectations,—impressed, even, by finding
his own road—, his acceptance and celebration of his
obsession—of this tumor / herpes / phantom limb / loss-and-finding-of-Self—precludes
any importance relegated to the chaos of those previous states.
His embracing of the process, the journey, as simple fact
/ history cuts the mental red tape and drives him to pick
up the pen, this time, ith eyes for something else. The writer
relishes, at this stage of his evolution, probing the possibilities
undulating from the egg-go-round of ideas in his head, ovulating
blanks until … bingo! Speared by a cross-wind and the
point of his pen—It’s come to life, after all.
Or maybe not?
Simply put, the pen looping
across the page is like a waltz to him, the clacking of the
keyboard—jazz. Even during his lapses, he now revels
in the fact that there will be failures, that some of his
musings will fall flat, and become, to quote Heiner Mueller,
“the petrification of a hope.” Not everything that
should be written is written, he now realizes. And
that is part of the art, this inability to procreate constantly:
he is not a fish.
It is thus the act
that both feeds and soothes his compulsion, that blind writing
for days on projects which may or may not be realized, which
makes all of it not only bearable, but worthwhile. The writer
suffers from a glad obsession, something that most people
will never comprehend. And when he’s come to terms with
the mania, the existentially hectic caresses and blows, the
slow drag of personal evolution, the mind a frothing dervish,
he may decide to deem himself to be, as others have told him,
“gifted.” And perhaps he reads one day that “gift”
means “poison” in German. And he knows it’s
true—but he likes this feeling, this drug. He enjoys
the act for its sake and not just for its fruits, much as
he liked the strychnine better than the actual hallucinogens
in LSD back in the university days. And he continues to crank
it out—to his satisfaction—whether or not anyone
is around to hear the tree in the forest fall. 
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