Portrait of the Artist as a Young Blonde
Lately I’ve been writing every morning for myself before I write anything to share immediately with the world, whether it be a script for NY1, a critical essay, or even a blog post. I’m trying to regain the quiet containment–the sense of meditation and magic–that writing conferred long before before it became so easily shared. The irony of writing about this to you is huge of course, but I’m okay with ironies and even hypocrisies. What I’m not okay with is the hampster wheel of information–the cycle of generating quick prose that’s quickly turned around and digested as we leap back on the wheel to generate more–that deconditions us for deeper exchanges and delights. In short, it’s time to call my bluff and write a book–books, even–which is something I often threaten and boast about doing but then fail to accomplish because I can’t imagine anyone wants to hear what I have to say at such length.
If it sounds like a self-pitying statement, I suppose it basically is. But it’s also honest. The problem with growing up in a house in which everyone talked at once but never really saw each other is that bearing true witness felt lonely and self-erasing. And yet, it’s all I’m really equipped to do. I want to write books that make others feel seen. I want to write for quiet loudmouths like myself and all the other sister insiders who don’t really fit anywhere–and anyone else with imagination and a patent sense of the absurd. So I’m waking even earlier to write into the pre-dawn darkness, to find sustainable fire. The good news: The sun always shows.
