June 18, 2005
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The Disclaimer I Should Have Made Months Ago:
The thing about this web log is that it isn’t necessarily me. I mean, it is. But it’s edited. It’s me with fewer errors; it’s me with more courage. It’s me using repetition in order to further emphasis my point. It’s me if I could use spell-check, if I could re-read, reverse, re-construct my entire life into the way I want it to be.
As bizarre as it may seem, it’s a lot easier to spill your soul to large masses of people than it is to only one person. When you’re up there on stage, when you’re behind your computer screen, the light is blinding. The light is focusing on you and not on the audience. You can’t even see the audience you’re talking to. And it calms you. And you can talk about whatever you want because you can’t see. You can go crazy with your ideas and your opinions and your experiences and your voice and you wouldn’t be scared because there are so many people, so many people with blank, shadowed faces. So many faceless people that they aren’t really people at all, but listeners.
It’s different when you’re spilling your soul to one person, where the light is on both of you. You actually have to look into that person’s eyes when you’re talking. You actually have to listen. You actually have a harder time admitting the truth. It’s still you, alright. But you’re raw. There is no room for editing, revising because you’re a pro, right? You can talk to an audience for miles a minute. Why not one measly person? A person with a face that is staring back at you, waiting for a reply.
Because you know you can’t backspace your words. Real life’s more like a typewriter in that sense. You could ramble on that typewriter for hours on end. But one spelling mistake and it’s there forever. Unless, of course, you get out a new sheet of paper. But that completely kills my metaphor. Not to mention, it’s a total waste of trees.
My writing isn’t a separate, numb blob that I mold around like play dough whenever I have nothing better to do. I can feel it. It’s a part of my personality. But you can’t expect it from me all the time. My vocabulary, in all honesty, sucks. Sometimes, it takes me ten minutes to write only one paragraph. In person, I say ‘um’ consistently after I laugh at my own jokes. Which is at least four times a day. Seven times if I had to read something I wrote in front of my lifeless Fiction Writing class. I am so human that I feel invincible. I’m such a teenager that when I give advice on this web log, when I distinguish what is right from wrong, I might not even listen to myself. My English teacher says I need to apply myself more and learn the rules before I start breaking them with sentence fragments and ineffective similes. And sometimes I try to convince myself that Van Gogh went through the same thing in kindergarten after he was scolded for painting the sky red instead of the stereotypical blue. And then other times when I know better, I regret starting my sentences with ‘and’. I regret thinking that I’m actually some artistic genius just trying to make a statement. I’m not trying to make a statement. This is just my way of fearlessly, although vaguely, revealing the truth.
But now that I think about it, Van Gogh wasn’t really trying to make a statement, either. The sky really can be red sometimes.
Comments (9)
I love how you write. Fragments, colloquialisms, conjunctions at the beginnings of sentences... it all adds up to make you and your writing style. And it rocks.
that last bit sounds like the essay you wrote for cross.
when my dad was little, he drew a rabbit. but he drew a black rabbit, not a white or brown one. they thought he was crazy. they didnt understand that he had actually seen a black rabbit, he wasnt disturbed.
Amen.
And the English language is beautifully fluid. It can be changed and used as you like.
I do have a book I recommend for you, about grammatical rules. I consider it my literary bible.
-HH
Daryl, I can't read your writing xanga anymore-- your writing makes me feel too inferior.
Kidding. Sort of.
i've all too often realized all of that. it's with a kind of reluctant relief that i read it here.
faith.
this sounds familiar (ie conversation on friday night)
I know what you mean when you say it's easier to spill your sould to large masses of people. I tend to tell complete strangers everything. Like I will just ramble on about some complex emotion I had experienced a few days ago and they don't even know who I am. Because I find it easier to tell people you don't know things, especially people you never intend on getting real close to, than telling my friends things. Because my friends could hold it against me one day, or make judgements upon me that would hurt more coming from them rather than a stranger.
Yes, this is all so true. But I also find that along with being able to spill my guts to a nameless, faceless audience, there are also certain people around whom I just can't help but be completely honest. That is, I'll say things that I would normally 'censor' around normal people so as not to sound like a total whackjob, or just out of fear of revealing the real me. Theres simply a certain quality about some people that just makes me want to tell them everything about myself, and I don't know why. Know what I mean? Anyway.
PS. france is spectacular - and the crepes too!
...i think you're doing great...so refreshing to read...
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