I have so much to write about, and I don't just mean blogging. I have several article ideas that I want to pitch to magazines, plus a few up-and-coming mags that are expecting articles, and I've been writing fiction non-stop for the past four days. There's also a journal that I'm supposed to be keeping for my English class, and a group project (survey and essay) that I'm supposed to do for my sociology/anthropology class.This is the first time that I've been overwhelmed with writing that I want to do, and the pressure to find my happy place within my happy medium is not lost on me.
Lately, my feelings are coming so quickly, so purely, that I feel them with every fiber of my body. But even that last part of the last sentence - "every fiber of my body" - sounds so contrived, so cliche, so outdated. I feel things, sure, but I don't know how to express them. I can't find the mental energy to dig deeper, to find a colorful way of saying what's on my mind. I feel inept and frustrated at my loss for words.
I've been rereading articles that I wrote for the Kingsman three, four, five years ago, and I can't help but feel that my way with words is slowly sinking toward mediocrity. There was once a spark, a definite feeling that my writing persona was someone special, that the words that flowed out of me were arranged in a unique way. Maybe my audience was limited, and maybe I didn't earn any money from writing, but I was undeniably good at it. Now, my audience has definitely grown and I'm earning a little bit from my writing, but I feel like my talent is diminishing. My words just don't have the easy flow, witty tone, and biting sarcasm they used to have. They feel so common, so used-up. It doesn't help, either, that I have such a hard time searching for the right word. I wonder if it's because I'm learning Tagalog that my brain is having a harder time processing language?
Speaking of writing, I'm reading Albert Camus's The Plague, and Jessica Hagedorn's The Gangster of Love. I've always liked Camus, but Hagedorn is a new obsession. I LOVE her. She's the first Filipino woman writer I've ever come across, and everything I learn about her - that she was discovered by Beat poets, that she's unconventional, that she's... what's the word? Gender ambiguous? GAH! I can't find the- ANDROGYNOUS! Yes, that she's androgynous-looking. Everything about her is fabulous, and I want her to be my mentor. After all these years of women picking me to be their mentee, I want to choose the person I want to learn from, and it's her.
I'm rereading each paragraph in this post, and I can't help but feel like this conversation would lead to one of our marathon gab sessions. I miss those! I want desperately to find someone here - someone besides my brother - who I can speak to like that. My best bet is one of my cousins, probably Leila or Lara. If not, then I'll have to wait till Rob gets here. But dammit, I miss actually speaking with a kindred spirit. I miss having face-to-face conversations with someone who just gets me and who I get. I'm wondering if that kind of friendship is possible between two people of such different experiences, cultures and languages. The only people I've met so far with good grasps of the English language are family members, and limiting my conversations to only them seems too exclusive. I have to figure out something to get me out of my communications rut.
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From The Gangster of Love, by Jessica Hagedorn:
ReplyDelete"I never quite relaxed around him, and so I stayed in love longer I than expected. He fulfilled my notion of love, which meant no one would ever get what they wanted. Love for me had never been a source of comfort, but of anxiety and longing, desire and regret. It was a terrible emotion, really. I learned that from observing the way my parents cruelly danced around each other."
Wow. Thank you for that Hagedorn quote. How can four sentences tie together every frustrating, loose-ended experience I've had with "love" so... perfectly? I took in your obsession with her lightly, because until I read that she had no real footing in my world. And now I want more of her. How amazing that was. I will go get that book.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking that the writing we did before, and the writing you (because it ain't we) are doing now, was different because back then, censorship was a foreign nation. It was not innate, it was applied, so the writing process was much more to-the-core. Our automatic filtering process was more like, "quickly catch the falling words and place them into beautiful patterns," and now our autopilot has shifted into "quickly strain the emotions we have to purify and expose." Is any of this making sense?
(I also feel that if we were having one of our marathon gabs, our similar wavelengths would pick up on the missing pieces of my explanation and put that shit together.)
I was recently reading an article (for school, because up until now I've had no time for any leisurely reading. Except David Sedaris, my first book of his, which fits deliciously into my free moments on the toilet and between destinations via MTA. He is like a blogger renowned for his innovative take on paper) about class differences (which has been fascinating me lately) and there was a brief mention of a study done on the differences in language patterns of the lower and middle classes. (The overall umbrella of that study was to prove a point that the education system values upper-class habits, and rewards students for it.) (Hi, fucking parenthesis orgy, merry christmas eve)
So the article goes into the speech patterns of lower class (both black and white) and the middle class children. One difference the sociologist noted was that middle-white (MC henceforth) parents spoke to their kids in 'discreet interrogatory statements', pretty much encouraging their brains to identify objects, emotions, etc and classify them on a braoder scale. Lower-black (LC henceforth) parents spoke to their kids in mostly imperative statements, or demands. (their argument was that MC kids are taught to be bosses, and LC kids are taught to be bossed). Tangent. Then it goes into saying that LC have a "limited" speech pattern, and that Upper/MC have an "elaborate" one.
It wasn't about vocabulary ability or anything, but it was more on HOW things were said. Lower class people live in a state of community, a "we" versus "I", and because that state of community exists, they are taught to make more direct, to the point statements (that pretty much speak from the core). So they are on some straightforward, blunt, shit.
On the other hand, the upper class values the "I" over the "we," so they have to choose their wording in a specific way so that the "I" because less individualistic, and the listener can pull their own personal experience out of what you're trying to say. They have to select their lexicon in a way that makes their statements vague enough to be understood by everyone they're speaking with, so that THAT person can plug in their own individual experiences. "LC" who were not taught to do that do not have that ability (which is valued in certain schools and a lot of the upper-echelons of the business world), and because of its sense of community which goes unsaid, it is not necessary for them to learn or reproduce. Did any of that make sense? (I'm in socio-psych mode, so please bear with me. you know how i get when I ramble about something that touches passion)
ReplyDeleteWhat I've noticed from working at ***, which is an incredibly upper-middle class society, is that wordplay is the most essential talent one can have. It is the ART of censorship that the upper class has mastered. What I've also noticed is that when I first started here, I was silent. The "filtering" process was an effort for me, it was new, it was not automatic, so I completely lost my voice.
The same went for me when I realized how many people I actually knew was reading my blog. I shut that shit down and stopped writing because I lost my voice. Once the concept of censorship came in, my emotions abandoned me and I was unwilling to grasp at them with such impulse and swagger, confidence, pride in them. All that disappeared once I realized that I had to somewhat filter my raw into an acceptable format.
And the more invovled I become in the upper class, the more permanent and automatic this filter became. And I've abandoned writing the way I used to as a whole, because until I fall out of this world and dive back into the comforts of the lower class, I migth not be able to get that voice back again. I'm kind of prodding around for a newer voice that could somehow incorporate this insta-filter and still be strong enough to press against an extreme, a relatable one that speaks to your core instead of your frontal lobe.
All that said, exhales, (this would have been merely a blink in our real life convo, goddamn son I miss the shit out of you), do you think it could be possible that you're seeing your words getting "blander" because you are in instafilter mode? You're a mom now, and you're also putting them through the additional instafilter of grammar choice and word placement, double strained to be pure enough to pass through their pores and sink into their surfaces, for them to blend in as they see fit?
To be honest, I find no bland in your paragraphs, and I wouldn't be too frustrated; second guessing yourself is a 3rd filter you place onto your thoughts; writing every day is a great idea and I'm so happy to see your human impulses be translated into one focus. You gonna have that extra concentrated drive, and everything happens at the time it happens for a reason homie. have faith, and roll your new voice around your tongue, get to know it and taste it and make love to it so that you can predict its next move, and play a part in inducing it. Treat words like its making love and you're gonna own that shit quick. trust.
No-apologies ramble. Fuck that shit.
Xo.
J
GOD, I LOVE YOU!!!
ReplyDelete"Our automatic filtering process was more like, "quickly catch the falling words and place them into beautiful patterns," and now our autopilot has shifted into "quickly strain the emotions we have to purify and expose."" - YES, YES! A MILLION TIMES, YES!
I feel like I talk mostly in interrogative sentences with Riley, and when I think about it, I'm pretty sure my parents spoke to me in mostly interrogative sentences. I vividly remember conversations I had with my parents when I was four, five, six years old, that all started from a question they posed, "What's [whatever's on TV] doing? Why are they doing that?" or "What's your favorite color?" I think that exercise taught me to express myself from an early age. Hmmm... interesting. More points to Mom & Dad.
On U/MC speech: "They have to select their lexicon in a way that makes their statements vague enough to be understood by everyone they're speaking with, so that THAT person can plug in their own individual experiences." I TOTALLY get that. It brings to mind every actually affluent person I've ever met, and the way they know how to universalize those parts of experience that seem, on the surface, to be completely personal. Conversely, when I think of the colloquial way in which LC people speak, there is usually a defiantly ghettoized lexicon; use of neologisms, idioms and dialectic words have narrow and specialized meanings. Now that I think about it, when people fail at faking their class status, these are the things that stick out: either an inability to universalize or an inept grasping of the hyper-individualized vocabulary.
Maybe you're right; maybe I just feel like I sound bland. Maybe I'm just lamenting past time, and a way of life/communicating that doesn't fit anymore. Maybe that previous way of doing things wasn't necessarily better, but it has the gleam and glow of nostalgia, so I'm mourning its loss.
ReplyDeleteWhatever it is, I feel like, there HAS to be a way to strike a successful medium: a way to communicate that feels at once "insider" yet simultaneously universal. I just know that, once I find my emotion, I can't help but filter it with the grammatical rules that are drilled into my head in English class; I wonder if the coy and meek attitudes of this culture are seeping into my system as successfully as the grammar it praises. Now, when I write/feel/act outrageously, it feels hyped, like I'm somehow placing more emphasis on the outrageous rather than the context it was supposed to highlight in the first place. This difference makes me tone down and filter even more, until my feelings/words are low and loud growls and snarls instead of high-pitched yelps and snaps.
Is that what you felt, when people read your words and knew your thoughts? Because I don't feel guarded, just changed. And it's this change that startles me.
Anyway, it's 6 a.m. on Christmas morning, and I've been pulling double-duty for the past four hours, typing while putting Riley back to sleep every time he wakes up. I hope I made sense... Merry Christmas, gorgeous! Hugs and kisses to my sister from another missus!
XO-M