Prose in G minor
I should have been a musician. I think it’s something of a blessing in disguise that I’m not, though, considering how atrocious my singing is. None the less, I think I should have been one. Explanation forthcoming.
I was reading an article recently discussing some writer’s ‘writuals’ – habits that they’ve formed over the course of the professional or not-so-professional careers. Whilst every other aspect of their daily working routines varied widely, they uniformly professed to an inability to write if they were listening to music.
I, on the other hand, cannot write in silence. I simply can’t. My obsession with musical accompaniments to my writing is so severe that I form new playlists for each writing project, whether it’s a would-be novel, a short story or even a short poem. Certain songs simply capture the feeling I get when writing about a particular character or a particular story, and I find that listening to them facilitates my ability to say what I want.
The problem is, I want to capture not only that feeling, but also the music. Melodies swim in my head as I write and I try as hard as I can to put them to words, but it’s an impossible equation. You cannot translate music to prose. Still I feel like once I can do that, I will have achieved what I want from my attempts at writing. So I try and try and try again. One of these days, I’ll succeed.
In other news, work is Hell. I apologize for all of the unanswered e-mails sitting in my inbox; I promise I will attend to them as soon as I can. Right now the venture is forking in a million directions and it’s just madness trying to keep everything under control. If we can manage it, then things should ease up soon and I can maybe, hopefully breathe again.
Unrevised therapy
It’s Thursday, which means the weekend is starting here. Don’t ask me why, but Friday is the only day Syrians have off. Seeing as how I’m a stuck-up European, I take Saturday off too so my fragile psyche doesn’t become overburdened and shatter in an orgy of workplace violence, but that’s beside the point.
It’s been a long week. The venture is coming along and we’re working on a few large projects now, which will hopefully pay off in the end. They have required a lot of time, energy and compromises however. I am finding that it is really quite impossible to do any sort of business here and maintain your integrity. I suppose it would be naive to claim that’s something unique to this region or country; I’m sure it’s the case all over the world. Here it’s just a little bit more obvious. Ironically enough, it’s the corruption that is transparent in the developing world.
That’s why I think the Endlessness means so much to me. Now, I like to think of myself as a fairly decent, if inexperienced writer. I know you don’t have much to go on at the moment, and that which is available would suggest otherwise, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. So I was thinking I’d like to add more to this admittedly ill-conceived project this weekend, and decided (against my better judgement) to read over what I’d put up so far. It’s really quite awful, I thought. It reads like a schizophrenic, pseudo-intellectual social critique with no apparent point. For a moment I thought maybe I should just stop writing it and hope that nobody saw it.
Something nagged at me, though. This is what it’s like – writing, I mean. You write horrible tripe at first, barely legible garbage that looks as though someone vomited a mixture of Webster’s, anti-depressants and vodka. It might be shit, but at least it’s honest. You can still see the half-digested pills on the bathroom floor. In that unrevised honesty, it’s the counter-balance to the bullshit inherent to ‘getting by’ in the world – a refuge from the half-truths you swear by and promises you can’t keep.
It’s the ultimate therapy. For all the words that I cannot speak during the day I find vindication in writing. I know it doesn’t excuse it, but it sure as hell helps me cope.
Irons in the fire
My apologies for the lack of substantial updates – since the news of my exemption from the Finnish army, things have kicked into over-drive around here. Every day I’m faced with a new idea or project, all of which sound terribly promising but put together portent a lifetime’s worth of work. Hopefully it’ll quiet down a bit in the fall.
In the meantime, I’ve made a curious observation about the novel which I’ve been writing during my ‘off-hours’, such as they are. I started it just to keep writing while working, setting Saint John aside as it really does require copious amounts of research and fact-checking: things I have neither the time nor the energy to do these days. Anyway, the off-hours project has slowly but surely been growing in the wee hours after I’ve declared my intent to sleep and the inevitable dreamless hours that follow. The other day I had some time to myself in the office and thought to read it over while properly awake.
It’s an awful lot like the would-be novel I tried to write ten years ago. The novel that I desperately wanted to write, but didn’t know how. The novel I thought would communicate whatever it was that I felt was so terribly important that it had to be shared with the world.
Is that a sign? Is that message still lingering somewhere inside me, looking for ways to escape the confines of my admittedly muddled mind? Thinking about this made me think of something else which I’ve often wondered about, but never really knew how to ask: is there one ‘ultimate’ novel in every writer? This novel – whatever it is – nags at me in the hours when I’m too tired to argue with it. I’ve ignored it for a decade for lack of technical skill, ambition and yes, for lack of courage. Now it’s back.
I think it’s something I need to write. I don’t know if it’s any good. Hell, I don’t even know what it is. It’s a difficult feeling to describe; I don’t really know what’s going to happen until I set my fingers to the keyboard and allow them to explain it to me. When I finish for a night, I have to read back to realize what it is I’ve just written. I remember feeling similarly about some poems which I’d written years before I understood them – as if somehow my subconscious had grasped what I’d been trying to say, but my conscious mind had lacked the faculties to translate the images and symbols.
I’m probably sounding very loony at the moment, so I’ll wrap this up after one last point. As I thought about this terribly-important-and-probably-terribly-terrible novel and what it means to me, all of the whining I’ve done about the publishing industry etc lurked behind a shadowy corner of my brain.
It wouldn’t really feel right, would it? If it’s something I feel I need to share, then why the hell should anyone else have anything to say about it? We(would-be writers) get so caught up in the world of publishing, agents and editors that I think we often lose sight of what this is all about; getting your words out to the world. For better or worse, that’s what we’re all in this for. To tell the world whatever it is we feel we have to say.
So, I’ll be ‘publishing’ it here on this blog as I write it, chapter by chapter. It might be great, it might be horrible – I don’t know. I’m not looking for advice, writing hints or helpful tips – it’s just something I want to say. I have the day off tomorrow, so I’ll throw what I have so far up then and continue updating it as I can.
Release
I’m sorry to say that there will be no bitterness or derogatory remarks in this post. This is mostly because this post is not about writing; instead it is a self-congratulatory post and a general notice to those among you who are aware of certain specific details of my life. Should someone find this interesting despite not being part of that crowd, I must express a sincere concern for your lack of hobbies.
My announcement is simple: I have been exempted from military service. This means that I do not have to pack my bags in one month’s time and interrupt everything…again…but can remain in Syria, work on the business and the novel until the cows come home. Or until Finland goes to war, in which case the Finnish government reserves the right to draft me for cannon-fodder duty.
Insert joyously frolicking emoticons here.
