Thursday, January 03, 2008
Meditations on Writing
It is innate within everyone of us to produce a masterpiece. Within everyone of us, there lies an untapped wealth of experiences, thoughts and emotions when put to words would turn to gold upon fruition. The failure to commit to words, to pen and to grant expression to is what stops us from the grand achievement of creation. We ponder, we think. If only a scribe were present at those moments of contemplation to record and create, there would be an endless text not unlike the greatest works of literature. The purpose of literature then is expression. The greater purpose is that these little pebbles casted into the ocean of art may create ripples enough to make a difference. What we have, had and were, what we think, thought and believed, all bear boundless value. If other were to cast eye upon these stokes of genius, perhaps change would be upon us. Our writings may alter another's reality, lend them courage to thread where they have not journeyed but where we may have sailed. Our testimonies may grant knowledge to those that seek the truth, seeing our mistakes, experiencing them, that they may not stumble as we have had. Perhaps we'll grant inspiration, perhaps we may discourage, sometime we may confirm, affirm or make stronger another's beliefs. The writing cure some may call it, self contained, fruitless experiences that yield no worth. But that is just one perspective, mine is a more hopeful one. By expression, one needs to master a language, but one does not need to be a master to begin to write, to labour. Like the act of birth, the gift of life, non needed lessons, it is all instinctual. When we begin to follow this drive to create, to express, to record, to write, to pen, to type, we may begin to put to rest unsettled thoughts, unresolved doubts, and perhaps grant light to our moments of greatness, our moments of humanity, nothing more, noting less. In fact those that do not master language but yet create, their works are the most untainted, the most true. I know myself that i hide behind my mastery of language in the creations of expression, but that is the doubled edged sword of knowledge, the lost of innocence. It is not that writers and good ones at that, are hypocritical, false or two faced, it is unfortunate that our grasp at a wider vocabulary, and intertextuality that colour our writing. Enriches it rather then taint. It is through writing that we may find the truth, it is through this fleeting transient act that we become immortalised. That perhaps someday, when we are no longer around, that our attempts at changing the world for the better, may perhaps one day become that pinnacle work that brings us freedom, that brings everyone a better place.
Posted by Jo