Words and the Whoever Gathers Them

I heard a musician on interviewed on the radio the other day -- I think it was Travis Williams, but I don’t recall and who it was doesn’t matter much -- and he was asked about a line from one of his songs. He said (I’m paraphrasing) “That’s how I know the words come from somewhere else. No way I’m smart enough to write that.”


That’s how I look at my writing. When I’m really into it (in the flow) it wells up from inside me and it’s all I can do to keep up with it. In those times, first drafts, edits and rewrites are a pleasure, refining something I know needs to be said. The right words in the right places, ideally the best words in the best places. Tone and tense and tempo all fit together, almost without my help, me as scrivener rather than writer. One time I tried googling a phrase I’d heard and only one citation turned up -- mine. I remember writing an article in a law review commemorating a recently-deceased federal judge for whom I’d been the final law clerk. I stopped by the office of a cynical old law professor and he had it in his hand. He looked at me and said, “Marvelous.” I’m not boasting here, I’m merely setting out the record. When I start to write, I write well.


But I don’t write often. I put it off, I find other things more demanding at the moment. I believe I could have made a career as a writer, but instead I worked at the fringes, as a lawyer, PR guy, attorney-editor, all jobs that required writing, but not only writing. I’ve never kept a job where my sole obligation was to sit down and write. I came closest by far two times -- once as a general news reporter for a small but respected weekly paper (I left that job because it was starvation wages and I told myself I couldn’t wait around for a big break) and as a law clerk for a court of appeals (I left that because I had to move away). And no place that wanted fiction --though I might have been a more successful lawyer had I been a better liar. In all those jobs, as in private letters and blogs and the like, the audience is limited and the writing is peripheral, often seemingly cast into the wind.


Not complaining here, either, just the record again.


There seems to be something else at work, too. Though as I said the words flow through me, they don’t flow easily. The image that comes to mind is that of a medium who goes into a painful and exhausting trance when the spirit moves him. It’s demanding of my spirit and it’s draining. So what happens is I tend to avoid it, sort of like trying to avoid throwing up after a night of drinking -- I know it’s going to happen, and I know I’ll feel better after. But I’ll do almost anything to avoid doing it.


Until the spirit moves me (literally, I think). Like now. I had to say this, and once I’m saying it, it flows, words following a pattern I didn’t know I knew. A message of some sort that had to come out, and at the outset I really had only the vaguest notion of what it would be. Is it good? Is it worth reading, much less worth writing? I don’t know. I rely on the kindness of strangers to find that out, and usually they have been kind. I hope you all will be at least understanding.


So that’s that part.



But there’s one more thing. If those writings come from somewhere beyond my conscious mind, where do they come from? The easiest and ostensibly most likely answer is, from my subconcious. But of course I can never know that for sure, “sub” meaning “under,” as in hidden from concious mind.


If one is of a religious or spiritual bent, the answer could be that they come from somewhere else in the metaphysical cosmos, and it is my lot to have to transcribe and polish them. (No, I’m not a meglomaniac or narcissist -- at least as far as I know -- I don’t claim to have written anything seriously profound and I don’t feel special). My personal view is more Jungian, I guess, the idea that we all share a common set of archetypes, and we each tap into them (willingly or not), each in our own way and style. I can even envision humanity as a gathering of weavers of consciousness, each of us drawing threads from our subconcious and knitting them into a lasting framework of human reality. (Are weaving and knitting interchangable? I think not but my source won’t tell me and I don’t think it much matters)


But anyway, and this is what I thought I had started out to say, are there things I’m supposed to write but don’t, or will I be blessed (or condemned) to hang around until I say what I am supposed to say, and then maybe fade away into dust? Or do those things I should have written simply stay unsaid, or does someone else draw that duty?


Is that even answerable?


Enough stream-of-consciousness for one night. I only know these ideas came to me today, and I avoided the writing as long as I could.


This is the result.