Ineffable

One of these days I will learn to keep proclamations to myself. Then again they are great motivators to accomplish otherwise unachievable goals; hurray for finishing a marathon continually running without dropping dead. At the very least I should check my schedule and realize that attempting to start up anything when the next two weeks will be swamped is a bad idea. Inertia supplied the subsequent week or so of ennui and no posts.

I did however have a thought that had started to percolate before my last post that has at least not entirely run away on me. I’m afraid I might have lost the essence of it along the lines of Coleridge with Xanadu (one of the few poems whose explanation by the teacher made sense to me at the time) but I will give it a whirl. Even more hopeful is that more posts have suggested themselves so I should avoid staring blankly at the screen hoping for divine inspiration.

I have several dilemmas with writing besides laziness and outside interests sapping my time. The first is a matter of ego; I have never considered myself more than a competent writer at best. When I say competent I mean that most of my ideas come across as I intend the majority of the time and my writing only occasionally gets in the way of what I have to say. This gets me to the level of all but the worst Star Wars novelists; they however do it for an entire novel. This is a step above where I used to be. Confidence was entirely missing through most of school. It took going to an engineering school full of very bright people who could not write to make me realize while not a Melville or Conrad, I can write.

Being able to write is not enough to convince me that this is worthwhile. The more I dig through the classics and other literature the more I realize that I will most likely not write anything new or innovative or possibly even remotely interesting. Very few ideas have not been recycled enough times to be worn bare. Two ideas jump out and make this thought something worth overcoming. The first is seeing those worn ideas presented in interesting ways with different incarnations be it a creation myth, a romance doomed to tragedy or a Faustian bargain for your soul. When done well they bring out varied emotions and thoughts on humanity and the self. It’s the thought that art helps illuminate the human condition that makes it worth striving even if I know I lack a pittance of the talent necessary to leave my mark on the world.

The other driving force is that even the great authors of the past have struggled with their inability to make the language express what they wish to say. In Heart of Darkness Conrad continually draws upon the ineffable to illuminate his novel. The object of interest, Kurtz is built up to demigod status, and yet the most glaring weakness of the book to me is how paper-thin he comes across when finally introduced. I think Conrad knew this so he postponed the meeting as long as possible and killed him off shortly thereafter. It’s hard to write a character that has discovered great truths, if diabolic truths unless you also possess them.

Conrad isn’t the only author that has these issues. Nabokov also seems to have similar problems. Non fiction writers are also not exempt; futurologists all draw on the past to explain the future. Either we’ll get more of the same to a greater extreme or we’ll find a way to do a 180 drawing on the doomed ideas of a distant age. It is also cross cultural; the French je ne sais quoi, on par with our having it. Myth in general is struggling to give context to that which is at present indefinable. On the other side, quantum physicists resort to ancient Eastern philosophy to try to put into intelligible form what they have discovered about the universe. They then proceed to say this is entirely inaccurate and bad form, but it is done all the same.

I could go on in this vein for quite a while. Douglas Adams had much to say on the subject. Plato and the shadows on the wall in the cave encapsulates it. I guess drawing attention to the idea is what I need to start writing. I think knowing there are limits to what the English language can do and seeing how I deal with those limits is intriguing in and of itself. On that note I’ll leave you with Bruce Campbell describing It.

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Tags: Bruce Campbell, Coleridge, Conrad, Melville