We’ll start with the obvious. By first impressions what follows is a wall of text- no paragraphing, no breaks to make things easy on the eye, zero regard for ‘readability level’. Now such things- as we have learned from messageboards, forums and comment sections- are usually the hallmark of the sloppy writer, the careless thinker, the unrepentant bloviator.
Usually, but not always.
See
has made a bold stylistic choice here so that what comes across through the style and the content both is a searing and soul-searching honest and true self-examination. By departing with formal niceties (which is done in an artful and deliberate way) he gets straight to the heart of the matter, a writerly equivalent of saying ‘lets dispense with the nonsense and get down to brass tacks.And in a world of smoke and mirrors, this is something we need more of.
Enjoy.
I look back and see that I used to want to prove things. I gathered proofs. “See? There it says this, here it says so, thus: …” The style, the tone of voice—it is dry, and altogether boring. Not that it cannot be done, or done well, but it cannot be done by me. No wonder I never truly finished a whole volume of that kind. I attribute it to the very lack of a defining shape in the eventual creation: an undefined medium. My digging around was never the problem—it served me well. But I was a painter overwhelmed by the so many things to put on canvas that I could not even bring myself to decide on the color. Much better to let the work sing indirectly—to let it bear some interest as it finds its way into the world! There isn’t a thing to prove, this is simply so. The less I try to prove the better I write. Isn’t it the old secret of the trade that cannot be taught? That one can learn from a master—or from example—but must never copy him, unless life should be a forgery. No, our lives are enough, our view is sufficient, our perspective adequate, for that is the eternal jiggle alive within our being. We must become like a sponge, and simply soak in our encounters, absorb our curiosities! After that it is only a matter of selection. That is the real work; the honest labor of spending one’s life. Dishonesty is in conserving it, in providing no more than placeholders. What stand I to gain from mere pointing to the words of others—of those who dared speak, that I shelter behind them? Nay, do not copy. Not only am I then a bore, but afraid to live life on my own turf and terms, of standing to defend my own decisions and opinions. Those I at least care and am able to defend! How easy it must be, yet what encumbrances it must involve, to stand only behind words of others, that it may all be dusted off the arms when difficult questions arise. Why are we as negligent captains that are first to leave when the ship is sinking? The primal fear of taking that step afront the herd. Our cowardice departs us from the authenticity of our own life. It is in that regard better to stand for one’s own wrongs than to follow another’s right. At least they be true—truthful wrongs. Genuine, I mean. I write and care not for what is made of it. It suffices, to me, that and what I write. The shape becomes the truth. Not by necessity the truth of anyone else, but the truth of my own voice. That is all I can, all I want, and all I must. The essence of art is to produce what is not a forgery. I’ll let myself seep through the words. More I cannot do, and all else I would not get done. It is the greatest task I can undertake, together with being the only. There are no obligations. Our enjoyments are our own and we may do as we will. To think there is one way alone, one thought, one view, is to strangle ourselves and limit the world—and why do that? We would suffocate in the grip of boredom, deficient in vigor. Wanting more and more, accepting less and less. All the while we forget to be sensible, to take life as it comes and make it where it meets us.
Loved it! I always look forward to your essays, Levi. And I quite liked this phrase: “The purpose of art is to create that which is not a forgery”. I am always skeptical of people who’ve dedicated their lives studying the work of some other man or woman, and this dedication to something they did not make feeding their ego to the point where they become extremely arrogant. While I don’t usually agree with the following saying, I think it applies well in these cases: “If you can’t do it, teach it.”
‘to take life as it comes and make it where it meets us.’
👏✍️