Prose that halts a hundred-thousand-word march

As things here at Thinkers’ Podium approach The Crucial Moment, so many things I’ve been wanting to say have been running up against an editorial wall. For everything I’ve published in the past few months, there are at least three or four other posts sitting there almost finished – things left unsaid. Contrary to the ethic that informed the earlier years of writing here, I’ve been thinking more and more about tone, connotation and above all, emphasis.

(That emphasised final word of the sentence I’ve been using is possibly wearing a little thin for some readers).

Oh, I’ll get on with things at some point. It’s not been a waste.

On more than one occasion a thread I’ve been picking at has turned out to actually contain two or more concepts tightly woven together. Having waited, I’ve been able to tease them apart, threading one or more through subsequent published writings to greater effect.

Reflection, coupled with happenstance, has enabled me to see with more clarity, the difference between the equivalence of method or logic, and vapid moral equivalence. The former required for solution building, the later for empty posturing. These and other realisations were never made as clear in the older, more impulsive mode of writing.

I don’t regret the apparent slow-down. The decreased turn-out has come with quite a few benefits, the above mentioned and many more – I won’t summarize here.

Perhaps with goals more altruistic than just for myself, or for a small circle of readers, this is why I started Thinkers’ Podium. Selfish perhaps, but perhaps without too much equivocation I can call it mission accomplished?

At any rate this isn’t about self-satisfaction.

There are other moments when as an aspiring writer, you’re just dropped stone cold to your knees. I’ll apologise now if my prose seems labored; I’m writing while on said knees.

The use of ‘I’ in any exposition, or retelling, can itself be a long winding tale, and I had such a story ready to unfurl from the tangled dendrites in my skull. From writing in the style of Austral Ecology, to experiments in autobiography and back, my insecurities with the use of ‘I’ could have furnished an extended essay or three. But now Hitchens has come along with half a sentence that to me seems to reach into my grey matter, turning the nest of confusion upside-down, replacing confusion with clarity; crushing an array of concerns down to size.

‘…but in time I appreciated that my fear of self-indulgence and the personal pronoun was its own form of indulgence.’

(Christopher Hitchens, 2011)

This does sum things up quite nicely. I was on the verge of realising this myself, the last step now expedited.

It probably says a lot for his quiet influence on my writing, but I have this image of Mr Neil Whitfield, if he’s reading this, sitting there and musing at how I’m finally working this out, as if he’s known all along. (About time, Neil?)

I can’t articulate to my own satisfaction quite yet, what it is that’s changing in me with respect to the values I bring to writing. Something is stirring and has been for quite some time.

I now know I need to write, that a previous expedition to the bounds of sanity and a subsequent poverty of prose, were in part the result of my not regularly writing; between a bad poem in 1998, and my initial blogging in 2005. The onward march of the word count has seen the poison mostly exhaled.

But more than this, it’s becoming a reason to live, rather than just a means of survival. More a potential contribution to culture (with all the responsibilities and considerations this brings) than just a means to deliver a missive.

Inevitably, these unfurling sensibilities alter the way I view the literary landscape. The march of the words goes on and on, but now the sound of water running over rocks, or the fold of a nook, or the way the sun pierces the clouds is experienced in a manner more Epicurean than stoic. The ethical missive may still be the message, but any poverty of language that accompanies its passage is an ethical concern in its own right.

This looking upon the landscape with new eyes does have the effect of leaving one open to surprise. But if it’s Hitchens’ article in Vanity Fair that’s brought me to my knees, it’s done so only to punctuate a humbling delivered directly before.

I’m still on my knees right now, figuratively speaking.

As I’ve explained before, I don’t like to make ostentatious displays of respect – it devalues the currency. This may make me an arse in the eyes of some, but now I’m more sure than ever I’ve nothing to regret in this approach.

Do yourself a privilege, and read Bully by Ross Sharp. This is what brought the march to a halt. This is why I’m on my knees.

It’s in these occasions I can offer all the respect I’ve withheld from wasting on nicety. I’d hate to ever have a falling out with Mr Sharp because now my respect is his, seemingly intractably; I can’t take it back. Not after this.

Such unassuming sincerity! So open! And it’s just so rare to see anything so obviously difficult, authored with such apparent ease!

His heart, and the truth, just pours out and he’s sharing it!

The prose; I can’t fathom how he managed to get it out in a form like this. It’s humbling.

The march has come to a halt in Sharp Town, and the landscape is to be envied. No dead-ends, no wasted sentences leading you around in cul-de-sacs. Every intersection is punctuated perfectly, leading from dot to dash with just the right cadence to exhibit the architecture without lingering too long. There are no tightly clustered McMansions to spoil the view in Sharp Town, and not a single fucking facade.

If you’ve got any designs for anything similar; to be honest with your readers about anything so difficult, and to project your voice while doing it, Bully is an object lesson in how it’s done.

You don’t need me to tell you this though. I’m just some guy who’s trying to fathom the significance of what he’s just witnessed. I’m flailing at words really.

Mr Sharp has my respect and gratitude for the experience. I’ll try to be a better writer for it.

~ Bruce

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