I've got a fever...

and the prescription is... more writing?

It may not be obvious, but what I am trying to introduce with that oblique SNL reference is the sensation of writing. Many writers, as you may or may not know, describe the state they are in when they write as a sort of fever; inspiration as this delerium that sweeps over them, obscuring circumstances, surroundings, and pretty much everything but the work itself. My professor in college said that you know you're writing well when you are afraid of what's coming out. Another friend of mine says that he drools. And all of this sounds really good and inspiring and all, though as for myself, I just don't feel it.

I want to. It sounds perfectly ecstatic, what they describe. For as long as I can remember, writing for me has been a mode of understanding. In high school teachers could ask me questions about literature or philosophy until they were blue in the face, and illicit only a dumb stare until I craftily managed to work my way out of the spotlight. But when they assigned 'reader response' activites I could write for hours, lost in my own musings, fascinated by how much deeper my thoughts ran when filtered through a pen. It makes sense that if you turn that process inward, cease with reader response and begin to examine your own self, that the uncertainty you feel may well seem like fear. Picasso argued that it is not the artist's task to find an answer to life's difficulties, but to articulate its problems correctly (at least I think it was Picasso who said that), and problems are scary. The trance state people refer to, I imagine, is the state one encounters when s/he turns off the logic function in the brain, the part that is always trying to put things together, reconcile opposites, and allows life's contradictions simply to be, in all their incongruity. It is not logic or sense (strictly speaking) which imbues a work of art with harmony, but the yearning that exists beneath its contradictions, and which shines through them.

So where am I going wrong? I have tried to write my way into a fever before. I've done a lot of free association journaling in the hope that if I just keep my hand moving, and try not to think about it, something magical and real will eventually come out. What ends up happening though, is that I immediately, and intentionally, go to the darkest part of myself that I know of, and write from my obsessions. It's really not difficult for me to pen my own darkness, in private at least. Rather than a fever though, the sensation feels more like wallowing; the artistic equivalent of building a house with a wrecking ball.

I often find that, looking back, my richest writing occurs when I am most annoyed with a project. When I am agonizing my way through passages and writing about one sentence every five minutes. When I feel uninspired and pretty sure that what I'm writing is complete dreck, that's when the little moments of magic actually happen. There is plenty of magic to be had in both states, I imagine, although I truly would prefer a trance!

What I would like to do--and I've been saying this for a while--is to put off creative projects altogether, and for a few months just emphasize journaling. The journaling can be anything it wants--reflections, stories, descriptions, dreams, etc--but none of it can be planed. I would like to take a good while and focus on narrowing the gap between my hand and my brain, so that maybe, eventually, I'll know what that whole fever thing is about. Right now though, I simply haven't the time.