Generosity

…with the written word:

Writing is, at its essence, a generous art.

It is, essentially, what I want to do.

But I feel like I’ll be wrong, no matter what I write.

Here’s a reason: the word, “FEEL.”

Here’s another: the word, “I.”

I can’t shake, can’t shake, can’t shake this sense of NOT ENOUGH. Of no match for your mind and the question of whether you’ll be kind enough to like me…to like these words I share.

‘Cause maybe you’ll call me gratuitous. Self involved.

Maybe you’ll ask, “Who cares?”

But I write anyways. Take the gamble that you will care. That you’ll stick with these words, these stories from my mind, my experience. Because through me, you may know yourself.

Because someone once said, “It is through others that we know or love ourselves.”

Don’t ask me who, I don’t remember. Can’t prop myself up on a history of other people’s words.

But I can give my own.

On Generosity with the written word…on Generosity in ART:

Art is generous. The turning of our insides out.

Why do we have to JUSTIFY our credentials to do so?

I feel my words into being, into shape. I cannot quote you Semiotic theories.

I can feel together a sentence or two.

Well what good is that? The inner critic asks. He is trying to bring me to a stop up. A halt.

All I can tell him is I’ll take the theory AND the heart. Let the two marinate together in my mind. Steep in generous juices then seep into the words I write.

On Generosity with the Written Word…with the Female SELF:

I want to be generous, loving with myself.

I want to be generous, loving with my reader. We are connected, you know.

Webster: “Main Entry: gen·er·ous

Pronunciation: \ˈjen-rəs, ˈje-nə-\

Function: adjective

Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French genereus, from Latin generosus, from gener-, genus

Date: 1583

1 archaic : highborn
2 a : characterized by a noble or forbearing spirit : magnanimous, kindly

b : liberal in giving : openhanded c : marked by abundance or ample proportions : copious generous nose — Richard Zabel

The Latin stem gener– is the declensional stem of genus, meaning "kin," "clan," "race," or "stock."

In short, we’re kin. Kindly connected. Don’t ask me to prove how, I don’t find it important to try. What I do find important is generosity and the green light it gives me to write.

To write despite my academic (dis)qualifications. To write even though I’m a woman penning prose about her unconscious self and how predictable is that?

Carole Maso: “The future is feminine, for real, this time.”

I’ll take it. For real this time. Take the risk you’ll brand me. Brand me another emotive woman, writing only about herself.

The risk that if I muster all my memory and shape it on the page, you might find it familiar. Might use it to find yourself.

We are connected, after all.

On the Generosity with the written word and…

Its absence:

Too much academia, it worries me.

Perhaps because past a certain point I fail to understand its language. Start to see it mostly as consecutive strings of impressive, albeit wholly incoherent words. These words are the jeering boys at the back of the bus. The in-crowd designed to alienate, intimidate, include solely the Select Few.

Alongside the Select Few, I feel so small.

Recall old uncertainties – a decade’s dormant fear of the professorial red pen. Of disapproving notes scribbled next to disappointing letter grades. Quantifications of one’s mind applied to the contents of one’s heart.

Perhaps such is why I find the Academy applied to Art similar to the search for new paths with old maps, through aged lenses.

The use of new words to speak old languages.

Side note:

I had a professor not too long ago who continuously repeated the necessity of “writing for one’s readers” instead of for oneself. Sea, a student in his class, brought into workshop a stream of consciousness piece that was neither prose nor poetry. It was, for lack of a better description, more strings of senses (female urges, yearnings, thoughts) than scenes and as such, constituted a kind of unknowing rebellion to our professor, an Iowa-grown authority on traditional stock fiction. He was enraged, offended.

And so, the hybridity of Sea’s work was considered self indulgent, publically labeled as such and warned against.

I wondered why.

Now I think I maybe know.

Now I think Sea’s words shaped a voice less linear, more dreamlike. And believe it when I say many of us have bad dreams. Believe it when I say many of us don’t want to delve into our unconscious selves. The in-crowd in particular.

“You’ve given us too dense a word thicket” the professor said, referring not only to Sea’s writing, but to mine as well. He admonished us for ignoring our readers.

Maybe he was right. But maybe not. Maybe meaning can be made out of splices and sound bites pieced together. From motifs repeated and shapes formed with words more than lock stock sentences and fully fleshed out scenes.

And anyways,

Gertrude Stein: “I write for myself…and strangers”

Lesson Learned: writing that is necessarily Other is angering to containers of the norm. It is also an insurgence, a rebellion, subconscious or staged. In this case, a reemergence of the Female voice, in others, the song of the Oppressed.

What to do what to do?

Well, I am going to insist, yes, insist through violation of some unspoken academic contract that these words gain respect. And maybe by doing so, I can insist my way out of other reductive deals.

Maybe I don’t have to change my writing to undo the pigeonhole it’s shoved into. Maybe I’ve just got to quit apologizing for it. Start insisting instead.

Could it be so simple? That we’re all so afraid of exposure that we build up barrier walls? Prickly fenced defenses out of academic words, intellectual ideas?

That we ward off criticism with the very concepts, the very schools of thought most likely to critique?

To be clear,

I do not want to control you, make you think this or that.

I want to nurture you. Serve you generous potions of words, ask you how you like them and smile with your praise.

Simple, I know. Predictable, maybe.

Certainly not high minded.

Intellectual.

But I’ll tell you a secret - all this intellectualizing, all this masculinizing of the written word… it kills my buzz.