Notes of Expression

My ideas towards writing are changing, reworking themselves into larger shapes that crowd my head and want out. Onto paper, poem, voice. I used to think of writing as a response, tinkered from observation or shot like streams of paper birds after I was passed along to a piece of writing that I'd loved. I crafted my first  story in between reading only Virginia Woolf and The Waves and Mrs. Dalloway and creating a kind of third space that was echos of Woolf's lines. I wanted to get as close a could to her, and I think that in itself is a form of translation. I read that Roxana Robinson does this too, tries to create a kind of language between herself and writing that reflects her thoughts.

"Sometimes I read a bit, to enter into a sensibility that’s useful for whatever I’m working on. I read “The Journals of John Cheever” while I wrote “This Is My Daughter.” I read “Anna Karenina” while I wrote “Sweetwater.” I read “The Hours” while I wrote “Cost.” I read “Atonement” while I was writing “Sparta.” I came to know those books very well. I could open them anywhere and know the passage. I broke the spine of Atonement, though I only read one section of it, over and over.

I read a page or two, then close the book.

This is the moment. On a good day I’m now where I need to be, still in that deep dreaming place, where I can listen."

I see writing as a response, in some cases, with some works. Maybe attitudes towards writing change as we approach each story. We figure the harmless way to abstract surgery, to the removal of this story from ourselves into words.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954), of the French Fauves (a group of bold artists who broke from Impressionism and were christened 'wild beasts'), understands this. His wrote:...my thought has evolved, and my modes of  expression have followed my thoughts. I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there is not one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there."

I'm in the excavation stage for a new story, listening closely to identify what language I'll be using to express this one. I just realized how aptly this blog is named, because I'm constantly going through transformations. For me now, writing is more about mythology. Matisse writes, "What I am after, above all, is expression...I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it." Matisse's thoughts on expression create his mythology, not parallels that never meet, but his own twisting cosmos of expression, life and vision. It's not really a response to life and what he sees, but his own world without filter between reality and perception. It reminds me of Descartes and dreamworlds.

The mythology is the vision and the expression varies. It's apart of a search. In searching for our expression, we borrow from other mythology. Matisse writes on a Cézanne painting that left an impression: "....Sustained me spiritually in the critical moments of my career as an artist; I have drawn from it my faith and my perseverance."

It's a sort of self definition by wonder. Wonder that grounds you and disciplines and gives you the patience to get closer to refining and delving deeper into yourself, your focus, your work. I think as artists, as writers, as creators, we are constantly at war with self definition and that during our formation, as we search and strive, we use our influences as expressions that make ourselves seem more possible.

Now comes the writing.