h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi dancingBuddha

I thought I'd stop by off the beaten path for a chat. You seem to have some interesting ideas about the nature of art and expression. Or rather the limitations of such. I think I both agree and disagree, but that's probably quite presumptuous since you've stated no opinion and I'm just picking up shadows and hints from your posts in the AWW.

I'll sketch an outline of my views for the sake of having something to talk from. I do see writing as centering around self expression, always actually whether the writer intends it or not (I don't think it is possible to remove oneself from one's writing) but hand in hand with that (and again whether one intends it or not) I see writing as communication. I think that a piece of writing is a converastion, or perhaps an interaction, between the writer and the reader. Meaning in this context is always negotiated it has to be since the writer cannot control the meanings a reader will bring to the text and similarly the reader can never be sure that they have interpreted the text in precisely the way the writer intended. I don't see that this negotiation process, tricky though it can be, invalidates the real and honest communication that goes on between a writer and a reader.

If I write something I am saying 'here is what I think' or 'here is a little bit of my world, a bit of myself...what do you see there? What do you see of yourself and what do you see of me?'And as I do that I know that there will be readers who see none of that, who catch the barest fragment of what I was trying to say. But that's fine, they will still get something from it even if it is only a passing thought or a few moment's entertainment. It's fine if ninety nine out of a hundred readers pass by like that because then along will come the hundredth and they will read it and see. It will unfold for them and they will understand the meanings that I intended and all the ones I did not know I had included, the shadows of myself that cling to each word carrying the shapes of the ideas that I thought I had failed to pin down. We write and we reach out. Some people don't reach back at all, some people try but their hands don't quite reach ours or thier fingertips just brush ours. Then some people reach back as fully as we have reached to them and their hands meet with ours and clasp so firmly that the sound of it must echo for miles. Some rarer few again meet our hands like that and never let go.

The really odd thing for a writer is that they will never (or very rarely) know the people who they have touched or how deeply they have affected those lives. I know that this is so from my own experiences as a reader. I know the authors who hold my hand through life now and I treasure them. When I think of the most important of them (important to me you understand I make no value judgements for how others may see them) it pains me to think that they have woven such changes in the very fabric of my being and that they will never know it and I weep for all the times they doubted themselves because they sat at the other side of the piece of paper and so they could never know.

I've rambled on quite enough. I think you have interesting ideas, and I like the you I've seen through your writing, though I think you are not without your painful shadows. I'm interested to know your thoughts.

N

Oh, I do write and if you want to read something of mine there are links from this page: A2023741

Some of them are finished and some are works in progress.

N

Nadia,

About writing. Of course it is but self-expression! Why else would one want to write? I know that I write because I want to, because what I have seen must needs be said. I write because I cannot help it. Perhaps I want to talk to myself, to see what my words sound like, and whether I have said what I wanted to. Above all I want to know what I haven’t said, or haven’t been able to. It’s like looking through the eyes that stare at me when I stand myself in front of a mirror. Mine, yet not mine. And I wonder that what I wanted to say has been said at all! It’s a game, the writing; a struggle to capture myself in words, to quantise the most intimate, personal of thoughts. Sometimes I write just to play with words, to see if the play reveals parts of me I had not suspected exist, and to see if I can produce visions of me that I know do not exist. It’s a game – I win sometimes, and sometimes I lose – but I will never cease to play it, because the playing is everything. And I play the game not just with words, but also with pictures (when I can struggle enough to draw what I want to say), and with doing things – I would make love to say what I want to, and I have done so. Words by themselves are rarely enough.

But I publish because I want to converse, and in that I agree with you. I want to hear what someone else has to say, and that is why I read. In the reading about what I write and the writing about what I read I end up discovering just that little bit more about my world. The Word brings me through winding paths to the men and women I seek. But it is a passing strange thing that the men and women I have found have in many ways been reflections of myself, sometimes so much so that I wonder whether it is them I am seeing or has my longing for what I seek brought me to myself. In any event the writing and reading cause me to tread paths I would otherwise not have tread, and for that I am glad, and in those paths I discover the Writer, for they are of his/her clearing.

Would you weep for the Word and the Writer? I will weep with you. But do not weep for me – I have never doubted myself, and I do not think I will.

But hearken to these words:

“Listen to the reed and the tale it tells, how it sings of separation.
‘Ever since they tore me from the reed bed,
my wail has caused men and women to weep’
I want a heart open with longing, so that I may
relate to the pain of this love”
-- Amir Khusro

So seek me; but do not seek yourself in me! That would be an unprofitable venture with one such as me, if it were not so with others; nevertheless know that you will find yourself, else you would not have sought. For I am much more than you might comprehend, or wish to. So much I will state plainly, and in words.

And what of my shadows? Shadows are caused by light… To avoid the shadows is to avoid the lights that make them. How would the picture be complete with one, but not the other?

Maybe, this once, i said more than i wanted to


-- db

Ok i read all of your stuff. Let's see..

Rusalka: i don't know why, but this reminds me of those russian fairy tales i used to read as a kid. Strange realms, girls called aloysha and mishka, and ivans and dmitris and gentle flying swans, and strange magic and witches all came to mind. i like this piece, though i cannot claim to relate to it.

Three Fables and a Fairy Tale: the depiction of the rusalka reminds me of anne rice's vampire novels (esp 'interview with a vampire'). have you read them?

The springtime of my death: love that title . Otherwise a little drab - i could not really find any passion, only a rather mushy sentimental expression of newfound love and exuberance.

In Love with a German Film Star: cute. very. funny in an oblique sort of way. exactly the sort of thing i would expect happens, and perhaps does not.

Apple: i don't know why you wrote this. i don't know what the story means. i don't know what you wanted to say. i don't know what to make of it at all.

Getting By: neat. i was reminded of what i went through when i read dostoevsky for the first time. more of you in this than in the others, i think (excepting perhaps "In Love with...").

Eva Meek: Passenger 3rd class: LOTS of you in this, i think. The characterisation of the meek yet not scared, affected but not really present in the scene central character was extremely consistent. Love the multilayered people in this one. There's something there under the guise of a twisted titanic-based love theme that i can't exactly pinpoint...

But i wasn't really hit by any of these pieces, perhaps because i am not getting any handles to latch onto the mood; being in a rather melancholic patch right now myself, that is a little strange since these writings are full of it. Plus a strange kind of pain/longing/sense of displacement or loss for *something* i simply can't see clearly... you sound like someone who got lost rather earlier in life than others do, and have lived since in these little interludes because nobody else could even begin to touch you. And yet there are these little happy endings, where everybody lives comfortably ever after. But though i sense some form of contentment in these writings, "happy" is only a little piece in a corner of the jigsaw - it does not blaze through. No, it does not blaze through.

Perhaps these interpretations are wrong. Perhaps you have hidden yourself too well. I don't know. But i *would* like to know your perspective on my perspective on your writings . I would certainly like to see something more transparent, and less misty.

-- db

PS: if you don't mind i would like to continue these exchanges through e-mail - i find that far easier than posting on a website. the prefix to my '@msn.com' id is in plain view somewhere on this page. if you are smart enough you should be able to use the most obvious clue. i don't wish to publish an id on a public website (I get enough junk mail already), and so i won't ask you to put up yours either.

"the prefix to my '@msn.com' id is in plain view somewhere on this page": should have read "somewhere on my home page"

I agree with much of what you say (in post 3) though I do not consciously seek to express myself, or rather, that is not usually the foremost consideration, I will allow that it is always a consideration - self expression being fundamental to writing in my view. It is interesting to come back to an old piece and see reflections of thoughts and states of mind that I would not have known at the time that I was carrying with me.

But I think there are other reasons to write. I know that for some writers thoughts of self expression do not enter into their writing. I know writers who write just to communicate, who even if they are aware of the power of their writing to reveal things about themselves they do not care to analyse it in that way. Some again (and there are times when I would count myself among them) write for the simple beauty of language, it's powers of expression, the joy of playing with words - not for what they reveal but for their own sounds shapes and textures as they interact on the page. There is something of that in Rusalka. I suppose because the narrative comes out of an aural tradition I had a heightened awareness of the way the words sound. There are probably as many reasons for writing as there are writers and I doubt that anyone writes for one reason alone. Self expression (wether conscious or not) and self exploration are a common thread in the motivation of writers I would even go so far as to say that it is the strongest common thread that links writers.

'So seek me; but do not seek yourself in me! That would be an unprofitable venture with one such as me, if it were not so with others; nevertheless know that you will find yourself, else you would not have sought.' - is that not always so? I seeking others we seek ourselves. Sometimes what we find is a kindred spirit, a friend of the soul, and there we find both. So, I seek you in you but know that I may find reflections of myself there. If we understand others is it not because we see their patterns of light and shade and know that our own match in some ways. I do not think we can escape ourselves. Understanding is always tinted by the perspective we see from so the trick becomes to see others without imposing ourselves over them. If we do that we see nothing but a false reflection in which there is nothing of the other person only ourselves where we have no right to be.

Responses to your responses...

Rusalka: yes, based on slavonic folklore and deliberately using many elements of that tradition. I'm glad you like it, part of the reason for it (and again this goes back to the tradition it is written in) is that it should be a good story. Not all stories are so much about storytelling but in this it is important. The other side of it centers on a political awareness of feminism and I suppose an understandin of the complex ways that women can relate to each other.

Three fables and a fairy tale: no I haven't read any Anne Rice. There are quite a few literary referances, though I shan't tell you what they are, I don't think it's necessary, they stand up without havig to know what they are refering to. These were rather an academic exercise. The point of them is to draw out some of the subtexts of the main story and to be a light read in and of themselves.

The springtime of my death: The title is my favourite bit about this. It is a very unfinished piece. What is there was written quite spontaneously and quickly and during an altered mental state. There are things that I like about it, touches of description, the pace and the narrative voice but it does lack a point. It's not really saying anything. And you are right that it is too sentimental. It was written from a letter in a book of lesbian love letters and there is too much of the origional source material in it.

In love with a german film star: I'm glad you like it. I've never thought about trying to get this one published because the referances in it are rather obscure. If that's no a barrier to understanding the central misunderstanding I might reconsider that. I had fun writing it.

Apple: That's surprising; this is one of the ones that people generally 'get'. Can you expand on what the barrier to understanding it was? Did you catch that it is a retelling of Snow White?

Getting By: there is a lot of me in this, though perhaps not in obvious ways. It is written from personal experience but that's quite misleading. This is a trickly one to look for me in. If you try to read it as autobiography it is one big lie, but I am there.

Eva Meek: Passenger 3rd class: I hadn't thought of this as particularly revealing of me but the elements you point out do fit broadly with the me who wrote this. I have changed a lot in the three years since then. This is another that I would class as unfinished. I dusted it off a few months ago and started redrafting it but I haven't had the time to do it properly.


'you sound like someone who got lost rather earlier in life than others do' ain't that the truth. And for many reasons. But I'm found now. These stories were written in the first three years of my relationship with my beloved (U226879) and part of what I was about was putting my life before into order as I took up a new life. Before I met her I had never known joy. That probably explains the odd mix of pain and being lost set against happy endings - a mix of the then and now That I was writing in. Though that you see the endings as happy is interesting, after all, three of them end in death of one form or another. Not that you are wrong, the endings are largely about finding, oneself and one's other, but most people don't see past the ambiguity to get to that.

Thank you for your comments they were interesting. You have a strange side long view. I don't think I have anything more recent or more transparent to show you. My short fiction all tends to be full of sharp edges and obscurities and I'm working on a novel at the moment (Althea - yes I know that page doesn't load but it is possible to get there. There's not much to see, I use that page to put drafts up so that I can work on them while I'm in call centre hell.)

I don't mind putting up my e-mail address, it's around the site anyway: [email protected] Besides I'm really bad at cryptic puzzles and I wouldn't want you to think less of me when I can't work it out

N