prattle

I seldom write here about myself, well, when I say about myself, what I mean to say is, I seldom write here the stuff of a journal, well, why would I bother? This might be contrary to the motivations of many who do write, as I think it fair to say that journaling is the preferred form hereabouts, the preferred ‘prattle’ if you like. We’ve chronology on our side after all, and the obsession Blogger and Wordpress exercise with date-tagging which forms the back-bone of this post-mapping system, without which, I suppose, there would be no line upon which to peg out and air our dirty metaphorical laundry.

Personally, I would prefer a patchwork quilting approach to journaling, a kind of desultory scrap-booking by which snippets of this, that or the other are scattered in no particular order, broadcast randomly, certainly not a chronology (the rotary clothes airer comes to mind here - the laundry analogy) no merit in following this extract with that, no tension in a hanging narrative, no dénouement. Like the circularity of Steve Reich (I mention this only because a Steve Reich track has started playing on my ipod) whose compositions seem to grow not in narrative form, whose music moves away from the unpacking of plot, instead layering up an elaboration of sound, crafted, finely honed, exquisitely integrated ‘presences’ which keep returning back upon themselves, regenerating, rebuilding, over and over again, a marginally enhanced form of that which had been before; but I digress…

It’s not as if I have secrets to hide, or that I exercise caution dipping my toe into the inviting shallows for fear that the bleak and dark unfathomable depths beyond may throw up indescribable scenes of the unknowable, or that in declaring my thoughts and drives, in uncovering that which to date has remained unspoken, I fear that you will discover something in me, what is the word, something representing the essence of me. But perhaps I am missing the point, perhaps this essence, I can’t think of a better word, is what it’s all about? You see, I’m not sure whether this work, this stuff of journaling, is really me. Don’t get me wrong, I love the diary, I love stealing upon the abandoned book in an empty room, I love the tension evidenced quivering between the written words, of the author’s sanctuary of the privacy in pages; yet this excitement born in the very moment of each words formation, in the time it takes for the pen to scratch out the letter shapes and for the ink to dry (I enjoy this image, although it’s hardly relevant in the age of instant messaging) the author’s clandestine declarations longingly await discovery, ache for it, you might say. There always remains this tangible self-conscious dialectic: between the secret diary and the moment of its discovery, or when that moment might reveal itself, the one existing in deference to the other.

It is not dissimilar to the tensions resident in the endless prattling in posts such as this.

journal

I love the journal precisely because of its audacious claim to truth. Words emit truth like radioactivity the minute they take form, but unless the writing is purely cathartic (ie: it takes no published form, or the pages are burned when complete, or the post is deleted rather than published, or perhaps the draft is kept locked in a tin box, stuffed under the bed, hidden deep in the inaccessible depths, or set sail majestically amid the myriad stars of the firmament, where perhaps it remains true to its author… ) writing resonates to the style of its telling, emits the reader’s needs, and what is truth for me is that which I need at the moment I read. When I read your journal aloud, it tells a different story, it’s suddenly all about me.

I don’t know how to respond to the tremulous narrative of ‘truth’ because I don’t know you, I don’t know what part of yourself you think you’ve knitted into the text, I have to ‘make you up’ as I go along, I make a kind of identikit ‘you’ and this is the truth for me, this is how my reading becomes writing. I measure and sample the scenes in your text, taste the narrative for what it can offer me, what texture, what frisson, what jouissance, and it is for the love of this tension that I adore the journal (I said that before somewhere). Because of its precocious obsession with self, the ‘I’, the ‘me’, the ‘my’ (and therefore the truth) and because of this contradiction: it never really knows who it is, and partly, as Barthes has said, because the ego only discourses when it is grieved, the journal is a kind of masochist's journey.

Everything I write here is my journal, but I tend not to borrow the form: today I thought, today I hate, today I love, today I reflect, today I cry (well, actually I do, but it’s deeply stitched). I link to your journal because the writing I find there gives birth to all this, and that for me is what it’s about, that’s the truth for me.