Analysis/Emotion

1 November 2006

Arsenal 0-0 CSKA Moscow (Champions League)

What a fascinating game this must have been. I don't think I watched it, a rare feat considering I watch almost all of Arsenal's games at this point (early-round Carling Cup matches excluded, of course). But I got wind of the score somehow and decided to leave it to the history books because I could find a better use for my time than a frustrating 90 minutes of scoreless football. It reminds me of a comment made on a short-lived (cut down in its youth!) television show: "because we've got soccer highlights, the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero tie." Nil-nil draw would have been apropos, but an American audience would not have understood. Such is the point of this blog, right? Go on and roll your eyes. No one interested in soccer, or Arsenal, bothers to read this because I don't have any relevant news and I talk about matches from three months ago. Whatever, man! And now it's time to talk about writing. Why?, you moan, and I answer with not just a touch of ruthlessness that, well, it's what I do. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was not very pleased with how Alcova was turning out. Now that I'm approaching the two-month mark (somewhere around 45 pages of material), I find myself at least somewhat more pleased with the results. I realized that, if not an utterly fascinating story (which I still blame on the structure rather than the content), it has at least helped me hone my writing, an unexpected goal that has granted me something I could have only really dreamed of finding: my own particular writing style. For a long time, especially when I was in writing classes, I often bemoaned (to myself, of course) the fact that my writing, while perhaps good was not entirely unique or identifiable without my name attached. I had strong details, I could write dialogue with the best of them, and my stories were always entertaining: but I want something more than that, I want to stand out, that's how you get noticed, you get noticed by being interesting, not boring. But in college I never wrote much beyond what was demanded of me. A depressing reality, now that I have less time but more drive to write. So whatever style I might have or might cultivate was lost in the mix, thrown in a basket with the trash on top of it. As Alcova has progressed, as I have written on a much more regular basis, a distinctive style has emerged. That isn't the end of the maturation; I find myself much more cognizant of word choice and grammar. There is still a lot of room for growth, but sometimes it jumps out of me now that I've used the word "simply" five times in about two pages worth of writing: a disease I've had for too long unfortunately, but maybe I've finally found the antidote. Writing frequently does seem to make one a better writer. Shocking developments I'm revealing, I know, but please, it's for the good of all mankind. The style that has unfolded is a charming blend, I think, of post-modern physical detachment (that is, a disconnected realism, sort of existentialist but with a focus on social constructionism) and psychological deconstruction. That is to say, I explore both the hopeless physical interactions between humans on their primary level, and I explore the individual, internal reality that people subject themselves to. So one paragraph will describe, in basic enough terms, a journey somewhere. It will discuss the dirt on the road and the clouds in the sky, how far away the town is and what the protagonist aims to achieve. The next paragraph would maybe delve into the protagonist to get a feeling, a true feeling, of being him on that path: why do I walk everywhere, can't there be a faster way of traveling, by horse maybe, or car, haven't they invented cars yet, this walking is killing me, killing me, my feet fell off two miles ago and I am walking on stubs and this walking is killing me. I don't know, it's hard to get the way I say it in my head. Which is a problem, I understand. I think it's kind of like reading poetry though, all you really have to guide yourself off is the punctuation and tone within the piece. I like writing like that, because it helps me get in the head of the character, but also because it's more complex: I have shed modernist details for inner monologue, a monologue which explores emotion to its most obsessive and unending (except in death) degrees. It's almost stream of consciousness, and to some degree it is, but I think the way I write it at least tries to be more poetic than the standard stream of consciousness. Furthermore, it slips into the monologue and out at will, thus shifting the voice of the narrator from first person to third person, again at will. Perhaps I move too easily from style to style, perhaps it makes my writing more difficult to understand, and ultimately less rewarding. I like to think it makes it more cerebral, but I certainly cannot say; only you, the noble reader, can judge most accurately the results. However, being a writer isn't all glory and bombshells. There is a curse that writers suffer from. I was never able to put words to it until Neil Gaiman exposed it in his subtle British style: "I'd fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, 'So this is how it feels,' and I would tie it up in pretty words. I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else." That is beyond true, in my experience. Everything that happens to me, happens to me as if there is a small camera behind me, and I'm watching, dissecting, analyzing. When my grandfather died in 1996, I didn't cry. I remember a lot of other people crying, some only two years older than myself, but I didn't cry. I felt bad, like I should be crying, but I was too absorbed in watching their sadness. Then, when my great-aunt died in 2001, I said to myself, "finally, I can cry like they cried." And I did, and I understood the sadness of a relative's death. I imagine everything in my head as if it were prose, okay, how would I describe this feeling of nostalgia, as I sit here on the beach in Montauk, watching the ocean, this fabled ocean, this grand and glorious example of Mother Nature which has caressed me and punished me, how do I explain that this place is my youth, I can only be young again here, I can only understand my youth through the prism of the soft sand and dune-like cliffs, big empty rich houses and never-ending one-lane highways. Montauk is a topic for another day, but you should know that it is the physical embodiment of my childhood, and that when I die, I want to die there, looking out over the sloping hills, the shrewdly majestic lighthouse, and cheap seafood. I want my soul to merge with that place, I want to become one with Montauk, forever a child lost on a hot white beach, imagining adventures with my cousin, creating extravagant sandcastles, and getting swept away by that insistent post-Hurricane rip tide, swept away, fine, this time I will go with you, this time I won't swim back to shore, you can have me, finally, I am yours.