"Transparent writing" & GEN X
I always tried to make myself a thin and transparent lens, approaching nothing, was how I wanted to see myself. I wanted to show things "as they were," and change nothing.
Part of this was the trend in technical writing when I was at Delaware. "Transparent writing" was a concept I was really into, where the writer said what was, and style was squeezed out for precision. I was obsessed with the exact meaning of words, as stated in the dictionary, and I was glad for a broad vocabulary and being able to call to mind a word that got at the exact thing I was trying to say.
Transparent writing is in contrast, then, to stylized writing, writing filled with character. I was going to tell "the truth," and my own filter of it was wrong. I wasn't going to stylize. I wasn't going to embellish. Character was bad. No character was ideal.
Did I tell you about reading books by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2 summers ago? I was reading one called "Finding Flow." I decided there was an answer to my problem in this book, and I would read it over and over again, CONSUME it until I found the answer. I decided that I would go ahead and underline every word, tear out the pages, burn them, if I had to, that I would know from it what it was that was vexing my life. (And this "consumption" was a radical revolution for me ... before I thought I should leave a thing, like a book, as I found it, but now I wanted to tear through it, express my own force upon it, make it changed because I was there, maybe even destroy it, USE IT UP, AS IS MY RIGHT as its owner.
Finally, I read a passage saying the difference between a human and a dog was self-concept, and in this passage, self-concept was a downfall, a bad thing. But I realized that was the point I was spinning my wheels on; I NEEDED MORE SELF-CONCEPT, not less. I couldn't keep anything, bcs I had no self-concept. Nothing had meaning, because I didn't assign meaning, I only adopted existing meaning.
Recently, I've gotten to know two people my own age, self-identified as writers, who seem almost as obsessed with "The Truth." One was a marketing writer who wrote only "benefits-based" marketing pieces. Only about the features of high-tech products. Another is a fitness service writer for a consumer magazine, who infuses as many jokes as he can into his pieces, but wants to write only about things that are absolutely helpful to people. Am I getting at the issue? Do you understand the limitation? I think it could be a unique Generation X problem/issue. I think there was some cultural lull or explosion or event we witnessed that has made us obsessed with this, even as the concept of journalistic truth collided with "The medium is the message" ... Some event between Kennedy's assassination and the concept that Pokemon could hypnotize children through the television ... something stole our souls.
Something about growing up with a recycling obsession that made me focus more on the trash I was generating than the PRODUCT, whatever it was, that I was making. Something about being told that nothing I did MATTERED. I did not own the world. I did not have any stake in it, whatsoever.
I came to see "transparent writing" as a kind of self-immolation, a denial of what I am, a denial of being. Why was I trying to make myself into nothing?
Part of this was the trend in technical writing when I was at Delaware. "Transparent writing" was a concept I was really into, where the writer said what was, and style was squeezed out for precision. I was obsessed with the exact meaning of words, as stated in the dictionary, and I was glad for a broad vocabulary and being able to call to mind a word that got at the exact thing I was trying to say.
Transparent writing is in contrast, then, to stylized writing, writing filled with character. I was going to tell "the truth," and my own filter of it was wrong. I wasn't going to stylize. I wasn't going to embellish. Character was bad. No character was ideal.
Did I tell you about reading books by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2 summers ago? I was reading one called "Finding Flow." I decided there was an answer to my problem in this book, and I would read it over and over again, CONSUME it until I found the answer. I decided that I would go ahead and underline every word, tear out the pages, burn them, if I had to, that I would know from it what it was that was vexing my life. (And this "consumption" was a radical revolution for me ... before I thought I should leave a thing, like a book, as I found it, but now I wanted to tear through it, express my own force upon it, make it changed because I was there, maybe even destroy it, USE IT UP, AS IS MY RIGHT as its owner.
Finally, I read a passage saying the difference between a human and a dog was self-concept, and in this passage, self-concept was a downfall, a bad thing. But I realized that was the point I was spinning my wheels on; I NEEDED MORE SELF-CONCEPT, not less. I couldn't keep anything, bcs I had no self-concept. Nothing had meaning, because I didn't assign meaning, I only adopted existing meaning.
Recently, I've gotten to know two people my own age, self-identified as writers, who seem almost as obsessed with "The Truth." One was a marketing writer who wrote only "benefits-based" marketing pieces. Only about the features of high-tech products. Another is a fitness service writer for a consumer magazine, who infuses as many jokes as he can into his pieces, but wants to write only about things that are absolutely helpful to people. Am I getting at the issue? Do you understand the limitation? I think it could be a unique Generation X problem/issue. I think there was some cultural lull or explosion or event we witnessed that has made us obsessed with this, even as the concept of journalistic truth collided with "The medium is the message" ... Some event between Kennedy's assassination and the concept that Pokemon could hypnotize children through the television ... something stole our souls.
Something about growing up with a recycling obsession that made me focus more on the trash I was generating than the PRODUCT, whatever it was, that I was making. Something about being told that nothing I did MATTERED. I did not own the world. I did not have any stake in it, whatsoever.
I came to see "transparent writing" as a kind of self-immolation, a denial of what I am, a denial of being. Why was I trying to make myself into nothing?
posted by Constance X at 1:07 PM
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