Voice
even though i’ve been writing fairly frequently i know it isn’t enough because every night laying in bed i find myself having an internal monologue that leads nowhere and often turns into the beginning of a dream i will soon forget. while doing some digging into the annals of my writing history, it is not surprising to realize that i’ve felt the most at peace when i write for hours every day, but that’s unattainable now due to my schedule, lifestyle and i guess phases of life. over the past few months, when my future/present was as bleak as it could be, i often said that deep deep deep down i was not worried about losing myself because no matter what, no matter the source of my income or my daily actions, i will always be a writer. if the right opportunity to write for a living comes across i will gladly take it as long as it does not interfere with what i consider Writing.
mauricio and i often talked about writing in the last three months or so. these were conversations that i may remember with the voice of a different storyteller due to the alcohol in our bloodstream, but i vividly remember when he asked if knowing that certain people read this Medium ever interfered with the way i write/my intentions/style/etc. the nature of his question was focused on if it impacted relationships with friends, girlfriends, exes and whatnot, if i ever worried about the emotional troubles it would cause to write as he said “dictado por el espíritu santo” without a filter or editing a single word. i said that not really, that i’ve come to learn that one cannot write while considering what the others will read but now i wish i had expanded on my answer, and maybe i did. what i mean to say is that even though it does not cross my mind while i am writing if people will react a certain way, i do care about the lack of reaction and the worst acting performances i have ever seen. i am talking about people reading some personal shit on here and then acting as if they just didn’t read what i write, trying to spark up conversation in a few days and ask about my life as if they just didn’t read about it. or don’t say anything at all. it makes me feel like i am their amusement, a silly spectacle they can watch from afar while still call themselves my close friends, as if pouring myself on here was an act they can scroll by like they do in their little stupid phones. there are a lot of things that bother me about this whole ordeal.
maybe the reason this happens is because they have become accustomed to call themselves artists while struggling to write a single, 100% honest paragraph/verse/caption in the propaganda brochures they call their online presence/content. but i also know this is my ego speaking, that out of artistic survival i must call channel my inner Raymond Carver and call myself the best poet in this room. maybe the real reason is because they lack the social or intrapersonal skills to not look at whatever friend’s written word comes from a public forum into their screens as a raw expression of humanity.
speaking of carver and getting to my point, the last nigh we saw each other Mauricio and I also talked about Carver. it all started when we were venting about wannabe editors, the ones who read and correct prose as if every piece of writing was an academic paper for a creative writing class. we shared stories about dealing with these people who act as the paperclip from windows 95 that corrects every grammar mistakes by making a passive aggressive suggestion. there’s also the thin line of writers who write like they don’t think, like no one actually talks to one another. if i remember correctly, he mentioned a man with whom he shared a writing class who described kissing a woman like climbing mount vesuvius, as if all the information he only had from the volcano wasn’t googleable. then we of course got to Carver, how the beauty of his prose was that he found a thin line where he wrote to the everyday man while also exploring the profound beauty and emptyness of the human condition.
afraid of comparing myself to Raymond Carver once again, i would like to think that my writing voice is the same one that has been keeping me up all night, the one that got me where i am now and makes people think i am some kind of oddball with the gravity of the moon. if hasn’t been obvious to you, my reader, i am writing on this medium again to see if my voice is still there because i don’t think so. i do know that marisa is most likely the only person who has read the most honest and unfiltered version of myself but i have been thinking that maybe the last three months have changed something inside of me that will take me a long time to fully peel.
one time, marion gave me an a- on a paper that i wrote the night before with the sole purpose of getting a passing grade. i was expecting nothing more than a C+ because i knew she hated my procrastination habits and was harder on me than the rest of the students because of that. besides, it’s been almost five years since i learned to tell when my writing isn’t its best and that paper could have been written by a monkey with any basic knowledge of caribbean literature. she walked me through my paper when i asked her about it and turns out that it was actually some of my best work according to her, but it truly didn’t matter because in my eyes what i had written in the months leading to that was some of my best work. then the pandemic hit a year later, i became the unabomber and wrote my ass off to stay alive. that is truly when my writing turned natural and the core of my routine. everything revolved around writing back then.
time went on, i got a job, i still wrote, i met some girls, we went through some lynchian trip together and i kept writing. then i lost my job, went through an even more intense lynchian trip, stopped talking to my best friend, found my valhalla and there are some things that have happened this year and i now realize i never want to be twenty five years old again. i am worried this year has changed my voice in a way that i do not recognize, that i will have to go through another lynchian trip to feel like my writing hands are deeply connected to my life. i mostly worry because i have never been in a context like the one i currently am. there is PLENTY of learning to do without considering my writing habits and voice. oh but then again i’ve spent the last five years telling people that no matter what, i will always be a writer. that i live life without a net, with no dictator to force its way into my being. that i destroyed my propaganda brochures and turned them into who i am. it is time that i make my word worth of what i always say.
there is A LOT i still need to write and i told marisa about it. i simply do not know where to start.
