THE WRITING LIFE

By David Eide

The writing life gives legs to the impossible.

"It moved through thick and thin, light and dark. Many projects, many failures, many bitterness's, many joys, many of everything but goods and money."

I had to pass through several overwhelming experiences:

Nature: That is, what precedes us and continues on forever with the perception of form and beauty on an undiscovered planet in a galaxy we have not yet discovered, on the principle: Nature is abundant and grabs hold wherever it can.

Science: Cosmology; space, mass, velocity, chemical composition, etc etc. The little markers we love to pronounce: Quark, meson, String. The path to a certain glut of elegant facts.

Culture: Cities or the complexity of things built out of the cussedness of human nature in love with its own powers. Sumer, then all the functions, systems, inventions, through time. The determination of walls, streets, crowds, and social structure.

Family: Identity through the growth of personality

Freedom and its resistance.

Separation and its Longing.

"Wonderful densities we travel through!"

* * * * * * * *

The old wise woman said, "he didn't become an expert at anything but his vision was comprehensive."

Projects, relations, communities, jobs; difficult modern nundane and fasincating life.

I never believed I was superior to anyone but I didn't allow the stink of human nature take down my potentials.

The writing life, then, was akin to a path, sometimes of discovery, certainly contemplation.....

* * * * * * * *

"The well-springs of your own productive self. That is the center. That is where it is done. That is where happiness and joy are born." That's what she told me as I contemplated the Bridge way off in the distance but right beside me as well.

"And most of the morality and virtue books don't get it for the most part. You have to go to the original types who have struck the fount. They are the trust-worthy ones."

I relented to her advice even though I didn't want to.

It was around the time I was trying to write novels. I never got to that "fount" as she called it. So I moved away from novels and tried other areas; poetry, thought, political discourse, contemplation's, etc.

Very simple. I said, "talent, go where thou wisheth," and it went into the areas it did. I treated my writing as though it were a restless son who you let loose into the world knowing he will get creamed but be the better for it.

* * * * * * * *

The quandary for the writer is judging what is and what is not productive....a few lines of Rilke appear more productive to my sense of things than a 500-page novel of nothingness. The market may disagree, certainly.

But it is a personal thing is it not?

* * * * * * * *

A young writer learns the following like a dart through the eye on some dank battlefield:

Era's can be destroyed by Nothingness. In a culture divided between exploiters and victims there is little truth; there is little building or constructive principles.

A writer thanks God for the hearty laughter of men!

To fight the easy sort of Nothingness leisurely parading itself, a writer needs to focus on his or her:

• Writing life
• Publishing career
• Pursuit of knowledge
• Personal life

Sometimes separate, sometimes meshed and blended.

In an Era of Nothingness the writer learns patience and develops the belief that his work is his own, for whatever end he feels necessary for it.

* * * * * * * *

The Speed of Light

The stated limit is duration=1 second= 186,000 miles in the space we create, if not occupy. It is the description of one limit and therefore, celebrated by poetry. It is a kind of facement of God.

Duration, as a reality, is all we know. That is poetry.

However, to be human and healthy we need to slow everything down. That is prose. We need to understand. That is prose.

* * * * * * * *

The Pursuit of Truth

The writer enters that haunted state of demoralization when he discovers the difference between the "pursuit of truth" and the "will to power."

The pursuit of truth comes in through beauty.

Events emerged from the post-Vietnam era, its pessimism's and degradations. The old liberals showed me history and the perspective to see one's own time as it will not see itself. They taught that if you hit your head against steel thighs your head, eventually, will fall off and nothing will have changed but one more headless writer. But just when the learning was good came the old-Bolshevik-takes-over-and-rubs-out-the-idealistic- Menshevik syndrome. It was an interesting show but left the writer amazed by the destructive power of politics at a time when he needed models. A more cutting-edge thing going on at the time were the rise of cults, harvesting armies of the old drug culture or idealistic waifs who wanted no part of the dank, discredited American society.

It's hard to communicate how deep that wound went.

My Virtual Space emerged out of a simple question, "how do you build a political state on a nation filled with rotten people; ignorant, addicted, gross, lousy, putrid people?"

That was a recipe for disaster, I thought to myself, not prepared for the arduous task of self-examination it required from me.

I separated the political and literary this way. The political was the self-evident machinery of due process, debate, policy-making, etc. Anything that made its way into the political machinery no longer had interest, ipso facto, to the literary imagination.

I think of protests against the Vietnam war or equity/justice issues for example. These became self-evident political issues that were significant to the citizen but not the literary imagination. The one issue where this was most tested was the environmental since it implied the core of literary imagination, that is, nature. But that too became a political issue decided in the political system.

The literary imagination extracts from these issues what it can.

• Battle, for instance and the persistence of war through time
• The wildness of nature and its necessity
• The liberation of the female for her full development
• The depiction of a perfect society or a perfect citizen

.....these things unattainable to anything but the appreciative imagination are what the writer focuses on.

The undiscovered problems.

* * * * * * * *

There is society and then there is the individual. The society is either wealthy or poor. It is Republican or Democrat. It is swarming in gadgets or not.

The individual is usually all of these things at different times. And the writer is the quintessentail individual in that he demands all his focus is on what the society despises. Or, is not adventuresome enough yet to take on, such as new ideas or new perceptions.

The writer rationalizes the need for wealth without too much trouble. "It is better to be in a society swimming in wealth than in one deep in poverty." One creates leverage after leverage that even the writer can stand on. Poverty is one surly ride down the mineshaft.

And to secure this wealthy state one must live in a stable republic. And that depends, not only in the ability to create weath but in the continual attention on the needs of the middle-class. The writer sees all of this in a very positive light.

But then, the individual is not the society. He meets many who think they are! The individual writer can do those things the economy and the politics can not, that is, roam freely through all the different pluralities, all the states of wealth and poverty, all the classes, all the activities and functions and come out the other end more a writer than a nutcase. Sometimes things are on the balance beam but regardless.

For a few decades I had what one could describe as a "disaster" when it came to publishing. I didn't have the foggiest notion of what I was doing. I started and abandoned projects as fast as I could, deluding myself that I was being productive.

CLUE: When the beginning is off-center, don't go in a staight line.

Sometimes I entertained the idea that I would die young and all my papers would be found and printed. Decades later a professor would do a paper on me and the contents of my folders. Other times I said, it's just a matter of time....something will happen......have patience.

* * * * * * * *

Discouragement is the deadliest acid for the writer. If even a few spoonfuls gets on the tongue a writer is apt to lose confidence in himself. When that process begins there is the ten-years-of-sliding- downward syndrome until an ugly rock or vicious animal tells you to pay attention.

Even the most precious project crawls to the margin.

I think, in the modern world, it's smart to live 3 or 4 distinctive lives. This is possible and necessary to do in order to sustain levels of interest and energy.

Between the ages of 25 and 35 I was very concerned about the global situation, the future, nuclear dilemma, ecological problem, resource depletion and the rest of it. I didn't separate out my moral concerns and literary concerns.

And I thought a free, liberal democratic person should, in fact, take on those larger questions. You can't solve them but, at least, you get to know the world on a scale hitherto unknown. But, only youth and its energies can take on all of those things. Eventually, the energy runs downward and there is the need to transform.

* * * * * * * *

It is crucial to know when one life is complete and done with.

* * * * * * * *

Between 35-45 was, as well, a complete life in a way. It was centered in family, self, and the cohesive properties of life. The conservation of energy, perhaps. The conservation of liberal, democratic values since those were being threatened every moment.

One life comes to an end and another is being born; based primarily, in strict self-interest. What is my self-interest as a writer? What is my self-interest as a economic being? What is my self-interest as a citizen? What do I need to do in order to fulfill these roles and obligations? What sort of intentionality is necessary? What sort of plans? What sort of demands do I have to put on myself and others?

That describes the sort of life I am going into.

* * * * * * * *

Early on I had the intuition that the modern world was creating a society of very passive/aggressive types who sat back and let themselves get zapped by the horridness of other people's intentions. This is something that belongs to hordes not to liberal, democratic citizens.

Culture, to be valuable, must first be hidden. It must be discovered on its own terms. That process produces authentic individuality; spoon-fed culture produces a distracted, addicted, dumbed-down population.

The writer has to make this sort of distinction since the marketplace is dominated by lies and promises rather than self-discovery.

It only matters when we take stock of who is ruling the roost.

* * * * * * * *

A society is never in trouble when the bad arises and resists it and fights it. The society is in deep trouble when the good arises and resists it and fights it. That follows an inevitable process of corruption over several generations and drains whatever remaining morale it contains straight into the void of space.

* * * * * * * *

In the first phase of my career I was concerned with questions of repression. What represses the imagination and intellect? What, in other words, is the enemy to free, liberal democratic culture?

* * * * * * * *

I was one who studied the end of life on planet Earth. It seemed reasonable, in youth, that such a fate awaited the future. "Ah, the end of life, the end of the human prospect...." There was a stubborn egotism that didn't allow for such a view but, then, something large and real made me realize that it was probable and what, then, was the writer's response?

After all, the weapons were not myths. And their delivery systems were not myths. It made it absurd to continue as though nothing had happened or nothing need change. To the poetic consciousness the absurdity appeared fatal and, in fact, I was convinced great and wonderful things had to happen.

That anything less than the fantastic discovery of new form, new imaginative horizons, new aspirations was a sacrifice to the demoralization brought on by the blight of the modern world.

It's quite shocking to take this view into society and see the responses one gets.

But, I was convinced that an utterly new thing had to come into play. The only thing that is not conditioned is the poetic imagination.

Therein is the tale of a thing or two.

Freedom experienced as a splendid future!

* * * * * * * *

One thing that I fought with and that was the status and nature of the novel. I felt that the novel had been stripped various ways by modern technology. That the writer should leave off "telling stories" in this form and focus or extract the very best qualities embedded in novels; insight, vision, and connectedness with a sense of place. Those were the great qualities of the novel.

But those qualities could be developed any number of ways. The novel was reduced down and shuttered in by the growth of so many things outside the dimension of the novel. Better to move to exciting new ways of presenting the essence of those qualities the novel once embedded in so many delightful, dynamic ways.

* * * * * * * *

If the novel is not an expression of our freedom, then what is it?

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