Who We Are

I feel like I’ve been hit in the face with a theme.

As of now, I’m in the midst of writing a research paper on Cabeza de Vaca’s The Account. I’m focusing on his battle against his peers to define himself (as he sees fit) through his writing and how he fought to keep his identity intact while being surrounded by a completely New World. While talking with Jack recently about the merits of Final Fantasy 8 he claimed that the game was often misunderstood because it dealt so heavily with the theme of identity, and Americans just don’t relate that theme as much as the Japanese do. But what I think really cemented the theme happened today while I was speaking with my aunt who I hadn’t seen in years. After making small talk about school for a bit, she came out and said “It must be hard to be a writer, to have to show everything you are to so many people” she continued “I guess that’s how you know you’re a writer, when you’re not afraid to let everyone see who you are.”

What pushed me over was Bermuda’s blog, head over and check it out, it won’t even take thirty seconds to read. What he said was that we, as writers, must choose how we will be perceived through our writing. So maybe my aunt was wrong about that, maybe showing who you really through your is the mark of a bad writer. Oscar Wilde would certainly agree, to him the mark of a great writer was the ability to make believable lies in order to escape a mundane reality. But the act of taking on new identities in writing has been viewed from a less sardonic point. As Leena pointed out to Bermuda about a week ago, Peter Elbow has done a lot of work in the field of voice in writing. He came up with the theory of many voices in writing, each appropriate for the appropriate moment. Ironically enough, his theories dictate that voice doesn’t actually have anything to do with anything innate to the individual. But isn’t that true enough outside the world of writing? Don’t we put on different faces, different clothes, use different language, and laugh at things that aren’t funny when the time is right? Certainly we act differently in front of a classroom than we would when surrounded by friends. In his last blog, Nick brought up Donald Murray who would have us believe that all writing is unique and inescapably individualistic. It sounds a bit like the work of Karl Marx that was quoted by a Mr. Eric Strege not too long ago, but I assure you that Nick and Murray approach it much more romantically. Or for an even more fun example maybe we should turn to Alli who just can’t escape the moral standards set by Calvin and Hobbes.

So what do writers do? Do we work and work until we can put forward the exact identity we want (personal or not)? Or do we refine and refine our craft until we can express what is purely us? Surely the latter holds merit. I think that this fact can be most seen in Slick’s friend Chingu who just couldn’t portray exactly what he meant in English or Korean. It’s not uncommon, many people can’t convey exactly what they mean, it’s a problem that I struggle with constantly. But let’s not start with structuralism.

It reminds me of a Taoist story I read, it goes a little something like this. One day the king of the land wanted to see a painting of a crab, having never seen one himself. So he called all his greatest artists and a Taoist master. When the artists were given their materials they all began to paint, except for the Taoist master who waited and asked to postpone the painting for a year. As the king grows tired of all the artists, he places all of his hopes on the Taoist. The Taoist keeps postponing until four years have passed. Until one day, he picked up his brush.

And in one movement.

One clean stroke.

The crab was finished.

It was the most perfect crab anyone had ever seen.

So maybe the roll of the writer, an artist, is to convey perfectly through a craft that takes years of training to hone? Or is the point of the story that it takes years to even convey just one thing perfectly? Either way, the fact is, as writers we have chosen the path to sharpen our craft, to be able to convey what we want to better than most.

So what do I think we should all take away from this? Personally, I say we need to write daringly. Because we’re all a part of this narrative. Being a writer isn’t about not being afraid of being read, it’s being willing to do it over and over again. And if you don’t convey yourself through passion, don’t hold your convictions tightly, and you just write what works, then you might find out that you’re just a foil. And nobody wants that.

Sorry for the sentimentality.

It doesn’t come often from me,

-Ryan