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Right Brain Vs Left
Sometimes I think I am very technical minded. When I read, I pull everything apart into a million pieces. I deconstruct the elegance of the equation by hammering it down into raw numbers. Writers I interact with, some of you reading this perhaps, say to me, "Oh, such clever reading! I never even notice those things were there!" That is because you are creative; I am technical. You give life, while I--I don't take it away, of course. I merely dissect it after it's dead (maybe ideas die when they spew into words, onto the page. Or maybe they don't die until I read them. [Maybe that cat in the box is dead; maybe it is alive. Maybe it is both until you open the box.]). This is a very clinical job of mine that requires no power and quite a bit of cleverness. I am like a scientist, a mortician. I am very business-oriented; I host a funeral parlor.
When I write, I do not give life; I merely do the opposite of undertaking. I add up numbers on my machine. I assemble parts; I fit them together, jig-saw style. I put a lot of things in there, I feed them into the black box that you see, but I can rarely say to you, "I never even notice those things were there!" because I put them there. I am very intentional; I am filled with purpose. This may be a form of creativity, but it requires not a single leap. Leaps are genius; steady steps are merely very clever. (I told you I am very clever; I have no doubt of that.)
This is why I cannot write poetry. Poetry is all leaps. It makes me feel; it makes me think as well, but my thinking is not successful. I don't understand why certain poems make me feel they way they do, or how the words in them work on me. I cannot take poetry apart. I hate it because I cannot break it to bits and I worship it for that same reason. It's smarter than me--or, more hatefully and more sacredly, it is not about intelligence at all but something spiritual that cannot be accessed with logic. I shake my fist at T. S. Eliot, the integrity (the leaps) of whose poetry I interest-list.
But sometimes I think I am not very technical minded at all. The millions of pieces I pull apart from a piece of art require a certain kind of vision, this vision being revelation, being faith, which requires all sorts of leaping, as the saying goes. I am managing, in all this deconstruction, to see the construction itself, the creation, but also all the millions of things that went into it. Millions of things that do not exist as things separately; I look at something smooth and continuous, like a marble statue, and see it as if it was made of a billion bricks instead of carved out of a single stone. And seeing it that way isn't false seeing. Just because the author didn't mean to put it there, didn't have to think of it, doesn't mean it's not there. I'm just seeing of what the rock itself is composed, which the artist might never have understood or considered beyond what it took to manipulate the raw materials, and again I say this takes vision.
In a marble statue are billions of atoms and molecules and particles and dust motes and rubble and rock bonded together by atomic forces, by molecular bonds, by weather and erosion and time, by nature. They exist on infinite different levels, and coexist in different relationships in infinity times as many ways. Obviously I don't literally see atoms. I do see in 80 pages of a good book at least a dozen different themes, which can be broadened so that there are maybe really only two or three umbrella themes, or narrowed such that there are however many sentences come in 80 pages. But I see these different themes and can make almost every word connect to them.
I could reorder every word--of course, I could reorder every word and write the book all over again. But I can also make every word relate to every other word; I can make each idea hark back to one of a thousand threads weaving together the cloth; my view of the cloth is not linear but a web. Of course it's easy with a good book; I think that must be what a good book is. But good writers don't necessarily do it. That is not to say they couldn't. Everyone can to some extent; that is why we have the word "theme" and almost every person knows its meaning. But of course I am a snowflake.
That was longer than 15 minutes. I wonder if it even means anything? To anyone but me, I mean.
no subject
And I am so very sensitive about that that I find it difficult to talk about, even though I think this post is beautiful and I loved reading it and love you more for writing it and for allowing me the privilege of your company and watching you work in conversation. And you don't make me feel stupid, but sometimes I feel so very certain that any illusion I had of being smart at all is a sham.
no subject
I don't do any of those things you say
Does this make you feel less intelligent? Because I don't think the fact that I do those things is evidence of my intelligence, just evidence of the way I think, or look at the world, or the way my brain analyzes the world. How well I do those things is perhaps evidence of my intelligence, but I do believe very firmly intelligence is a singular thing. I sound sarcastic when I say I am a snowflake, but I sound that way only because I want to point out how special I am while at the same time fending off the inevitable insight that I'm not special at all. I actually *do* believe that everyone is unique. Some people are smart, and some are stupid, but everyone is smart and stupid in his own way. I may be pretty and I may be ugly, but I am not one or the other because I'm taller than you, or because my face is longer than yours, or because my hips are wider and my feet are bigger and my eyelids droop more than yours.
I don't do the things you like about my writing,
You mean you don't do them on purpose, right? If they're there, whether you did them on purpose or not, the quality of your writing remains the same.
no subject
I think "good at reading" means different things too. For instance, I'm great at bringing my own meaning to things. I'm terrible at imposing other schools of thought on what I read. ...Those essays I was talking about for classes, whenever I was supposed to give a "feminist" reading of a text, or a reading according to any school of critique, I was such complete and other fail. Part of it was I just didn't care enough about other schools of thought besides my own (that's my arrogance at work). Part of it was that's just not the way I read, and try hard as I might I don't see those things.
So in some ways I read incredibly well. In some ways I suck. In the end I prefer to believe I'm wonderful, because I'm a snowflake. And you, perhaps, believe occasionally that you suck, because you don't excel in the ways others do.
...I have a post up my sleeve I want to make about this. Because in some ways I'm entirely confident saying, "Oh Lordy look how clever I am!" as I did in this post. In some ways I'm very self-conscious about it. Partly because I know I should be modest (which is why I use the word "clever" instead of smart. There's sarcasm implied in "clever", it sounds like I'm not bragging about how smart I am, but rather I'm saying I got lucky somehow. Or that's how "clever" always sounded to me). But partly because I'm very aware that I am smart in this way, and that in the ways others are smart, I'm not as much. I'm good at math but I'm not going to be Einstein. I'm a good writer, but I don't understand T. S. Eliot. So I don't compare myself to others, and find a unique way in which I can believe that I am brilliant.
This is all about me me me. Maybe I just don't want to come off arrogant when you are manifestly anti-arrogant. I don't know if sharing my perspective with you will help you. I do know that when I do read Eliot, and feel stupid because I don't know how to pull it apart, I comfort myself with the knowledge that I am special, and clever in other ways. ...I think about Eliot a lot when I think about this topic, because I feel intimidated by Eliot. Meanwhile Eliot himself was incredibly intimidated by writers who had come before him, who he felt were masters to whom he could never live up.
Um, so you don't have to reply if you feel sensitive about it or it's difficult, but ... I love your company too, and do feel it is a privilege. And sometimes I'm envious of or even intimidated by your quick grasp of concepts or ability to intelligently dissect abstractions or ability to write efficient and fun-to-read reviews. But I'm a snowflake; I'm a snowflake; I'm a snowflake.