What have I learned about writing this week? Well, from reading several linguistics criticism theories for somewhere around fifteen plus hours, I must say that writing about writing is one of the most daunting and complex tasks in the entire universe. I just wrote a long paper on why this is so for another class, and I'm not one for making two of the same pieces, due to the obnoxious redundancy it creates for myself, mainly.
The basic gist is that what is difficult when defining what is writing -- and the truth behind words and how they are indicators of concepts -- is that words change with time, perception, and so much more. To get through understanding writing through the process of writing can almost look like madness in trying to keep riddles, rhetoric, and metaphors from conquering the author.
I think mentally the artist needs to train their self. The starving broke artist isn't broke because they're an artist; it's the art that keeps them alive while in the poverty. I have seen true poverty, I think I would be silly to say I've actually lived it. Just because you don't have material goods doesn't mean your life feels unsatisfied. I think we often put these material goods where other more fruitful concepts can alleviate the pains of a homesick mortal soul.
Going back to my point: an artist not only needs to be trained in their craft of choice, but they have to be willing to strengthen their mind. If one allows their body to be sedentary, you don't just gain weight, you also gain tension, soreness, and often times, depression. Once you start stretching, even though at the time sounds like the worst idea, it actually helps to free up all the stress one carries. We carry stress in our mind; it's a battleground of concepts, memories, dreams, and other related psychosis. Without alleviating the stress that allows the mind to run free, the mind reverts to a state of confusion, of feeling like it's lost to a jungle without any tool to combat all the dangers. Exercising after a long lifestyle disease of sedentary living often feels painful, as do most things when they go through a purification process, like being thrown into fire to strengthen the sword -- this is bringing up some crazy religious notions in my mind. I need to slow down.
So what is a healthy mind? Defining that is complex because we have to use our minds to figure out what that is, and since we are in part liars it becomes an abstract set of statistics that may or may not prove pertinent.
This is part of the problem in writing about writing, for you see if you do not give writing about writing proper direction it does in fact turn into madness, and by madness I mean having all the information but not being able to balance it properly for it to be solved into a cohesive text. For me to straight up tell anyone how to have a healthy mind should always be questionable, and since each human brain has its own distinct entity, yet commonalities with other minds, giving a universal remedy for the health of a mind is fairly convoluted, if not arguably insulting (considering it removes personal touch).
I think in writing well, and I mean extremely well, and not the tripe candy we all may enjoy from childhood on up, I mean writing that actually enables you to have genius -- I think to write genius you must experience genius. Discovering genius writing is not an easy task. It's a chaotic field to seek through, and even more so, it is hard to come up with a system whereby you find patches of literature that have inspired readers, philosophers, mystics, fools, and kings. We could look to the anthropomorphic texts of our past and ask ourselves how have they carried on into the future, or perhaps best seller lists, but again these texts are hit or miss depending on the audience. I'm not here to say look at what sells, at least this time, because the future does some weird things to art that when people are dead transcends money. Franz Kafka wanted his work destroyed and most of his work wasn't brought to the attention of literary circles until after his death... and yet there's been a fortune made off it. Be thought provoking, not for the sake of money because money doesn't always satisfy what the heart needs.
Be thought provoking because genius helps us to relieve the stress of our minds. It's those eureka moments that bring such insane amounts of joy that actually makes life worth living, even in the darkest of times. To know that there is truth out there, to know that there are answers to our existence is fascinating and in all happiness, a huge relief in that there's actually some sort of logic in the way our lives move forward. Even if our pasts are foggy, even if trying to find our origins with the scattered puzzle pieces is terrifying, the shards of evidence in bringing truth together helps us all.
The brain needs to be treated well in order for it to create. There is a relationship to our inputs and outputs and the way it affects us. If you want to enjoy what's been given between your ears, you have to treat it well regardless of what circumstances may offer to lessen one's personal dreams.
Writing is summoned at all times through the power of memory. Each letter was learned through systematic memorization and as you develop as a human being, concepts come into understanding. Through the significance of memory, writing grows. Writing is the epoch of all forms of thinking for it is the conveyor of concepts, human thoughts, science, mathematics -- all of it is connected together in one piece that relates to each other, both aiding in solving out the complexities of the other individualized parts.
How would we come to any understanding of science without rhetoric? How could we make sense of science without language? And how could we come to any sense of language without science existing at all?
If you want to be a better writer you have to take care of your mind. Enable your mind to find significance in life and eventually one will be able to fashion words together. From order breaking a part, we have chaos, and when we put chaos back together, we have order.
I think this will suffice for now. I just have to make sure to catch up with these posts, because somehow this winter has gotten the best of me.
It's often through writing we find edification. Whether or not our minds are paralyzed with disease, the nutrients of our generations' drugs, or the synedoches of misconception -- writing things out and seeing it before our own eyes helps to push out of the jungle and into the open air.
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