Friday, 09 January 2009
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Currently
Silver (Extended Edition)
By Starflyer 59
see relatedFor Advanced Writing Class
We had to pick a unifying topic for all our writing this semester. I chose pain. This is what I wrote about the choosing of the topic itself.
I hate picking topics. It's asking me to write for someone else, pleasing them and leaning to their tastes and not ruffling any feathers. It took me a while to come to a topic that didn't seem like a death sentence. I wanted to find something that left me free to explore, while still giving me clear guidelines. I wanted something that I could grasp onto like a steel railing while walking up the dilapidated stairs of my all but atrophied writing skills.
I went for a long drive through the gray and white streets of Marion, trying to conjure up the things that had influenced me, things that were staples to my artistic influences. I looked to my favorite authors and artists, taking in every word and brush stroke and sucking desperately from it like a starving infant at a strange woman's breast; starving, but not at home. Then I paused. I looked at my own life. I looked at the things that had happened to me, I remembered the line that I first heard in the movie, Duplex. "Write what you know."
Pain. I truly think there is no greater bond that humanity shares than the indescribable pain of living. To quote The Princess Bride, "Life is pain...". The Epic of Gilgamesh talks of the bond that is shared between two men who share hardship. Soldiers who endured the Vietnam War together have a stronger bond with each other than many of them do with their own families. There is no greater adhesive, no more omnipresent uniting force than utter, indescribable pain. This language is universal but difficult to communicate in words. Yet I, as a writer, am able to transmute it from abstract substance of thought into a tangible ink and paper portrait of the most universal aspect of the human experience.
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