Taxidermy and Other Useful Occupations for the Would-Be Writer

Courtesy of Monsieur Mamet I have been talking late of film in relation to fiction and poetry. Okay so I omitted in previous posts to tell you that, but that is what I was about. So now you know, you can counter, “but screenwriting is not the same thing as fiction or poetry…”
That may be so, but is taxidermy? And yet I have a book on taxidermy that I will quote you one of these days (when I can find in under the mountain of other books avalanching in my basement office) which will teach you more about writing than any number of workshops or fancy Creative Writing courses.

Look around you. The form of writing is everywhere. This was my point in Pollacks, Woodpeckers and Imaginary Selves. We cannot assume writing has a form of its own. Its form is the very form our living and our life, nothing less. Sadly, nothing more.

We are limited by our experience. We use writing to learn more about ourselves, but it may be pointless since our writing is limited by the very act of being ourselves.

We may get to know ourselves better, but we won’t get beyond that. I feel this is the truth. And while we hold ourselves in lofty adoration, we are no more than a weak link in a chain. Think about it. Only humankind would be bothered inventing words to write about themselves. It’s quite pathetic.

We understand ourselves by understanding our form. We learn about that by observing forms around us.- structures, animals, light etc. And so I’ll mumble on about Dave (Monsieur Mamet to you) and we’ll fumble around looking for combinations of words which tell us more about our choice of patterns than anything else. We’ll call that writing, and for now it is the best we can do.