|
The shape and tone of
a line or sentence being an idea about narrative
These words given toward a developing vocabulary of ‘what is prose.’
I ask myself what I mean by prose. And respond it’s the present-making
of consciousness through the sound of narrative and the partition of character.
Which posits that the preoccupation of such writing is THOUGHT. I
have never been able to separate thought from language, from the utterance.
Any sentence composed of words (at least one) that may be recognized and
interpreted by others is an issuance of an idea about being in the world.
By consequence, every sentence is a potential problem of time, space,
and identity. That is, the manner in which we go about articulating ourselves
in time and in space and as time and as
space is various and debatable. And the memory of such living in
and as is nearly impossible to corroborate among others or just
alone by oneself.
An utterance exits out of the mood of the speaker/writer and is received
into the mood of the listener/reader. Mood carves the articulation. Between
the place it was issued and the place it arrives, there is the world—
the exterior, vague, illuminated, sweaty, stinking, beautiful, rainy,
terrible, sweet world.
Every utterance, every excursion in language (that is shared) contains,
in itself, all possible itinerary of being. So not only are our words
swollen, but also, the gesture of speech, of writing is swollen.
***
In order to greet
a person and inquire about her health, in order to select an entrée
from a menu, it is often necessary to forget the above, to push through
the ambiguity of being a container of every possible word and emotion,
to push through the distortions that are time and memory. So to function.
We are trained to do this, and it is my bet that anyone reading this right
now, has succeeded (at least in part) in carrying on like this.
But writing, for me, is freedom from the confines of rationality. Sentences
allow me to create a world, a narrative world that resembles the one in
which I live. It’s as though the text blocks are little architectures:
a house on a street, a store, a bed, a bus, etc. However, these same sentences,
which I also like to call “pretend-tences,” become a theatre
for enacting the perplexity (and luminosity) of consciousness. When I
say prose is the present-making of consciousness through the sound of
narrative and the partition of character, I insist that sound of narrative
is not interchangeable with the unadorned narrative. This is what I mean
by “pretend-tences.” For me, the point of “going out
for a walk” is not to arrive any place in particular but simply
to move at a specific pace on my feet. My relation to prose is very similar.
Sound of narrative as if it is the very motor of thinking. Something
like that…I’m not sure yet. These ideas make the writing of
prose seem like an activity of absolute randomness, but that’s not
what I want to propose. When I’m walking it’s not that I don’t
have a sense of where I want to go, which path might suit my mood most.
***
Character is a gauze
curtain behind which a dance occurs. From the observer’s side of
the curtain, there is a figure and a prop. It appears that the figure
is trying to step around the prop or move it. The persistence of the figure
to push pass this particular prop is not clear from the observer’s
side. From here, there seem to be alternate routes: walk away from the
prop, jump over the prop. The observer begins to yell at the figure—making
suggestions or reprimands. That gauze curtain reveals each side to the
other, and through some type of absorption, records them. When you read
the work (my work), it’s the curtain you see, the curtain you read.
***
The question of naming
happens only afterward. I’m never thinking this is prose
as I’m writing. The moment of writing (typing, really) is the moment
of creation. I must allow distractions only of the fertile kind, e.g.
a bug’s sudden appearance or sudden hunger. Yet, once the thing
is printed and sitting in front of me, the voices from the folks inside
me swell. “What is this Renee? Where did it come from?” They
yell.
|