I’d like to lead you down an excellent internet rabbithole I fell through recently.
Themes: “putting yourself out there,” aloofness as coolness, earnestness, need, embarrassment, poetry, code.
From Jenny Zhang in The Creative Independent:
I think the main thing is to let go of the idea of greatness. Wanting to be great is really limiting. Wanting to be great, wanting to be perfect, wanting to wow and to stun and to dazzle—letting go of that is the most important thing.
You have to both be incredibly willing to be humbled and also, at the same time, hold an incredible high level of delusion. The high level of delusion is what allows you to keep writing and to want to share it with the world. But you also have to accept that it might not mean anything to other people, or that you might be writing so esoterically or so privately that other people have no way of entering into your ideas. Everyone is constantly trying to articulate the secret languages in their head to the outside world. If your language is too secret, then no one can understand; if your language is completely public, then there’s no mystery. There’s no longer the pleasure of decoding.
So how do you have both? I think it’s okay to be embarrassed. Especially in the beginning. When I say “beginning,” I mean when you’re starting out as a writer. But also in the beginning of writing anything new; it should be kind of embarrassing. Because the secret, intimate thoughts in your head should be kind of embarrassing. They should be kind of intense. It’s embarrassing to cry, but it doesn’t make sense to not [cry] in your life. It’s embarrassing to laugh really hard.
to Jenny’s wowowow essay “How It Feels” in Poetry Magazine, about feeling the low lows, and about how humiliating it can be to try and make art, to ask to be seen, to reveal yourself to anyone.
I think everyone wants to make something touchable, but most of us don’t out of fear of being laughable.
to “Code Poem” (1969) by Hannah Weiner, written in flag code for ships:
…Oof.
Read anything good lately?
<3
Lindsey
The best sort of rabbit hole. Omg that Hannah Weiner poem. Oof is right.