On free play

One of the must-be myths of Montaigne is that his Essais represent the free play of the mind. If this is the case, then how does he not leave his desk to go take in the sunlight? Why does he continue?

If it is a devoted study, how is it free? If it is not free, how is it enjoyable? What sort of masochistic shackles hold him down?

In truth, I speak of Montaigne as of myself. Everyone likes to reform him in their own image.

Personally, my undertaking here is simply to write, and, in order to do so, I must suspend judgment on that which I am writing. Suspending judgments is a matter of infinite hope. Here, I do not claim to know Gatsby in any insightful way; rather, the important thing, it would seem, is to encounter myself in literature. Though that was not the sentence I meant to write before starting it, what I mean by this is that the only meaningful engagement I seem to get from literature are with words and phrases which strike me outside of themselves. There is no vainer an activity than reading something which does not make you question; and no vainer a pastime than to write without meditation on what one is writing.

To be clear, I am not referring to the practice of automatic writing. That is the zero-degree of what I am doing here. Rather, what I mean is that I need to delete anticipation of a reader in order to let the thoughts flow. All this said, why do I need writing to block thoughts in the first place? Surely, as a slower medium by which to see one's thoughts, and analyse them, writing is a hindrance rather than an enabler?

In any case, there are many questions here and not many answers. But, given that I can barely exist with myself peacefully at times, it makes sense to profit from this by at least making testament of this split personality. 'Splitting' was something I mentioned in my last post. It might also be called duality, since, to divide something once is to divide it into two. On the other hand, 'splitting' might be likened to Voldemort's horcruxes, and in this sense, the mark of a truly evil soul.

In any case - I start again, remembering at this point the point at which Montaigne makes an intervention into his train of thought to address the addressee directly (voilà ce qu'il dit):

(J'use en liberté de conscience de mon Latin, avecq le congé que vous m'en avez donné.) (Apologie de Raimond Sebond)

At this point, I have forgotten the part of the sentence which was to follow the hypothetical second dash and 'in any case'. This is an example of where my writing has cannibalised itself (concept I mentioned last time I blogged) and which practice I believe I must avoid if I am to make a craft of writing at all. I imagine many people will have experienced such a concern when writing, with a perfectionism so paranoid that hardly a word is written before the page is scrunched up and thrown in the paper bin. The craft the writer develops thereby is most likely parabolic accuracy. One would rather learn physics to explain that.

So, to return to my title, which can become for me an ever-fruitful starting point to recover from these losses, I want to ask if there is any possibility of free play, especially where writing is concerned, and especially in writing where one knows that what one writes will be written by others and that that which is written will most likely be twisted against the writer for various purposes. It seems to me - here I will be a good skeptic and qualify my opinions with the forewarning that they are an opinion, like a bag of peanuts which forewarns its consumer, 'contains: peanuts' - that we live in a society which judges people immensely and immoderately for a few misplaced words in their youth. This thought having haunted me for most of my teenage years, I have lacked the experience necessary to truly perceive where those limits really are. Now, this having so wholly consumed me, I can no longer continue caring how my thoughts may or may not be perceived to be good; because, surely, it is better to have thought and erred than never to have thought at all. There is such thing as lie; however, lie cannot be completely removed from the truth. There is always some element of truth at play. Thus, to declare that 'I am not writing', and this to truly be a lie, the thought of me writing - that which takes place in the material world - must cross my mind. Even if the thought does not cross my mind, the words stand in some relation to the truth, albeit that they are not the truth themselves, they are not altogether nothing in the rational cause-and-effect universe.