Why I Write

Let me dispense with the cliche first.

I hope that I am not writing in the hopes that there is one or more persons "out there" who will read what I post and "get" me. I hope that I am not writing to help others understand who I am. What I write may be a part of me, but it is filtered through my perspectives and again through my transient feelings on the day I write. Further, whatever another person reads will be filtered again through their comprehension and once again through whatever real-life experience he or she has had with me. It is a true fool's errand to think that the resulting understanding will even come close to capturing me.

Of course, I've qualified the above with the words "I hope." I have to be careful here, lest I deceive myself into thinking that I am above the common desire held by all those who express their thoughts through the pen, that their audience can share in the feelings held by the writers themselves. I am not above such desire, but that isn't my intended purpose.

I write because I like to express, in both expository and whimiscal styles. It is fun for me to see what comes out of the jumbled head of mine. Imagine taking a bunch of brushes and dipping them in various paint buckets, then throwing the bundle of brushes against a canvas. Every time I put words to page, I get a surprise at what comes out in the end. Not quite the stream-of-consciousness technique, but the result is similar. I get a kick out of reading what I write, amusing myself in the writing and the reading.

Second, I always write with music in the background. The combination of the music and the writing is cathartic. I find myself able to travel worlds and across time with the words I write. Combine that with the appropriate soundtrack to my mind's eye, and you have a Blockbuster (TM) night. I play a lot of different kinds of music, and it is interesting to see whether the music choice affects the mood/tone of the words I choose. For instance, I am writing this particular post to Evanescence - Before The Dawn (from their most recent album, The Open Door). And when I dabble in screen plays, I try to choose Hans Zimmer music, although there is tremendous risk that a dramatic scene turns into a car chase of some sort. (Short aside - I was driving around San Francisco with my wife last week, and we were on top of one of the many steep hills that dot the cityscape. If I had Hans Zimmer playing at the time, I know for sure I would have been tempted to drive like a madman. And as funny as that would have been, my wife would surely have had serious reservations about my mental stability... some things, you just cannot explain adequately to your wife).

So, there is incentive enough for me to write, internal to me and requiring no audience at all.

Yet I think, yes, I would be disingenuous if I were to say that no part of me wishes for someone to someday read what I write and be able to see what I see. My community would then be extended beyond the close company of me, and maybe I wouldn't feel alone.

My fear, then, is pretty obvious. What if someone were to read what I write, completely understand, and then simply say something like, "Ok, but so what?" or "I get what you say, but it's not very interesting or even original." This is why I have to hope that I write for myself and not for others. It would be a tragi-comedy indeed if I held the belief that I was truly unique, and a person much smarter than myself would come back at me with, "uh, you aren't different or supra-normal, you just think you are, like everyone else in the world. The only difference is that others accept their normality and thus have community, where you fail to grasp this and are apart only in your own mind...what a poor joke." I wonder if other writers feel the same way... of course, it is all pure irony in the end. I AM different, and I AM the same, and the only difference between the two lies in my mind. So really, who am I kidding?

Still, to save myself from a stark reality, I choose to write for myself first and foremost, and hold any other potential thoughts hostage in a dark recess of my mind.

-David