The Unprofessional Boy #7
Wordworking, wavemaking, and (not) thinking
Hello.
You’re on the other side of a screen, reading these words in the approximate order in which I’m typing them; maybe you skip a sentence or two forward when it gets boring, maybe you rewind at the first sign of convolution. That’s understandable; as good a medium as written text is, as much of a thought-out, permanent record as it attempts to establish, it’s lossy. It seems as if we are decades away from direct transmission of thought or feeling, and wordworking is modern-day humanity’s best answer to that most critical gap. Communication is the central function of our species —we are in some sense defined by our value exceeding that of the sum of our parts— and yet the current solution is a poor facsimile of the optimal execution.
It seems to me that the individuality of the human experience merits further study, and that maybe we shouldn’t mock technological attempts to connect each other, but support them— in concept, at least. One day, perhaps, I won’t have to type; we will merely enter each others’ experiences, and I would like to hope that the world will be better because of it. Until then, we wait, and we work to make ourselves heard, even more to be understood.
I often think of art, that field which proudly boasts its lack of definition, as classified in these terms, bound within the idea that it attempts to mean more than direct communication. It attempts to subvert our expectations surrounding the media of our everyday lives and deliver a more true, complete portrait. “It’s said that a picture is worth more than a thousand words” is an oft-repeated phrase; personally, I feel that I hear the cliché, by this point, as an excuse for lack of explanatory text, as a justification for a careless graphic. Moreover, it seems to be used as such almost intentionally, self-mockingly.
Art constitutes more than two-dimensional visual images, obviously, and not every picture is intended for evaluation in that category. Still, I tend to feel as if there is little value to the inherent superiority of a medium; as much as I prefer words, a given method of conveyance is only valuable in its use. A strong storyteller uses the method that best suits the story, and only a poor craftsman blames his tools.
I may prefer the spooky season to Inktober, but I see no reason not to experiment in new methods of shared understanding. Here’s what the (actually, obviously, calm) water felt like on Saturday with everyone in the boat rowing, with apologies to Hokusai.
As pictured above, I was in my first boat race, the five-seat in a novice mixed eight. We have, suffice it to say, a lot of practice to do, and a lot of room for improvement concerning coordination— in large part, it’s attributable to water time and not having truly set lineups, so I trust we’ll all improve. I’m crossing my fingers that I will, at least; I’ve dropped my five-kilometer ergometer time to a 19:52.5, almost a minute better than my first one ever, but I remain nervous whether that will translate to better races. All I can do, I suppose, is trust the process and keep raising that max wattage.
The thing I appreciate most about crew, about rowing, is the simplicity of the sport. It’s like running, almost, but with a forcing function of extremely specific technique that regulates the repetitive motions. That focus forces me to stop rhyming, to stop humming the beats to my favorite songs, to quiet the malaise of my internal monologue, for the duration of the exercise. There’s not much I can self-examine other than the minutiae of the numerous points I’m trying to optimize. Practicing on an ergometer, with the details of split and stroke rate hovering six inches in front of my face, this is even more prominent; this is surprising to me because a treadmill doesn’t do the same thing. Maybe it’s the practice I’ve had with running, maybe it’s a natural tendency of a team sport where rhythm is so crucial— either way, for once, I can’t really think.
I’ll admit that it’s nice.
Outside the boat, this week I’ve been considering the ramifications of writing. Business writing, sure, as I earmarked last week —I think the market, being a guiding force in many of our lives, is always worthwhile to consider— but I’m pushing discussion of that to next week, possibly. I’ve actually fallen a little deeper down a more specific rabbit hole than I anticipated, and I want to explore/research that further before offering my thoughts. This week, we’ll focus on personal writing, starting with the narrative kind.
It’s often been useful for me to use this lens to reflect, largely because of two characteristics of humans. Firstly, we are exceptional pattern-matchers; we guess at coincidences and create cause-and-effect chains that don’t exist, because it used to be an effective survival mechanism. Secondly, our happiness, or lack of it, stems often from our expectations of the future; to a certain extent, the present circumstances are bearable as long as we can see a road ahead.In my darkest hours —those in which I’m not pretending to be Batman, anyway— it’s because my pattern-matcher is broken, and I can’t see a way forward. I can’t find that narrative.
The human experience, seen in this way, exists in a set of permanent contradictions; namely, there is an endless ripple between significance and irrelevancy. One consideration is that we may be mere side characters in others’ stories, another is that certain times are wholly immaterial to the larger plot, and we have no way of knowing which they are. This lack of resolution is unsatisfactory, even painful— and so there exist two well-trodden paths for navigating these straits.
The first consists of philosophical systems within a certain radius of nihilism; the second is a common response to the assertion that, probabilistically, we exist within a simulation: to ignore the problem entirely, to act as if this analysis is unknown. As I understand it, the first —in theory— necessarily eschews any standard practice. The second option, though, is forced into routine by its very virtue: in a system of constructing a narrative anyway, structure is required. It’s because it is hard to build a story out of days and weeks and moments that our years don’t land the way we want them to, that the character development seems lacking. Rather than grand tales, we turn our lives into mostly-predictable sitcoms.
We don’t watch our own shows, though, we fixate on the interesting ones. That’s how one gets that all-too-powerful thing, the devoted fanbase: by creating narrative hooks for prospective supporters to latch into the ecosystem, to enter and become more progressively interested in the universes we hold within. Much has been written recently about any individual being their own media company; there is some truth to this, in that the Internet has begun to allow for the lowering of frictional costs. Those who don’t realize this, I think, probably would do well to more deeply consider the value of a public body of work.
That “public” element may seem obvious; it’s now in many cases almost the default— but it can be hard to find the rationale behind writing at all, because our experiences feel ordinary, and therefore useless. The transformation of a bad narrative into a good one requires spin, though— and every PR officer’s take on a situation is different. We can get stuck in consumption, in the reinforcement of the paradigm we believe ourselves to inhabit. It’s easy to romanticize the process of those whose work we consider impressive, discouraging ourselves in the process. This is where the first path and the majority of the second converge in the woods, meeting at a disregard of outer significance.
I don’t know that I’m on that most rare path, the one which diverges into the pursuit of meaning-making and creation and defiance of the premise of universal mortality— but I don’t see any reason not to support those who are. I try to help those who know they’re on that path, and to push forward anyone who doesn’t know it yet; it isn’t a matter of moral virtue, but besides the surface desire to help those around me, it feels imperative. Perhaps this speaks to some deeper desire within me to know for certain that I am walking the hopeful path, that there will be a legacy even as a footnote in my friends’ biographies. I think I’m good with words, particularly writing them, as much as anyone can know for sure, and I’d like to think that I’m learning on a level that matters— it appears only natural, then, to write: to extend a hand which someone else may grasp to pull themselves into persistence.
I break this goal down, often, into the specific utilities which writing things provides to me and to others; I find that enumerating these details can force me into a state of mindfulness, and that said contemplation usually pushes me to stumble forward a few steps. Firstly, I feel almost that the primary use of writing is often internal: it helps in the development of a broader sense of expressing and interpreting ideas, and it often does this by progressing and adding nuance to the writer’s feelings. It’s a valuable method for this in the same way that reading is. Secondly, it —even if unpublished— can serve as a utility to others, by simple virtue of the fact that the writer is less blocked up. That energy carries over, and this idea only multiplies if the work is shared; in that case, it can be reviewed, and critiqued, and mulled over.
In the public creation of material, I run up against problems; I find myself —especially in non-Internet interactions— defaulting to a short-term conversational mindset, disturbing the fermentation of ideas, perhaps, before it begins. The consequences of this kind of misstep, of course, are worse on the Internet, where our words are archived; it’s always difficult to walk the balance of saying interesting and new yet not regrettable things.
The only way to address them, I feel, is often with volume; to create so many iterations and versions that I can take a step back and compare them. Past a certain point, writing is the only way to get better at writing. In large part, that’s why I write this newsletter; because I’m trying to get better at newsletters, and because I think building skills that produce end products is useful. It keeps me thinking and the wheel moving in the same way Twitter can, used optimally, and the same way chat messages could if their platforms’ creators wanted them to.
Work
In that spirit, this week I’ve written another book chapter; hopefully, as I’ve said, I can close out this ridiculous first draft in another few weeks. There’s definitely some good there, but the current me isn’t quite qualified to tease it out just yet; I’m going to come back to it when I feel I can make some decent edits.
Speaking of, I’ve been revising some of the script I’ve written for a hypothetical web series pilot (which I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned earlier) which will hopefully go up next week.
Links
I’ve certainly linked Alexey Guzey’s Why You Should Start A Blog before, but I think it’s particularly applicable here, so I’ll recommend it again; the post is the strongest exhortatory, analytical recommendation for writing I can remember reading.
[Earmark] Here’s a list of guidelines for Writing Docs at Amazon, written in part as a response to one of last week’s links, which elaborates on some internal specifics.
[Earmark] For further and deeper exploration, I think this compilation of articles and posts about the Writing Culture at Amazon, collected by the awesome Rahul Ramchandani, is a great starting place.
Top Ten: Movies
Die Hard
The Prestige
WarGames
Inception
The Social Network
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
The Dark Knight
8 Mile
Sneakers
The Breakfast Club
Closing/Signature
That’ll be all for today, I’m afraid. It’s been nice having you here, and hopefully I’ll see you next week. If you want to get in touch with me before then, compose an email, shoot me a Twitter DM, or scribe a Letter.
I wish you all the best.
Orion Lehoczky Escobar