why I need to write more

I’ve found as of late that the things I write haunt me. When I read back on what I’ve written in the past and find it foreign to how I see myself writing or thinking now. This doesn’t always take the form of a progression or sense of maturity, but also a sense of being ambushed with the ideas I’ve had before… and otherwise lost to my present self. This is one of the things I like about writing – the expansion and transformation of time in relationship to manifestations of self in the past. Words and thoughts I write shift meaning and sometimes disappear when I write, and committing them to mild permanency widens the space for self questioning. Meanings begin in one place and begin again in others, in ways I may not expect or understand. I feel a more substantial intervention to structured thought when I write, a self-speculation and wariness of thoughts that doesn’t come necessarily in conversation.

I also think writing responds to the connections I feel between myself and politics as someone who reads often. Written language cannot contain its audience – the text may be copied or re-read any number of times without correspondence with the original author. It addresses anyone, generally, potentially across any number of spatial boundaries. For that, reading involves myself in political situations outside the immediate proximity of my physical experiences, and I feel like isolating communication in verbal expressions leaves significant portions of my political experience under theorized and unaddressed for the most part.

Duncan