Style

It should, of course, come as no particular surprise that one approaches the task of writing very differently in the morning than one would at night. My principally nocturnal contact with this blog has left its mark upon the tone of everything I've written - a tone which I could not possibly emulate as the morning sun warms my back.

But just as we are always already in a mood, and that mood always already influences the constitution of the world we perceive - guides our priorities, alters our perceptions, subtly modifies the contours of the world and our interactions with it - so too does writing always occur both within a context of contingent (but often consistent) environmental factors as well as within the confines of the activity of writing itself. That is to say, tautologically, that one cannot produce writing without engaging in the activity of writing, and that activity, doubtless, alters the words we commit to the page. And if I cannot imagine Walter Benjamin buying groceries, it is only because I mistake his writing, or even his character as it emerged while he was writing, for him in his totality. And if Proust astutely observes that we, just like Swann, find it exceedingly difficult to imagine that other people do not always behave in the same way as they do in our company, then it becomes necessary to acknowledge, even if it is impossible to conceive of concretely, that even Walter Benjamin was not always like his authorial voice, and that my writing is, perhaps, not a very good representation of me, or, alternatively, an indication of the vagueness of me as a coherent concept.

This leads to diverging strains of thought: the deceptiveness of letters, which we take somehow to be a 'true' expression of a person's voice, somehow rescued from the innumerable and contingent factors which influence everyday activity (simply because we do not see these factors); and the nonexistence of anything that I can meaningfully like an enduring, consistent self. But since the latter is a subject I bring up too often (and somehow, precariously, hint at my own refutation in this demonstration of idiosyncrasy), I will concern myself briefly with the former question.

It is difficult for me to sense, while writing, how the tone of this completed piece will come across when read. Writing extemporaneously is almost like writing automatically, in that the completed entry will confront me as a somewhat mysterious text, a work of uncertain authorship and interpretation. Nonetheless, I anticipate that the extreme difference in time will not impact my style all that much. Too many factors remain consistent: isolation, ambient silence, the habitual memories which return - bearing with them all manner of concerns, ideas, anxieties, and inclinations - every time I sit down to write. This consistency of context lends consistency to my style. However, that does not make it 'mine' in the sense that it is somehow more authentic than the even more extemporaneous speech that I would produce if suddenly addressed.

If Nietzsche distrusted any thought that came to him sitting down, he still had to sit down to write that thought, and even his potent and vigorous style is probably the product of a man sitting in a chair with a pen in his hand. Ideas that I have while trying to fall asleep, or eating dinner, or walking in the woods take forms which I cannot reproduce at the writing table. I could trick the process by talking to myself and recording everything, but like those mysteriously indeterminate particles which seem to choose a concrete location only when observed, I will not be able to capture those fleeting ideas without altering them. There is therefore something necrotic about writing, and, perhaps, about those who devote their lives to it.