I stumbled upon this piece today. Joan Didion wrote it in the year of my birth.
Coincidentally, today is my birthday.
I am featuring it here because of my respect and adoration for the freakish and profound writing talent of Ms. Didion. When I read her work, like that of other writers I favour (Joyce Maynard, James Salter, Raymond Carver), I think: this is writing at it's best - precise, lucid, insightful, magically poetic. And I feel uplifted, inspired, informed, enlightened.
Click on the picture to link to the full piece, if you wish to see what I am talking about. Then, if you want, come back and finish reading this entry. I'll put a few dashes and make a line here, to delineate the text and encourage you're temporary visitation of the Vogue article from 54 years ago.
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I'll never write that well. Not ever. I don't have that kind of mind. My composition is nowhere near as rigorous, my thought-process-compilation not as unequivocal. But I appreciate it immensely. Mine is more a free style of writing,
lackadaisical, meandering, unselfconscious. I am like a friendly, playful scribe, largely untrained, but with passion and perseverance to make up for it. And, too, lately, I am on a mission. I seek to find and celebrate truth and beauty and investigate the beauty of truth. I aim, here in these pages, to humbly uncover the sweet grandness of the ordinary and exalt the sticky, cumbersome reality of the everyday existence of the outsider, the artist, the overly sensitive sentient being that I embody. In my journey is a reflection of your journey. I unashamedly investigate the unpleasant side of small triumphs; the pathway of multiple failures, the cloudy sky of indecision and misgivings, the daily sufferings of the inquisitive, unsatisfied mind.
In this sense, I share something with Joan. We are both artists seeking to direct the spotlight of our perception onto ourselves. Reading her piece the first hour into my birthday somehow brings me a feeling of comfort. It reads like a whisper and a well wish from a wise and somber friend. It's like a small slap - on the face? on the back? - that bolsters my resolve to create things - images and words - of substance and value. Why waste time with anything else? There's joy to be had in wasting time just the way I always have: playfully and with conviction.
Fifty fours years I have been around now. Time for me to pull up my socks? Ha. I don't wear them.
Coincidentally, today is my birthday.
I am featuring it here because of my respect and adoration for the freakish and profound writing talent of Ms. Didion. When I read her work, like that of other writers I favour (Joyce Maynard, James Salter, Raymond Carver), I think: this is writing at it's best - precise, lucid, insightful, magically poetic. And I feel uplifted, inspired, informed, enlightened.
Click on the picture to link to the full piece, if you wish to see what I am talking about. Then, if you want, come back and finish reading this entry. I'll put a few dashes and make a line here, to delineate the text and encourage you're temporary visitation of the Vogue article from 54 years ago.
------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll never write that well. Not ever. I don't have that kind of mind. My composition is nowhere near as rigorous, my thought-process-compilation not as unequivocal. But I appreciate it immensely. Mine is more a free style of writing,
lackadaisical, meandering, unselfconscious. I am like a friendly, playful scribe, largely untrained, but with passion and perseverance to make up for it. And, too, lately, I am on a mission. I seek to find and celebrate truth and beauty and investigate the beauty of truth. I aim, here in these pages, to humbly uncover the sweet grandness of the ordinary and exalt the sticky, cumbersome reality of the everyday existence of the outsider, the artist, the overly sensitive sentient being that I embody. In my journey is a reflection of your journey. I unashamedly investigate the unpleasant side of small triumphs; the pathway of multiple failures, the cloudy sky of indecision and misgivings, the daily sufferings of the inquisitive, unsatisfied mind.
In this sense, I share something with Joan. We are both artists seeking to direct the spotlight of our perception onto ourselves. Reading her piece the first hour into my birthday somehow brings me a feeling of comfort. It reads like a whisper and a well wish from a wise and somber friend. It's like a small slap - on the face? on the back? - that bolsters my resolve to create things - images and words - of substance and value. Why waste time with anything else? There's joy to be had in wasting time just the way I always have: playfully and with conviction.
Fifty fours years I have been around now. Time for me to pull up my socks? Ha. I don't wear them.
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