Abstract:
Up until I was around eighteen or nineteen years old, I would regularly write in a diary. It would be filled with mostly trivial things: I’d recount things that had happened to me during the day, glorifying my hopelessly average teenage experiences, and try to give some reassuring tangibility, some validation, to a scattered range of petty preoccupations. As each diary’s pages filled, they joined one another in a shoebox. It was a habit I grew out of - for lack of time or something else. A couple of years ago I revisited this shoebox and cringed. Embarrassed by the uninhibited, fickle narratives of my younger self, I started destroying the diaries, fearing the humiliation I knew I’d feel if someone else were to read them. What I like about the concept of a diary though, is the honesty of the chronological format. I like the transparency of the passage of time, the naive sincerity of the unguarded confessional, the implicit acknowledgement of not knowing things in the present moment. I like having the capacity to reflect back later privately, and to see how things have changed - or not changed. I enjoy the organic, free-flowing way you can write in this convention, free from inhibition, knowing that it is only for yourself. In the way that some people enjoy singing in the shower (whether they can sing well or not), the promised absence of an audience means that any fear of judgement falls away. When I attempt to write in more recent years, I often imagine that I am flailing in a large body of water, gasping for air. I’ve found that this kind of paralysis is not uncommon when approaching academic writing: pressures to adhere to a prescribed style and structure, to formulate some sort of topical, original and meaningful contribution, and in the fine arts context, to constantly reiterate a relevant relationship to practice, gives one too many considerations to wrestle with - before, as Raunig notes, ‘content’ can even be conceived. Imagining a climate where these conditions are absent, I wondered, how would my attitude, my approach to writing manifest differently? What alternative forms of writing could breed?