Why I Write

It's important for me that anyone reading this to remember that this is a creative space I have created.

It exists solely for the purpose of exploring myself, my art, my connections with the world and within myself. It's purpose is to constrain me within a specific medium in order to free me from the distractions that would see the amalgamation of thoughts swirling around my grey matter don't disappear into some subconscious escape-hatch.

It's also important for me that anyone reading this to remember that I use a pseudonym in order to distance the Me that exists within this pocket dimension from the Me that exists outside it. I'm both those people, but the former is, only a very specific presentation of Me. The latter is Me with and without filters, the flesh and blood, the purposeful and the fallible. The former is Me as I am creating myself, exploring myself, swimming amid the breadths and depths of life in order to understand, to empower my artistic expression. It minimizes the confusion so often encountered in separating the Art from the Artist.

This entire disclaimer is necessary because, in my experience, people read what I have written here and project their interpretation of (or just project their own insecurities and flaws onto) this small part of my whole self. They may believe that my whole life is a single post. They may even carry the assumption that what I write here is truer than the Me which exists within the real world.

Please, disabuse yourself of these notions. Social media is performative. Cyberspace is contrived. It has been since the binary code first transported itself across the ether of a unified TCP/IP. Here, we are who we choose to be, but we aren't solely those things. They define us only in part. They may be important, but they are also fleeting, or even misleading. They are part of the truth; they are not the truth itself.

As such, keep calm and carry on.

Now, back to the title of this post. I write because, as Charles Bukowski put it:

"if it doesn’t come bursting out of you

in spite of everything, don’t do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,

don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was."

From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way, by Charles Bukowski. (And yes, I recognize that Bukowski was, in many ways, an immature misogynist who represents some of the most unhealthy of ways to live your life. Doesn't change that what he wrote above is, more or less, correct for me and so many others writers.)

I write because writing has been the only world wholly my own. It has been my refuge from pain, my shelter in troubled times, and my home when adrift. I write because if I didn't write I'm not sure what I would do with the things that live inside me, the ugly thoughts, the beautiful memories, the damned voices all yelling a thousand different things like a freakish choir, discordant and frightening. But, somehow, each singer is captivating, and the multitudes together feel as if I carry the weight of more lives than I could have possibly lived, in all their glory and in all their tragedy.

I write because long ago I decided to write, and have not stopped doing so since then. I chose this. Or it chose me. Or we chose each other. Or something like that.

I write because, by writing, I find that every single broken scar is a little bit less raw, and every shit-eating grin of happiness dances just a little bit more gracefully across my face.

I write because I do not know what else to do.

I write just because.

And that's the only reason I'll ever need.