Not So Much the Opening Salvo, as the First Nail

A friend called me last night and told me about an argument she had had with a group of young male coworkers who put forth the argument that people who write are pretentious.

"I couldn't believe what they were saying," she said, "these are educated people--people who read books. What is wrong with them?"

Jealousy seems too easy of an answer, although it's not far off. These critics, these highly educated skeptics, think so highly of themselves that when they finish reading something they often think to themselves, "I am that smart. I could do that." It is so easily seen as the hubris of the educated, self-centered young men who speak without knowing and were not prepared for my friend, a beautiful, strong, intelligent, witty, and altogether wonderful young woman, to question them. How distatesful of her. Doesn't she know that they could write "the-great-American-novel," they just don't want to bother themselves, afterall writing is for the pretentious. Those who think they have something important to add.

So, their pens remain lifeless, and their pages empty.

"For it is not only inertia alone that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don't think we can deal with." It is fear, in its most banal sense that keeps them critical, that keeps them from creating something themselves. A world that has been handed to them, that asks little in return except to keep the machine running. The border between critic and creator is born of the inertia of privilege, the illusion of mediocrity, and the timidity of impermanence and unknowing.

We write because we breath. Wordsworth once wrote, "fill our pages with the breathings of your soul." Whitman once answered the question, "why are we here?" With the koan-esque answer of "because we are." And that is the only fitting answer for why one writes, "because we do."

Writing is a priveleged form of communication in our dominator culture, one that shudders oral tradition. Although, spending time in the classroom one quickly learns that oral competency is on the rise while written literacy is not. A culture that communicates through a glowing box of visual and aural sensation removes much of the demand for written literacy. However, as the sun never set on the Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the British Empire, and now the American Empire writing was and is a medium of privilege. So, saying that "we write because we breath" leaves out that we breath the air of the dominator culture.

So, I pick up my pen, so-to-speak, and make this my opening salvo in a war that hasn't been officially declared, but began at the beginning, against the top and the bottom, knowing that I use the tools of the dominator to wage the battle.

Timeout, the metaphor of war seems disengenous. I am not here to do battle, I am here to create. At least that is my hope. As King said, "I believe that what self-centered people have torn down, other-centered people can build up." To use the metaphor of war is to accept the frame of the dominator. We are here to engage in our real work, to build up what others have torn down. To paraphrase Mary Oliver, I am a man of 25 and glory is my work.