I was talking to a friend the other day and he—between laughs at bad jokes and interrupting each other and making subtle references to life details that we simply use as stratum to abstract how we feel about mundane things—reminded me of something.
He said:
“I realized that you are the writer and the editor and the publisher and the whatever else there is.”
And then he threw about a bunch of compliments that I swatted away deftly from the memory so as to not believe I’m actually good at anything. I’m good at that though, good at the paradoxes of being.
That overefficient swatting mechanism is why I need friends, and reminders, and probably why I need to call my friends more.
He reminded me that when we do a thing we are for that stretch of something (season or decade or little slice of seconds) embodying that thing. We use it as a label, a brief little identity to play out our fantasies.
When I write I am writer.
When I edit I am editor.
If I press that dreaded publish button I will be that too.
These days I feel like a marketer of ideas and a projector of thoughts, with some faulty wiring and an oblong lens and a wrinkled sheet to display them on.
And every day for as long as I can remember I’ve been a critic, aimed upon that inability to display an idea.
But I have to choose the right time and place for critiques. This, the start of things, is not the time. This, the location of my errant thoughts, is not the place.
My thoughts are this:
If you’ve come here as reader, thanks for the visit.
If you’ve come here as writer, you’re welcome for the inspiration.
If you’ve come here as publisher, you are welcome to comment.
If you’ve come here as critic, I’ll be waiting to pick you up when you’ve fallen.
If you’ve come here as simply you, I leave you with a lesson I learned from somewhere I wish I could credit for the wisdom:
If you want to know all about a someone, ask them what they like about another. And keep asking, and dig and dig and dig. In not so long you might see them beaming, and they’ll be telling you all about themselves.
But they’ll be thinking about you, and all the things they love to perceive.
In that moment you’ll both know how it feels to human being.
I am suddenly very glad you happened to appear in my notes feed.