writers and failure
I have been enjoying the week promoting and making fun little content bits for the latest zine, some of which are almost as enjoyable as the writing of the poems and the making of the images themselves (my little animations are especially fun via reels to pair with piano Taylor Swift covers I have been listening to on repeat while writing freelance stuff the last couple of weeks.) I've done a couple of recordings, but actually like working more with text and image than voice, or at least, hearing my own voice.
This week, I was reading an essay about failure and writers that was really good in talking about how writers, in the digital age, don't have the same markers and consistencies in the world of letters. That things are constantly changing, and therefore the playing field of being a writer constantly shifts. I feel this, especially as I see so many authors doing interesting things in new mediums. As I try to do new things in what's available to me, the logistics of which are also in flux. The process of my pursuit of publication and sharing work is so different now than even 20 years ago. Definitely different than those SASE's I was sending out 30 years ago.
I guess talking about failure, like Joyce and Melville, and the ultimate folly of trying to gauge your own legacy or famousness as an author, is a capricious endeavor and a waste of time. If you cannot gauge what success is even now, how can you gauge failure? Is it not all one grand experiment? Throwing something at a wall and seeing if it will stick? I see a lot of churn in the literary world, the bending to and fro to get something like success, but I often wonder if we are speaking the same language at all when we talk about it.
I think it takes a while and perhaps an entire career to get anywhere like peace with the striving, especially when it comes to poetry where the gates seem high and unscalable, even though the kingdom is frightfully small and no one lives there but the poets themselves. You can occupy yourself with throwing yourself at the wall repeatedly. Finding a bridge over the mote or looking for others to hoist you over, but what happens once you are inside looking out? Instead of breaking your teeth on the bricks or trying to lob yourself over the parapet, you could also just go wander off into the woods instead. Carve out your own little cave or hollow. The longer you go and the farther you get the less you look back.
I feel like I used to stand across the river and gaze at the walls. That I too bloodied myself just a little trying to get over or through them. But it feels good, though scary, sometimes to walk off into the distance a little way, Even if the woods are darker than you'd imagined, lonelier, and sometimes all you hear is an echo. But occasionally something makes contact and lights up the forest like a storm.
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