On writing
A guy like me, with limited number of grey cells swimming in the medulla oblongata, has no business reading Schopenhauer. He was a wiz, if ever there was one. He wrote treatise on philosophy, science, and, the way we think and act. Precursor to Freud, Jung he waged a war against rival philosophers like Kant. I don’t think, he put in one honest day’s work (lucky him), but, he thought a lot, some of it focused on writers and their writing- my kind. Hence my trepidation, I am a writer you see. It was only with a lot of alcohol swimming in my system and some trepidation( I love this word) that I finally found the courage to read him. He was tough on writers, so I was told. I needed an armor stronger than steel, because I am a writer( I love calling myself one).
Most of his thought scares the hell out of me. For example, he firmly believed that if you write for money, you suck big time. Yeah! he said that. Money tarnishes your work with a brush of banality. It lacks content and a heart. The expectancy, he says, of being rewarded for the writing, destroys the soul of the writing, the wit, and much about. everything else. Much of the writing is done to please and that essential “naivety” is lost behind the façade of words and much convoluted thinking.
I agree
I do that a lot when I write.
It is called technical writing. .
You see most great works have a childish, naïve like quality. Let’s take Alice in the wonderland for example. Isn’t it a fabulous read? It has everything a fable needs: talking rabbits, walrus and the carpenter, the queen shouting “off with his head”. I can bet the bottom rupee in my money jar that, there is no way, anyone could have written such a tale, unless in a very inebriated state.
I tried it once upon a time and it worked fine.
I, once, wrote a short tale of talking cats after downing copious amounts of beer.
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Suzerainty
Many, years ago, a very young boy, the hermit, hearing scratching and mewing, opened a door and found his destiny and a yellow cat. The cat, one of those bushy little things, very businesslike, always running on an errand, sat on its haunches, raised its paws, and kneaded the dry winter air in little circles: Once, twice and then thrice. The hermit, sat down, and with child like naivety, proffered his hand: A handshake Mr. Yellow Cat; How do you do? Are the children all right; the missus, she okay, eh? The Yellow cat, looked at the hand, and said gravely-
“The twelve cats
So they prophesied
The hermit, he lived
Near the silver fox
With the button hole”
By reflex, and part by fright, the hand tightened, much to Yellow Cat’s discomfort; right before the hermit’s eyes it leapt nine feet high, spinning in a blur and landed at the very spot. Now, had there been a slow motion camera an astonishing feat would have been recorded, for in its ascendancy the cat had thrown in a backward somersault, one cater vault; all the while licking its paws with absolute nonchalance.
“Ouch, hurt me not
I am the messenger
Not the mole”
The Hermit sat and pondered and looked at the cat; the cat sat back on its haunches and looked at the hermit. Then thinking aloud he said, “But there is no silver fox with the buttonhole; it’s not me the cat addresses”. Clearing his throat, very businesslike, and then touching one whisker and then another, the cat stretched one furry hand towards Chandni the she dog lay, panting furiously, the bushy tail working overtime keeping the flies away. Jabbing furiously in that direction said the yellow cat, “There is your silver fox; isn’t it true that she belongs to the family which hunts in the night and bays at the moon.”
“What about the buttonhole”, I said: Damned if I was going believe that Chandini had anything to do with the making and the unmaking of history: Poor Chandini, wandering aimlessly trailed by a half a dozen pups angry yelping at anything that moved; look at her teats for god sake. “What about her”, the cat spoke, “ did you not notice the button shaped mark, when she rolled in the dust, made half crazy by the heat, all four legs in the air, ears flapping and nose sniffing, sniffing, sniffing.
The cat paused and reflected and I am sure he would have crossed and uncrossed his legs had this been a business meeting. One carefully manicured paw stretched towards the heavens, and he spoke with lots of gravitas,
“Its destined you know
The day of the judgment
When cats of all color rise
And fight mankind for the
Ultimate prized”
“Ah, no alien invasion then, just a mere cat-invasion then; what a funny way to die”, said I. The cat looked displeased, as if he was slightly disappointed in me, maybe he expected me to bring a saucer of milk or a piece of yesterdays fish at least. Looking at me with saucy eyes, it spoke, earnestness shining from its eyes, “laugh all you want, but not a world of this to anyone or another kind will rise” So there was another, huh? Slightly miffed that I was not the supreme one, I asked, “So, who else is there, your highness, and to what greater purpose are we decreed.
“That in time”, and saying that the cat swished its tail, once, twice and thrice and then went its way.
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I just lost the thread after the alcohol induced daze had lifted.
Since drinking is a big NO, NO there is no chance of ever resuscitating what my alcohol induced brain conjured. And this is my point- anybody can write an Alice in the wonderland with enough alcohol sloshing around. Hell! it is not creativity. It is the freeing of the mind. Letting naivety fit into words. How else do you imagine something like lying on a rye field and catching kids as they topple off the clips. I tell you that writer was on something stronger than the usual H2O. .
The Contrarian View 