Daniel Kitson?- part two, aka Jen’s rules for life

Quite hilariously one of my sisters recently came across a journal that I had written when I was twelve, which contained about four entries over the course of a few months. The number of entries is really not very surprising, I am always struck by the fact that I am completely and utterly incapable of writing about my life… to well, myself. It always feels like an exercise in inadequacy: no matter how eloquent and truthful my articulation, I always feel that it cannot sum up the ambivalence of most of my emotions and opinions, and quite honestly, I don’t think I’d know how to construct a narrative out of the chaotic elements of my life. I say narrative, because why else would you bother? Journals may delve into solipsism, but I can’t imagine what pleasure one would get from reading entries that indulged in only that. I don’t doubt that other people’s journals are probably much more fruitful than my varying attempts at writing one over the years, that is before I realized that I spent so much time trying to fulfill imaginary journal obligations i.e. filling in back story- (for myself, when clearly I needed no background), or attempting to convey everybody’s point of view to be fair (I have issues with not being able to turn off devil’s advocate mode) that the whole thing, reading and writing a journal was so boring I stopped bothering. I mention the old journal though, because in it’s clumsily written, childishly conceived emotions, it proved that I am exactly the same person now, as I was then. It is basically a beautifully transparent example of exactly the same writing tics I have now- even then, I was writing about how what I was writing couldn’t possibly convey what I was feeling, how misleading every word I put down would be to my future self- although I suppose one could argue quite convincingly that I my determination then and now to reveal my self-awareness of my writing’s inadequacies is revealingly truthful in its own unintentional sense. Even more bizzarely my twelve year old self was on a smaller scale dealing with the same anxieties I still grapple with on a daily basis. This should have been a depressing revelation, but strangely I found it immensely satisfying to fully acknowledge the nature of my brain’s workings- and to realize that it has remained comfortingly faithful to my (let’s face it- probably illusory) self-perceived self-hood.

I do scribble occasionally in a notebook that is carried about as a doodle pad (I like using coloured pencils) and as receiver of half written lecture notes. However anything that I ever write is either so specific i.e. detailed examination of what I ate for breakfast (I have actually never done this, it is simply a terrible example), or so uninteresting i.e. “I hate this lecture, I want to sleep instead of being in this lecture” or more likely- “I really like this lecturer, but I’m still really sleepy, don’t fall asleep that’s rude, ok, doodle some more so you don’t accidentally snore your way through the class”- that the exercise of writing at all is rendered quite useless. I refuse to write anything of real importance or ire to me- (except sometimes I cave and worry that I’ll forget a lovely memory and jot something down anecdotally- no ‘I felt like this’ or ‘it made me happy’, at best I use bland platitudes of understatement i.e. ‘it was nice’.

My preoccupation with not writing about myself (except here obviously) or significant moments of my life is I’ve come to realize the result of some surprisingly good wisdom on my part. The enunciation of one’s happiness or moments of happiness is to immediately to take away whatever mystical element that makes it so good. The other side of that, say anger and hurt is to take away the gravitas- the real base of one’s melancholy, and to do so denigrates your emotion into feeling sheepish, instead of justifiably sad. If you’re going to wallow in shittiness, I say do it properly- enjoy feeling like absolute crap so you can indulge the urge and get over it. Internal dialogues about how stupidly melodramatic you are however, are acceptable.

In any case, I keep mentioning Daniel Kitson because I happened to see his show last night and it was yet just another example/proof of how right my theory on not-ennunciating one’s special moments is. By which I mean, he spent a good lot of the show reporting moments of awesomeness- but that is exactly how these things should be expressed- by which I broadly mean in ‘art’. Having the sweetness of Kitson’s stories balanced by the more pragmatic elements of comedy had me feeling very squishily joyous as I left (this lasted a good half hour before I got to my car and realized I had lost my keys). I have been noticing this a lot lately with art- whenever something truly resonates, it is inevitably because it hides the very thing that makes it special as if it were ordinary, or as if it were invisible. I keep thinking back to Jonas Mekas and his desire for spontaneity, and more recently to an article of Zizek’s I read on fantasy- I’m not positive, but I think Zizek mentions something about the ability of great art to obfuscate the very thing we desire. It sounds about right.

Also many apologies for terribly long rambling sentences, am so exhausted, brain is functioning at about, oh 12%.