Note-scad: writing and time
Cioran only wrote, for a time, in an explosive state, always in a feverish state. It was indeed the stealth of modesty and fatigue, the deluge of disappointments that appear to characterize the rhythm of life (of which the opposite is a surprise notable exception) that some cease to "blacken pages." It is perhaps a misunderstood state, confused with giddiness or joy, that drives some to write until, by degrees they come to realize that to write is to fill time, not watch it pass. And it is the remorse that sets in from having spent that nervous excitability under the false pretenses of writing TOWARD a truth that one comes to realize one has always been trying to write AWAY from it. To wedge reams of pages between the catastrophe of a first truth, as if a million or more words will function as the safe buffer - but the fusculum.
And still others do not write to fill time, but to extract some sort of compliance from the impossible. We may call such authors fabulists, those who press the boundary of chaos, or even the figure who suffers bitter resentment over what has not and could never be. So many types and masks write in this way.
The relationship between writing, writers, and time is a form of entanglement with so many divergent lines. Proust, the late-riser, engaging in a bit of opium before ringing for his coffee and croissant, tackled the word in the evening; Hemingway chose instead to rise before the sun to stand at his dresser and tap his rhythms into the machine, free from the interruptions of others. Orwell was given to narrating his entire life as it happened, a precursor to what so many people do on Twitter ("He reached for the iPhone to snap a picture of his scrumptious breakfast to mitigate his guilt of western affluence by dissolving it into the carnivals of frivolity and conspicuous status-enhancement found online..."). Orwell thus lived his experience at a reflective remove, widening the gap between perception and reflection, but converging on the moment of narration, It was not, as it was for Proust, the flood of memories from the spoon, but the lived memory of experience. Neither is "good" or "bad"; only different, just as a bundle of practices and approaches deviate with the smallest alteration to a method.
In all, to the writer perhaps, time possesses a certain elasticity to be compressed, expanded, and fully stackable in the papery reams of experience.
And still others do not write to fill time, but to extract some sort of compliance from the impossible. We may call such authors fabulists, those who press the boundary of chaos, or even the figure who suffers bitter resentment over what has not and could never be. So many types and masks write in this way.
The relationship between writing, writers, and time is a form of entanglement with so many divergent lines. Proust, the late-riser, engaging in a bit of opium before ringing for his coffee and croissant, tackled the word in the evening; Hemingway chose instead to rise before the sun to stand at his dresser and tap his rhythms into the machine, free from the interruptions of others. Orwell was given to narrating his entire life as it happened, a precursor to what so many people do on Twitter ("He reached for the iPhone to snap a picture of his scrumptious breakfast to mitigate his guilt of western affluence by dissolving it into the carnivals of frivolity and conspicuous status-enhancement found online..."). Orwell thus lived his experience at a reflective remove, widening the gap between perception and reflection, but converging on the moment of narration, It was not, as it was for Proust, the flood of memories from the spoon, but the lived memory of experience. Neither is "good" or "bad"; only different, just as a bundle of practices and approaches deviate with the smallest alteration to a method.
In all, to the writer perhaps, time possesses a certain elasticity to be compressed, expanded, and fully stackable in the papery reams of experience.
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