Tag Archives: Self-reflection

Writing Process: Am I Any Good?

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Every once in a while, it occurs to me that I’ve been writing for a long while, over 36 years now, writing my novels and screenplays, short stories and articles, and I have yet to get it anywhere of import, nothing but meaningless articles published in community papers.

I wrote opinion pieces for in college as well as for local newspapers in Toronto and Vancouver in the 1990s.

It has dawned on me that I might not be that good, that, as much as I pretend to deny my desire for vainglory, I crave it as much as the next. It may also be that my writing is bilgewater (my father’s expression), that I drivel on because I am on immature autopilot.

However, my extreme subjectivity understood, I don’t think so. I believe that I understand what’s in a character’s head, what moments mean something and what others do not, what this experiment of ours, humans that is, might or might not be, and that I can express that in words and phrases. My thoughts burn ahead. (Which might explain why I always get fired.)

Midsommer’s Dani looking for truth or something like it.

Anyway, that’s the trickery inside that pushed me on here, ready to take on the big bloggers like Gala Darling and Heather Armstrong and say, well, you know, I might not know marketing and key words but I do know something about…uh, not so sure what that is, but, fucking hell, I have Zake’s Orchestral Studies Collectanae looping in my head, and that has to be worth something.

The Orgiastic Pleasure of Writing

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Writing might be hell, but it’s also nakedly divine. Being in there, not knowing what might be coming next, not thinking about it, but looking forward to the words as they sort and bloom, or maybe none of that, but writing wildly with electronic music and gummy bears in my head. That is serenity for me.

Hastings, UK (1989)

It’s a hard thing to wiggle inside of, get my arms out and understand, but I do know this place. It is quiet and everything, tiny and never there. It is impossibly so, a sideways, half-mirror thing, dipping into dreams and memories, imagination of what could be, all of it as concrete as anything, more so than anything else. I know in this place.

McPhedran, Kingston (1986)

I do know about this shitty world, this place we share and begrudge, but I do think that I could help it be something else, not really exactly that, but imagine something like a child. And there is something orgiastically real about that.

Kudos to Princess Carrie Fisher

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Carrie Fisher, daughter of Debbie Reynolds as well as Paul Simon’s one-time wife, landed the role that defined her life at 20 years of age: Princess Leia of The Star Wars Saga. Ms. Fisher’s is not however a remarkable actor, but rather has The Force in her brave and honest ability to self reflect and share her thoughts with others. She wrote seven autobiographical books, beginning with Postcards from the Edge, much of it delving into the stark issues of addiction and mental illness.

Ms. Fisher was born rich and famous. She had absolutely everything – wealth, intelligence, physical beauty and opportunity – and became conceited and vain because of it, which is what makes her willingness to expose her weaknesses so impressive. Much of this is documented in Shelia Weller’s biography A Life on the Edge.

Am I vulnerable? Unfortunately, yes. I can do wrong better than anyone. (6) Ms. Fisher reflected on her life with blunt humor, a self-examination that was honest and self-deprecating. I wish that I could leave myself alone. I wish that I could finally feel that I punished myself enough, let myself off the hook, drag myself off the rack, where I am both the torturer and tortured. (322) She was unrelenting, to her final days. I’m not happy about being older, except what are the options? I’ve been through a lot, and I could go through more, but I hope I don’t have to. I’m not going to enjoy dying, but there’s not much prep for that. (335)

I have been very tired as of late. More than tired. Maybe it is the smell of the mask. Maybe that is what sets me off. Or the couple walking toward me, happily chatting away, their masks at their chins. Or maybe it’s just everyone bitching on social media and then posting a picture of a baby or dog. It’s all of that unrelenting bullshit. And then I read Carrie Fisher’s biography and thought, well, so what? This is the superficial world I live in, and if I want to do something about that, then get to it. (Yes, let’s.)

The Fear: Trite Angsty Reflections

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Previous posts on The Fear I-IV were culled from an autobiographical work called Wreck of Being. It mawkishly details my budding understanding of existentialism through four moments: watching The Wizard of Oz, attending a Leafs game and two Grateful Dead concerts. The book concludes with trite, rambling reflections on what The Fear means.

Now for my truisms: “Bad layering makes for bad burning”. Like every layer – everything from our friends and family to work and dreams – we learn what we need so that survival can be as straightforward as possible. We cannot operate our intelligence without confining it to contexts; to attempt to grasp all facets of existence outside a framed perspective is impossible, would result in a direct confrontation with The Fear and thus insanity.

Truism #2: “Tightly bundled minds cannot breathe.” A perspective must be maintained, but it must not be too confining. The Fear has to be understood and dealt with from time to time, for The Fear is the lurking reality of our universality, of our very irrelevance. It exists and cannot be ignored. Perspectives are vital to living a sane life, but they cannot be fixed. To live within a box of work, wife, whiskey and whist only makes the inevitable meltdown all the more forceful.

And thus my third and final truism: “Layers and The Fear kept in the right balance makes for productive years.” The time in warm and cool layers – the vast majority of years – will always be remembered as the coziest, though the time with The Fear will be the most vivid and affecting. An equilibrium lies somewhere; each to their own.     

The Ubermensch of Self-Reflection

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Self-reflection is impossible. No one can self-reflect. No one. Not you. Not me. You might think that you can self-reflect. I am sure that you do. You’re told to do it every day by someone – your brother, your sparing partner, a billboard or newscaster – and you think that you really do. I used to think that it was possible for some people to self-reflect. But it isn’t Not for anyone!

Honestly, consider yourself right now, reading this, thinking, “Well, I self-reflect. I’m doing it right now. I am self-reflecting on my self-reflecting! Obviously I am. It’s stupid to say that I don’t because I do. I’m doing it right now! It’s as clear as anything ever was!”

Yeah, but, no, you’re not. You only think you are because you’re trapped in that head of yours. It isn’t self-reflection at all. It is just you tricking yourself that you’re self-reflecting. As much as you might think you are self-reflecting, especially if you use words like mindful and empathetic, you’re not. You’re the opposite. You’re only doing that because you think it’s good and right. It’s like smoking. You stopped doing that because you were told it is bad and wrong, when it isn’t. That’s because you’re all ego and super ego. You’re all you. That’s all there is to you. Nothing else. Certainly not someone who can self-reflect.

I am the same as you. All I can do is reflect on how I don’t self-reflect. I mean, I can also reflect on you reading this. But that’s not me. That’s you. And I can even reflect on how insightful I am for realizing that no one can self-reflect. It is all so very clear. Or it’s not. But it is. I came to realize that the more I self-reflect. Which goes back to the main point. You can’t self-reflect.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, one can only self-reflect if you,1) become yourself, 2) avoid self-hatred and 3) overcome yourself. Seriously, you have to be on a lot of Oxy if you think you can really do any of that. And if you do – think that you can do that, that is – then you can’t – self-reflect that is – because you can’t.

In others words, like Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, the more you think you can self-reflect, the more you can’t. It’s as simple as that.

The Fear III: The Grateful Dead in South Carolina

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We drove sixteen hours to a Grateful Dead show in Columbia, South Carolina. I took the graveyard shift and consumed caffeine pills and coffee to stay awake. I didn’t sleep that night nor the next day, and came crashing down in the middle of the concert.

Awful black clouds washed over me as I desperately tried to think of a sane notion and cling to it. I knew this was just a matter of exhaustion and thought that if I just turned as much of my body off as I could, it would eventually pass. It didn’t work. I knew that I knew nothing, that I really never thought about anyone but myself, that no one existed, nothing existed except my nonsensical perspective.

I tried to think of the most basic things possible. Chair. Table. Lamp. These were words. I understood them. I knew what they were. But then the chair would dissolve into a table and the table would melt into the lamp, the lamp would fade to black. There was no substance, no reality, nothing existed. Chair. Table. Lamp. They didn’t actually exist. They only existed in my mind. The black clouds continued to flow in. If a chair wasn’t a chair, then I wasn’t anything. I didn’t exist. I only thought I did.

Chair. Table. Lamp. I could sit in a chair, write on a table, see light from a lamp. It wasn’t my imagination. I could touch them. I knew I could touch them. Chair. Table. Lamp. I had eyes. I had fingers. I knew they existed…the house lights went out. This was reality. A cheer went up. The band was returning to the stage for the encore. The clouds seemed to be breaking up. I didn’t have to focus my wild stare on anything. I could gaze into the soft colored lights. I was going to live. And stay sane. For now at least.

The Fear II: Maple Leaf Gardens

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The second time that The Fear struck was on my birthday. I think my eleventh. My father gave me two tickets to see the Toronto Maple Leafs. A Leaf hockey game for me then was the ultimate experience. I took a friend as my father didn’t really like hockey and thought that I might be happier on my own. The seats were great – center-ice reds – and we were up on the visiting team early. And then it hit me again. It wasn’t as strong as the first time. I seemed almost to have control over it. I could rationalize it.

The Fear II: Maple Leaf Gardens

Why was I sitting here watching this nonsense? Who gave a damn who scored what and when? The whole thing was a farce designed to brainwash and control. Nobody cared about winning. It was the popcorn, furs and dinners, the money, being part of the scenery that people cared about. The blue leaf could just as well be a red wing. I especially hated the silence between play, the organ occasionally filling that with carnival tunes. Eventually, it passed, but the evening had been depressing. We had won, but I didn’t give a damn. I just wanted to go home and get into bed.

The Fear I: The Wizard of Oz

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The very first time The Fear hit me was when I was six or seven years old. We were having Sunday supper and were watching The Wizard of Oz. Everything seemed to be normal. Nothing of note, to the best of my memory, happened that day. This was probably the fourth or fifth time I had seen the film. And then, right when the witch appeared in a cloud of orange smoke in Munchkin Land I got this horrible feeling. I wasn’t afraid of the witch; it wasn’t anything like that. It was a much more general feeling. Everything just seemed wrong, bad, evil. I couldn’t sit still. I had to stand up and move.

I walked across the room – nobody, not my sister, brother, father or mother, seemed to take any particular notice – and sat in a chair in the corner. I figured that if I didn’t watch the movie the feeling would go away. But it didn’t. I walked out of the room, down the hall and around the quiet, empty house. I paced up and down the stairs, went room to room, floor to floor. It took some time, but it did eventually fade away. I never directly associated the feeling with anything, but the movie certainly did seem to have brought it on. I didn’t watch any more of the film that night, nor did I see it for another fifteen years.

For the next few years I had two consistent nightmares. One where a witch lived in the basement and another where I would be sucked in between the walls and into the pipes by some sort of foreboding evil. I saw The Wizard of Oz again sometime later. It was incredible; no horrible feelings. I laughed all the way through. It is one of the best films ever made.