Tags: #writing #creativity #spirituality #logos Type: #musings Stage: #evergreen --- to add: [[additions to a spiritual compulsion]] One of the mysteries of my existence and that of many others is the compulsion to write. This act can take many forms for many different people. In my own experience, there are only a few. Most of the time it's a feeble attempt to represent a fully formed idea that has appeared in my mind. I could be doing anything — cleaning the house, going for a walk, listening to a podcast or reading a book — and suddenly there's a flash of realisation, a witnessing of the slotting together of puzzle pieces, a conceptual crystallisation, in my mind's eye. This *thing*, because as I write this I lack the word to describe what it really is — is composed of ideas, sensations, concepts, has a feeling of vast depth as if there's terabytes of swirling living information that make it up (which I believe to be the case). It's far more than words can ever hope to capture. > [!NOTE] insight → in-sight! That's probably the word for it This idea-apparition is short-lived, and writing for me in this instance is the frantic attempt at immortalising it in some way so that I can share it with others curious about the same things, but mainly so that I don't lose it. It's like if I write the right words in the right ways and read them again in the future, this *thing* can be re-experienced. It's never the case. Like Heraclitus' river, the idea is not what it was (or feels the same), and neither am I. The agonising part of this, an experience one might have daily, is that you can *never* represent the idea properly. In these moments I'm a painter trying to capture a blood red sunset on paper with charcoal. There's an ineffability to these living informational visitors that have bubbled up from the swirling, deep computations of the subconscious to my mind's eye. A sense that they can never, in fact, be captured; an irreducibility. But as impossible as the task is, there seems to be no option but to capture the idea as best as you can. — The next form writing takes for me is less frantic at the time but more stressful as it's far more complex and has a moral weight to it — writing driven and shaped by a feeling of duty. There is purpose to the prose, a wielding of words towards an end. This form of writing is not meant to capture an insight, but rather to direct it towards something. If we were to describe the artifacts of the previous writing process as bricks, then this form of writing is a house. It can take the form of an essay, a book, a manifesto — something that incorporates many of these bricks that have formed before into something larger, connected, and coherent, However, even as I'm writing this I know that what I'm saying is wrong because this form of writing also starts out in the very same way. It's a flash of insight that arrives complete and terrifyingly comprehensible, a fully-formed idea of a depth you cannot describe but *know*, something that's built out of literal years worth of experience and learning. One can spend years, who knows, perhaps their entire life, trying to represent an idea that appeared fully formed in its godly glory in the briefest of moments. So this second type, is a more elaborated version of the first. It requires planning. It's not something someone can churn out after a few hours of uninterrupted typing (maybe some can, I can't). It's iterative, painful. There's a lot of structure and thought. In some ways it's clinical. I haven't done much of this writing in my life yet, but I feel I should. — Poetry is the last form, and it's the rarest for me. I've never sat down and thought *"I want to write a poem."* The few poems I've written have come unbidden to my mind. Some begin as a few verses appearing in my mind as I'm doing things random things like doing the dishes. I'll note them down somewhere, and keep on writing in the moment if I'm feeling it. Every so often when I'm reminded of them or stumble across them, I might add a few lines or fiddle with them, but that's about it. Most of the poems have come to me in moments of extreme emotional turmoil, as if the violent, aching, churning feelings deep within me are in a pressure cooker, the steam coming out takes the form of words. I am but a witness to the verses that appear. The act of writing a poem in these instances is the channeling of something I'm honestly out of touch with. In these moments, the poems come out in one complete piece. — This piece itself is an artifact of the first type of writing described, but as I finish writing it, I feel there's a bit of the poetic part tied up in it. I feel great now! I've indulged in the compulsion, the pressure has been released key stroke by keystroke and now we're here. At the end. For now. > [!NOTE] Commentary on the piece above > I wrote the draft of this piece in one sitting one evening when I 'should' have been doing other things. I remember thinking 'ahh this is a distraction from other things' but i did it anyway. Having reread it, I'm really glad I did! Since then, I've tweaked a few things and tidied up the connections between sections a bit, but it's largely the same as it was when i first wrote it. > Started: 7:52 pm Ended: 8:44 pm