Why do I write?
I'd love to have more readers, but that's not why I write. I write so I don't get depressed. More positively, I write because I enjoy it.
Conclusion First: I want to understand why I write. Writing about why I write is a good way to find out.
If I write for money or notoriety, I’m failing. Since I don’t feel like I’m failing, I must be writing for other reasons. Of course, I could be failing for everyone but myself. If that’s true, I wouldn’t be the first. Regardless, even if I’m failing everyone but myself, I’m not a total failure, and even if I am a total failure, that’s not a good reason to stop writing. How could I get better if I stopped?
Curious Animals is hobby that produces a little income. It’s not a business. My goal for each post is to write about 1,200 words as best I can. I have no science to support that number. It just seems like a friendly number, long enough to provide some value and short enough not to be a burden.
I write these posts for three reasons:
I enjoy writing them
As a way to learn more about myself
For vanity
Montaigne wrote a funny introduction for the 1580 edition of his essays to explain why he wrote the book.
“This book was written in good faith, reader. It warns you from the outset that in it I have set myself no goal but a domestic and private one. I have had no thought of serving either you or my own glory… I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray…
Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject. — Montaigne, “To the Reader”
He answers very clearly what his book is about and by inference why he writes. The book is about himself and he writes to understand himself better.
As to making Ashley and Margaret the Pug and myself the matter of our Substack, I haven’t found the courage. Ashely has done a better job of being both personal and universal than I have — see here and here — and Margaret is a wonderful writing partner with whom I can say things that are otherwise hard to say. As to presenting myself “entire and wholly naked,” as Montiagne says elsewhere in To the Reader, I haven’t been able to do that yet. At 56 my naked self is hard to look at.
I want people to read my writing, but I don’t want to change how I write to attract them. That’s vain. I can live without readers if I enjoy writing. I’d rather have no readers and enjoy writing than make writing a bore to earn readers. So perhaps I’m lazy and vain both.
“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." — Cyril Connolly
Writing is how I educate myself, and it only works if I’m honest. I’m not concerned with educating others, or I aspire to be unconcerned. It’s hard to escape the fantasies that come with writing or any kind of creation. Even when I scramble eggs, I want whomever I’m scrambling them for to say they’re the best scrambled eggs they’ve ever had.
The fantasies of creators are obvious — wealth, acclaim, fame. I’ve never possessed any of those things, but I have it on good authority that I haven’t missed much.
“Who does not willingly exchange health, rest, and life for reputation and glory, the most useless, worthless, and false coin that is current among us?” — Montaigne
Honest stories are how I learn best, either my own or someone else’s. Vague and disconnected thoughts or opinions are rarely enough to teach me, and I never enough to move me. I don’t remember any of them. But that hasn’t prevented me from using them in this post. So here’s an honest story to show how I learn about myself by writing.
The Big Stereo
I have a big stereo in my basement. It has two 75 pound, 42 inch speakers and a tube amplifier. It’s vain and ridiculous, and it’s the realization of a dream that started at 13 and carried into my 50’s. A lot of dreams are vain and ridiculous until they’re achieved. I have a nephew who dreamed of playing major league baseball. His dream seemed ridiculous until he achieved it. A big stereo is vain until you hear it. Then it’s awesome. It’s still vain, but it also brings pleasure, and only a few possessions do that.
I use my big stereo to discover unknown things in songs I know well. Likewise, I write to discover new things in things I know well. I play my stereo loud when Anna isn’t home because I worry I’ll disturb her if I play it when she is home, and the concern for her distracts me from listening. Likewise, I write and publish writing on Substack, which is like playing a loud stereo in an empty house. Anyone who wants to read can subscribe. Anyone who doesn’t won’t be bothered. Writing to please an audience other than myself would be like playing music I don’t like on my big stereo because I want other people to listen.
Last Sunday I used my big stereo to listen to Cortez the Killer by Neil Young and Crazy Horse. On Saturday Anna and I had gone out for the first time in decades to hear live music. We saw a collection of studio musicians play at a venue in the Hutton Hotel, one of the first of the swanky new hotels to infect the Nashville’s Skyline about 10 years ago. The venue is called Analog, which means it’s for old people like us who first purchased music as albums and tapes. Anna and I sat a safe distance from the speakers in a balcony. We had the section to ourselves.
One of the songs the band played was Cortez the Killer. It was totally unexpected, and it made me cry. I don’t know why it made me cry. Asking why is almost always the wrong question when thinking about art. I’ve listened to Cortez the Killer in my basement a hundred times at blistering volume. It’s a song I know all the lyrics to.
I don’t know what Neal Young thinks Cortez the Killer is about, and I don’t care because it doesn’t matter. Art is public property, though not from a royalty sense obviously. The assignment of meaning to art is a public exercise. The artist should be left out. For me, Cortez the Killer is a love song. The idyllic civilization of the new world is the loved one. The performer is the lover who comes across the ocean in search of paradise only to destroy the paradise he finds.
Hate was just a legend
And war was never known
The people worked together
And they lifted many stones
And they carried them to the flat lands
But they died along the way
And they build up with their bare hands
What we still can't do today
And I know she's living there
And she loves me to this day
I still can't remember when
Or how I lost my way
He came dancing across the water
Cortez, Cortez
What a killer
lyrics by Neil YoungA self loathing love song is my kind of love song because self loathing is my favorite flavor of egotism.
“I’m not much, but I’m all I think about.” — a common saying in recovery circles
Writing to feel better
I enjoy how writing makes me feel, and I feel better when I write than when I don’t. So in that case, writing is a lot like belief in God, just as music is proof we’re not all alone in the world.
I’m neither a believer nor a denier. I’m a “Who am I to say there is no God?” man. I feel better when I act as if there’s a God then when I convince myself there isn’t. I feel better when I write than when I convince myself I shouldn’t. The factual existence of God isn’t important, just like what becomes of my writing isn’t important. What is important is how believing in God makes me feel, and I feel better when I believe. Still, I don’t want to believe too deeply. That could become overwhelming, and I cry too easily already.
A bad stereo squishes instruments together and makes them mush, like a dressed salad stored in a refrigerator for days. A good stereo makes every instrument distinct without losing the blend. When my writing is good, it helps me separate my beliefs and examine each of them without losing how they blend.
When I listen to one instrument on my big stereo I inevitably lose track, and I’m drawn toward another instrument, or all the instruments together. My writing often follows a similar path. I start with one topic, but I’m drawn to others. When I focus on one instrument at a time, other parts of the song reveal themselves. When I focus on one topic at a time, other parts of my thinking reveal themselves. Or I get bored.
“Why do I write? To make Tom happy. And to get what I want.” — Margaret the Pug
