On My State of Affairs

Twice now, I’ve written documents that currently sit on my laptop entitled ‘the current state of affairs’. There have been others, but this appears to be a new canonical series that I’ve started. In essence, at any point that I feel particularly overwhelmed or stressed, I sit in front of an empty screen Word page as I’ve done for about half an hour today (out of procrastination, this time) and empty onto it my every thought and worry and worst-case scenario. Annoyingly, those moments are me at my most productive.

I’ve usually resented the premise that great art can only come out of suffering or tragedy or pain, and while I do think those have a greater potential for creativity sometimes, I feel like making exclusive declarations like that is needlessly reductive. Even so, I am my most productive at those moments of high worry. I can, though, back up my earlier statement by admitting that despite that productivity, that is not to say the work is necessarily of high quality. The unfortunate side to that fact is that I have little idea why that is. I know, or I think I do, that I am capable of writing which I can admit as something I’m proud of, but it’s only ever something I discover long after writing, and there doesn’t appear to be any correlation in the topics of work so far.

There is an intangible – a reason lurking somewhere – that is responsible for the writing I deem my best, but for now, it will remain unknown. And I think that’s helpful. I’m very much still at the stage where I’m throwing everything at the wall, and not really minding what sticks. My objective right now is to produce work, to write – and I’m more than happy to allow for the refinement to come later down the line. To paraphrase a quote I can half-remember, ‘first drafts are to make it exist, second drafts are to make it work’. I have been unproductive for so long that I am preoccupied with the ‘making exist’ part.

Back to my states of affairs, though. I did say that they’re not my best writing, but that may not have been entirely truthful. I value them for reasons completely different to how evaluate any other work. I know and understand and have gone through the exact experiences and emotions that are laid on a page before me, and as things have so far passed, reading them in a time where I can empathise with past me, feel some pity and some triumph, perhaps, can be extremely cathartic and powerful. But they contain one other facet that I love – that I have one audience member, and I know him pretty damn well. I’m still getting used to the idea that my work, my writing is now available for anyone at all to read. So far I’ve dealt with that mostly by ignoring it, and I don’t know if that’s going to hold up in the long run. But for now, I’ll stick to what I know: making things exist.