show up at the page; put words on it
I have long been a fan of Rachelle… there are quite a few parallels in our lives, and she inspires me. She’s one of four artist friends who have, between them, inspired and persuaded me to start painting and singing after a few years in the doldrums. And although I was writing already, to gather confidence and discipline and method in writing too. A lot of the dynamic in creative pursuits is similar from one form to another – the way you work, the blocks to work, the balance between discipline and inspiration (which, regrettably, is heavily biased towards discipline. Only when you’ regularly put in the hours on stuff that gets thrown in the bin does that sweet inspiration strike and something that seems effortless flows onto the page or the canvas. Madeleine L’Engle said that the drafts of whole books that are thrown into the bin are like the pianist’s five-finger exercises. Without them, the good novels are never written.)
This morning Rachelle encapsulates the tendency among artists and writers to put off that awful blank-page moment, filling the time with endless mundane tasks – all of which, of course, are entirely important to life…
…Every morning the writer wakes up, eager to put pen to paper, and every morning resistance kicks in to keep the writer from actually doing the one and only thing she really wants to do. It is inevitable. It is part of the game and one cannot play in the writing world without this dark nemesis. What’s a girl to do?
Cram the bastard back down into the dung heap it came from, that’s what.
“Yes, “you cry, your voices in unison against our common foe, “Yes, but how?” Ah, there’s the rub. I think it goes something like this:
Show up at the page.
Put words on it.
go read the whole thing here: Magpie Girl – Writing and Resistance.
Me? I’m off to the page now to put words on it…
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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*sigh*. I guess it was meant to be funny, but misses the mark rather poorly… The web seems to be a massive temptation to overreact, and requires a certain kind of spiritual discipline. Pity, because he has some interesting questions to raise. Funnily enough I’ve just had a quick exchange with John Milbank, after he appeared on BBC Radio 4 alongside my colleague and friend Jonathan Bartley. I don’t always agree with him (Milbank), and he can be very demanding (in all senses of the term), but he has produced some incredibly stimulating work, as has RO. It is, in my view, flawed in its basic (but not necessarily intrinsic) orientation toward a Christendom approach, and it can be very difficult for non-specialists – and even specialists – to get their heads round. But there is real fruit too. The Word Made Strange is a good place to start.
Hello Maggi. Thanks for drawing attention to my inflated rhetoric there. I certainly hope you didn’t take my overblown remark about Milbank too seriously. It was something of a hyperbole, and was intended to be taken that way.
But, perhaps I’m too much of a violent person myself. As Stanley Hauerwas has said, “I’m a pacifist because I’m a violent son of bitch.” Perhaps that’s a bit true of me as well. But be that as it may, my remark about Milbank was not meant to be taken literally. I have no intentions of ever beating anyone with a tire iron.
Hi Simon, I don’t always agree with Milbank either, but I’ve always found him very gracious and generous with his time and ideas. I also think some of what he writes (and Catherine Pickstock too) has an interesting resonance with aspects of the Emerging conversation.
Hello, Halden. I enjoyed your blog. Sure, I understood that you weren’t seriously threatening violence! But it seemed to me that the same grace should be offered to Milbank – he looks for a path of peace in his theology; his human impulse to win an argument doesn’t negate that any more than your tire-iron “confession” negates yours!
One other quick point. When I refer to RO as wanting to “win”, I don’t mean that they want to prevail in intellectual debate. Any intellectual wants that. What I mean by that is their desire for Christianity/Platonism/Christendom to become the structuring principle of the world which outnarrates all other competing narratives.
That’s where I see the violence as centrally located in RO. It’s not so much in Milbank’s demeanor, or writing style (though both of those things leave much to be desired), it’s in the overall aim of thier theological project. For RO, any narrative of worldview other than “Christianity/Platonism” is inherently nihilisitic. Certainly there is talk of “ontological peace” in RO, but that is a reality that is restricted to the Christian/Platonic narration of the real. All other such narrations are there only to be deconstructed as nihilisistic, and then outnarrated. In essence what’s being said is that anything besides RO’s idea of Christianity is the devil (or Scotus, we don’t really know which one’s worse). That to me seems like an inherently violent theology, regardless of how its is worded or presented. Certainly there are insights in RO, and TST is indeed one of the most imporatant theological works of the late 20th century. But I think the fundamental flaw is very much there.
What Halden is describing here as the violent “wanting to win” tendencies in Milbank is what I have meant by referring to him as Constantinian. This “need to dominate” impulse has led me to wonder out loud why Hauerwas and some of his students like Milbank.
Having said that, I, too, thought the tire iron remark a bit over the top, even for satire.
It appears I have allowed the desolate wasteland which is the internet to allow my darker appetites free verbal expression. I repent in dust and ashes.
“Dust and ashes” is too good for you, Halden: you should be boiled in oil!
That’s a joke, folks – as I took Halden’s comment to be, with nothing in the least bit sinister about it. And I laughed.
But then perhaps I would: I myself have been raked over the coals for a blog-comment (with a literay allusion) meant to be hyperbolic. And even if a remark is in in bad taste, that doesn’t mean it’s malicious. I believe it was Calvin who distinguished between giving offence – and taking it. Or in the contemporary lingo (which is probably already dated): Chill!
By the way, there is also a big irony here: that it’s the British who are always accusing Americans of having – no sense of irony!
halden, we should probably think up a suitable penance for you – how do you fancy some nice Old Testamenty festering sores? Or two volumes of Karl Barth every day before breakfast? (though perhaps that would be fun, not a penance?) Take it easy, and keep on blogging!
Aww! Not more penance! Dang it…
Kim, it’s a pleasure to have you comment on the blog (even if about boiling oil
…) – I really enjoy your thought-provoking propositions whenever they appear.