roachboy

there is no distinction between writing in a journal and other types of fiction.
proximity to what you're trying to communicate aside...
but even there, that you won't be able to communicate what you are trying to reproduce is given.
so you make it into something else.
that something else only exists in the sentences that you make, that you want to make refer in a particular way to your "real life"--but there is no "real life" in a journal--there is the life of the fictional character "i" who wanders about, bumping into things or having adventures. no matter how intimate the raw materials you work with, you are transforming them by writing them down. and in the transforming, they cease to be descriptions. that's how i think about a journal today.

i like the public versions because you have to explain more.
private journaling is talking to yourself.
because you're talking to yourself, they aren't really about being read.
so they're like talking on a phone knowing there's no dialtone--not only is no-one listening, but no-one can listen.

for me, today, writing is about distance and re-processing.
distance, reprocessing, taking over, doing something other, not moping but acting, doing something no matter how small: sentences.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite