symbolic 58: time stretching
I'm making slow progress on THE BOOK OF LIES, a few hundred words at a time. Glacial pacing, I suppose, but it is forward progress. I'm trying to build a section in my head before I commit it to paper in order to prevent obstacles from injuring me during the headlong rush. It's a different method of working than I'm used to, but it is a more realistic method afforded by the time I have available.
Time. It's all about time, isn't it?
I've been reading The Believer off and on since it started earlier this year, and I've been chewing through Ben Marcus' essay about John Haskell and the lyric essay recently. Marcus covers a bit of ground, but the not entirely tangential aspect of his article which still hovers in my mind is the intersection between fiction and time. "Literature is supposedly a time-based art," he says wherein the fiction writer creates time in the course of his work.
Which is one of those ideas which, once articulated, puts everything in a different light. The "once upon a time" phrase becomes, essentially, a magical incantation. The writer invites the reader to partake in a shared imaginary experience. "Come," the writer says, "let us make time together." Does the writer really create time on his own or is it something that has no existence, per se, until someone reads it?
When you get right down to it, participating in fiction validates the whole idea that time is completely subjective and, while it may be defined as a certain number of vibrations of a cesium atom, it is still a human quantification of the universe. More importantly, not only can you imagine it, you can uncreate it as well. Does a story still exist after you've read it or does that time -- that idea space in which you've been dallying -- suddenly cease to exist?
The idea abutting this one is a factoid mused over by my pal, Greg, one late evening. He tells me that young children cannot understand stories until such time as they can understand the concept of lying. For infants, objects are solid and have an existence in space relative to themselves, and it isn't until they can handle the idea of an object existing outside their immediate visual space that they can truly understand what is real and what is not. Once they can comprehend a graduation of truth -- a variation of absolutes -- they can appreciate stories.
"Once upon a time" is an invocation of "not-truth," of unreality that we make real because we can imagine it. Time is imaginary then and doesn't exist for children; it has no bearing for those who are unable to think beyond the raw, sensory input which they are receiving. We make time then, don't we? We kill it, we take it, we waste it.
It is kind of pointless to get worked up about it, isn't it? Since we invent time in our heads, there is no end to the supply. We can make, kill, take, or waste more whenever we want.
I still don't know what I'm going to do in Chapter 4. Time enough, I suppose.
writing
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.
THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.
SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.
LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.