The Gap
When I sit down to blog, I feel the absence of the gap.
Good writing always involves space, a kind of gap. Blogging–it’s easy to fall into the trap of writing to everyone in the world and really say nothing to anyone anywhere at all. The closed loop: you are writing in your head, talking out loud to yourself. Sort of taking notes on what you really want to say. The voice is a kind of generalized, companiable chat. It makes one feel thick, wan, plain, rounded. My impression reading a lot of blogs (including my own) and a lot of beginning student work is that the voice is “notes towards a life” and the writing isn’t interesting to read because there’s no gap.
The gap is artfulness. Bloggery is so literal and direct and solidified, it’s like cement sidewalks. Gapwriting involves driving down hard into your voice, the true thing you’re going to say, and revealing more than you intended. A controlled free fall. It’s like meditation. You can’t go and meditate. Meditation is a state that arises naturally when you are focused and concentrated. How does the blog impede that state? How does it enhance it?
I want that gap in my work. I want to focus on the thing I want to say and let it take me not where I set out to go (get off the sidewalk). When I put two things that don’t go together together–that always creates a gap.
There was a comedian on Terry Gross the other day talking about the notes on slips of paper he finds all over his apartment, notes for jokes. Most of them don’t make any sense. He said it’s like finding little messages from a bad wisdom fairy. This reminded me of blog writing in reverse. Instead of getting little notes from ourselves, we’re sending them out, leaning in towards the nibble.
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