My Love/My Writing

by David Scott
It's been said that the only love that ever truly lasts is unrequited love. When I first heard that (and I'm not quite sure where I heard it), I dismissed it immediately as the defensive credo of the cynic. After all, the quickest and easiest way to deflect pain is to crouch slightly, tense up, and raise your fists about three inches from your heart. We do it all the time psychically, and the experts of this stance are called cynics, who wear their unrequited love like medals of honor around their necks. And if you don't dismiss these notions, if you play with them, like a five year old playing with a Zippo lighter and a pile of oily rags, you will become a martyr for your cause. And no one--no one--will mourn you. Not even other cynics. Because they know better.

So sure, I did my best to dismiss such a notion. But I couldn't quite leave it at that. There was something about those words--unrequited love--that resonated within me. So I pulled them apart and stretched them around like taffy. Unrequited love--love that is not returned. And then I had that moment of clarity where the gauzy sheen of the veil is lifted and I can see things for what they are. Ephihany. Love, true love, does not require outside energy to sustain itself. "Unrequited" becomes a superfluous descriptor. It's love, and only love that matters. We tend to confuse the issue when we're talking about one person loving another. For there are avenues of pain and sad knowledge that await the individual who embarks on knowing what it means to love somebody and not be loved in return. Keep in mind, I make no judgements on whether that is a journey worth taking. If experience is of value, then surely painful experience is the richest experience we can engage in. You can avoid it, but in a way, you avoid living.

The nature of unrequited love becomes clearer, however, when we talk about a love of something intangible. The love of an idea. If you can recognize beauty, the beauty behind the outward symbol, then you know what it is like to love the idea. The idea is that DNA strand that spirals upward, like gothic spires reaching towards heaven, creating the substance of whatever it is we find beautiful.

I think I've always understood the value of it, even if I never quite had the words for it. In the last couple of years of study, I feel like I have taken away a better understanding of how to pinpoint and articulate just why I am drawn to literature and writing. Why I connect. Why I love it.

I took a nonfiction writing class last year. Our text was a book called Word Paintingby Rebecca McClanahan, which I highly recommend to anyone who likes to string words together. One of her key refrains was to "pay attention." Her goal was to teach writers to use the tools of description to transfer what is in the heart and mind onto paper. I feel like I've learned a lot in that respect. (I have so much more to learn, however.) At any rate, I certainly pay closer attention to my word choices, deciding which ones serve me and which ones do not. Before reading this book, I considered writing to be similar to casting spells. A few arcane words, thrown out into the wind on a wing and a prayer, and presto! Hopefully you can pull a rabbit out of a hat. Thankfully, I learned that it's not enough to have intent (although intent is one of the most powerful forces in an artist's life). You must have a keen focus as well. Focused intent--a will and a way--is the true currency of the artist. You can have one without the other and still get lucky sometimes. It happens. However, when those kinds of spells go wrong, they really become spectacular disasters.

"Pay attention." Her words serve me well as a writer. It's almost too much to realize that they serve me well as a person, too. If focused intent is necessary for the writer to create works of purity, then the energy behind it must be love. (Unrequited love, mind you. This stuff ain't gonna love you back. If you need it to, if you need someone's praise, or a paycheck, or an award with your name on it, then you don't love writing. You are looking for something else and you will not find it here.) The love must be pure to ignite that brilliant white flame that melts everything into truth. Everything is connected. But you must pay attention. The details of life, the words people choose, the proper naming of things, the way a dog looks to a five year old boy, the way a boy looks to a five year old dog, a sunset after your heart has been broken, a sunset after your heart has mended. If you pay attention, not only will you become a better writer, you will find the love of life that drives the creative spirit. If you don't how can you recognize the beauty of the mundane? How can you possibly understand the importance of the trivial? It is all important, and if you discover that and feel that and love that, well, then you've got a reason to write, I believe.

There is only one reason to do anything. And that's out of love. Anything else is just asking for trouble. That's my primary reason for writing. My secondary reason is to fulfilll my obsession with communicating some piece of me to someone else. An essence that I can pour into word molds and harden into black ink (or pixels), that when read, become absorbed into the blood stream of another person. I don't ask for much, do I? Still, I know it can be done, because I've been on the receiving end of this "soul transfusion." When writing is pure and true, I receive a connection to another person. It does not matter if the person is alive or dead. All that matters is the physical manifestation of their consciousness. Their words.