One of the oldest memes I know follows the idea that writers work alone. We hole up in black caves or forest hideaways joined by our thoughts and a bottle of Jim Beam, perhaps even absinthe, if we can find it. This may be true for some, but the majority of writers I know deplore these conditions. In fact, I am most prolific when writing in a crowded space, when human noise washes over me, separating me from any possible distraction.
Human noise is conversation, it is the slamming of doors, the skidding of feet on carpet, the heavy breaths of a walker who has gone too far too fast. It is arguments and washing machines and ringing phones. Human noise is a refrigerator hard at work while light jazz eeks out from recessed speakers. It lives in common rooms, in Starbucks cafe’s, in the subtle glances of waitresses at the Village Inn curious to why you hold their table for hours.
Walden claimed that he went off into the woods for months to pen his work, but the truth is he craved human noise. He would trudge back into the city and seek out human contact before returning to his isolation and his words. I have tried to write in the way we are told to imagine Walden wrote and I too opted for an escape. I found my way to diners and Walmart McDonald’s, Fry’s Marketplace, and anywhere that promised a chair and a half decent cup of coffee. That human noise drags the words out of me and leaves me feeling fulfilled and refreshed in the way that only walking the streets of New York comes close to duplicating. Even there I would stop at a corner, at a bench or a bus stop and pen a few words before moving on. I would look up at the sky, catching hold of a thought and follow it to its eventual conclusion. There is a happiness in the bustle of life that silence cannot bring, and I am grateful for it.
Some Thoughts:
1. Being at Evergreen State College invokes feelings of summer camp in New York. Everything is tucked away and surrounded by trees. We are literally a forest that sprouted buildings and fields. I am having a good time with good people, and looking forward to the next few days.
2. That being said, times like this always remind me how different and out of place I feel around academics, that sense of not belonging also triggers memories of youth when I was one of three or four black kids in my school. This modern difference is not of race but of reason. I feel like the only sci-fi geek in the group. I feel unique in other ways too, but I find that uniqueness always feels like a separator as opposed to something that makes me one of them, and that leaves me feeling very much alone.