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The question is this. Do other people help you or hinder you in your writing? The answer, not surprisingly, is mixed: sometimes they help and sometimes they hinder. But it's worth working out the answer in some detail because it turns out you can do something about it when an audience hinders your writing. Four Images | 1. | A mother with her toddler chats with a friend in the parking lot outside Safeway. The child wanders back and forth as far as he can without letting go his grasp of his mother's middle finger, sometimes babbling to himself and sometimes even to his mother and her friend. But he knows they aren't listening, he doesn't expect an answer. He also takes a kind of pleasure in half listening to their talk even though he doesn't understand lots of what they say. Sometimes he comes closer and stares up at the friend's face. In short, the child and the friend could be said to be paying half attention to each other. Then the friend squats down and pays full attention to the child: "How are you? Did you get a cookie in the store?" and the child slides around and hides his face behind his mother's leg. This is not a scary or unknown person. The child has often played with him and will do so again. But his first reaction to full attention is to hide. | | 2. | It is a grey late November Northwest day. I am giving a lecture to a large class -- a hundred or so students. I have worked in seminar with some of them. Most of them I know only slightly.
| | I can't seem to create any coherent speech even though I have clear notes and I got quite excited last night preparing them. I mumble, stammer, bumble. It's not that I don't make any sense at all. I do. I'm saying what's in my notes -- after a fashion. But it's halting and cramped and not very clear. It's as though my notes and ideas have left-handed threads and the language in my mouth has righthanded threads. I mumble more than usual, especially at the ends of sentences. A couple of hands go up in the back, they can't hear me, will I please speak louder. I do so, but after a moment or two I lose volume again and a couple of hands go up with the same message. When it happens a third time I'm annoyed. I come from behind the podium to the front of the stage and stand on the very edge -- as close to them as I can get. Holding my notes in my hands I start talking again. I feel more exposed without the podium but in a way I don't care because I'm sort of mad. It's as though I'm pushing against them with my chest or my whole trunk. "Damn it, if that's the way you're going to be, then I'll bulldoze right through you with my words." And, suddenly, I can talk coherently. It's not just that they can hear me now because I'm closer and keep my voice up. In addition, the threads of my ideas and speech finally seem to mesh with each other. And I can push those words out and make contact with listeners, make a dent. I can tell I'm being heard. Which helps me find more words. I'm a bit more nervous now, nakeder, but I'm able to turn that into some kind of forcefulness or even aggression that had been lacking before. | |
| I remember a time in my 20's when I was particularly troubled, seared, having difficulty hanging on. I'd never felt that way before. At moments when I was most frightened of coming apart I would call up one of my friends and ask if I could visit. When I arrived I didn't pour out all my troubles or bad feelings. That's not what I wanted. I wanted to feel regular -- like the old me: whole and rational and in one piece. And that's precisely what the presenoe of a friend automatically permitted me to feel. We would do the regular things and talk in the regular way. Things would snap into perspective. Without even noticing it, I felt reserves of strength and solidity. I no longer felt watery-frightened. | But during this same period, being with a particularly close friend or family member occasionally had the opposite effect on me. Instead of helping me be my old regular self -- hold on better -- the presence of that person somehow drew the threatening feelings closer to the surface. That made me feel scared of coming apart. I didn't want to utter any of those words that were beginning to appear in my head. I would get the urge to go away and often did: "Well, I guess I have to go now. See you." |
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