Earlier today I recalled that I am not Igor Stravinsky.
In fact, I have been, and remain, not a great many people. Today, though, I am not Stravinsky in particular.
Don’t misunderstand me: I am not comparing my talents to that master, that genius. Quite the opposite is the case, but inspiration comes from whence it comes, unbidden. Today it is coming to me from thoughts of Stravinsky, who I am content not to be, as much as I would like to exercise his talents.
I am me, which is perhaps sufficient - it will have to do - but I imagine that it could be very helpful to be Igor Stravinsky. At least, I suspect it would be helpful in the short term given current projects.
Stravinsky composed the astonishing, and tantalisingly brief, Rite of Spring for the 1913 season of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, with choreography by Nijinsky and sets by Nicholas Roerich.
Dynamite!
I want to do something like that, but to compose with words, realising that I do not have the capacity, skill or predilection to compose in music. Perhaps it is more correct to say I wish to partially transpose? No, that is not really true. Let me explain.
If I say I wish to do in words the kind 0f thing that Stravinsky did in composing and conducting the Rite of Spring, I am confessing a deep desire and sweeping, lofty aspiration. Almost certainly beyond my capacities, but why not aim high? That piece of music excites me, and inspires me. This is not, however, a disclosure of the intention to transpose that piece itself: it is more a statement of the desire to swim in the same deep pool, with consideration of form, structure, texture and experimentation with the forms of chaos and order. I would like to make something astonishing.
Transposition between media as a working method, rather than the transposition of individual works, is something of ongoing interest to me. It works for me to do ‘something kind of like that thing, but in words instead of music’.
It is both dumb and naive, by which I mean that it is simplistic in essence to the point of stupidity, even while being necessarily and inevitably complex in execution. I like the challenge at both of those levels: dumb simplicity and eye-watering complexity.
I do like it, the dumb ambition of it. Will I succeed? Who knows. Time will provide an answer to this.
I know that it doesn’t really matter. I have the rest of my life to work it out, and in the meantime, I will be making something.
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This business of not being other people is a bit problematic. Consider Wilde’s suggestion to be oneself, as everyone else is taken, if I may paraphrase with gay abandon. Not being Igor Stravinsky is considerably easier than working out who Marcus Baumgart is. It is also less self-focused and self-regarding, somehow less introverted.
At least I think it is.
I am a writer. It is a simple definition: I write, therefore I am a writer. That is part of who I am. It may or may not be the most interesting part of who I am; it is certainly the bit I am most interested in.
I run a business to pay the bills, and to give me something to do during the day. It keeps me quite busy, but there is always time to write. I am writing right now during my lunch on a perfectly normal work day.
Why do I write? I do it because I can; I do it because I wish to make something, and words are my medium. I like words.
I have been published many times. That is no longer a measure of achievement for me.
I write for myself, apart from the writing I do for magazines and the web. My personal writing is for me alone, and anyone else who may become interested in it by stumbling upon it in due course.
To make something astonishing (or to wish to) is a perfectly non-viable project (a profitless pursuit) that is perfectly viable and worthwhile because absolutely nothing is contingent upon it. I don’t need to make a living off it, I don’t need to meet any targets in doing it, it has no KPI’s, and no timeframe. It is not pointless, but it finds its reason for being in the act of making itself, not in the substance of the produced material, the actual text.
For the project to be worthwhile - wholesome and constructive - it needs to be outward-looking, not tediously introspective. It needs a subject, and that subject will not be me. God of the Starving Dog forbid.
It needs to be big enough and loose enough to encompass within it fiction, fact, non-fiction, description, narrative, storytelling, and so-called unfiction along with any other form of written text imaginable. Lists and dot points spring to mind. Not everything, certainly - but not restricted to one kind of written thing alone.
More to follow.
