Why I Write

Why I Write

If a tree falls in a forest where there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

Growing up, I never saw the sense of that question. That it was irrelevant and immaterial seemed obvious. The tree did whatever it was going to do: live, die, fall. It didn’t care if it had an audience or not. It was too busy being a tree, maybe the best tree it could be, maybe not. Maybe it hoped to be an example to other trees, either of exception or of conformity. Maybe it tried to fall quietly, maybe loudly, but I expect it just fell naturally, as a tree should. Until recently, this is how I decided I would live my life.

As a writer, I have not felt compelled to publish and advertise my particular point of view. The choice of infinitive reveals why: I felt no need to sell anything, particularly myself. To do so – to speak publicly and join the discourse of society -- seemed to cost more than it brought in return. Selling myself seemed nothing less than human trafficking, all the worse because the trade was not for a brute body, but a human consciousness and its time. Better to live simply, as a tree, and let my example speak for itself. If it went unnoticed, so be it. There was no reason to privilege my perspective. I have no corner on how best for mankind to live. I know only how best for me to live, and imperfect knowledge it is. Silence seemed to be the sum and substance of a humility born of self-confidence. Yet now I would publish. Why?

I do so for several reasons. First, a little education is a wonderful thing. With a ray of economics illuminating much that had been dark, a new understanding of commerce and its benefits, broadly imagined, emboldens me to venture into the marketplace of ideas. Second, writing helps a man clarify his thought. Third, it records that he did in fact think. In a world full of getting and begetting, few manage more than an animal existence. Fourth, this is what I am or would be. A man cannot be a writer without offering something to the public, sooner or later. Fifth, I am not trying to sell my self so much as I offer a mapping tool. Do not assume some production-line mentality, I say with no small irony; instead, find your own with this handy gadget. Sixth, action gives substance, clarity, and meaning to words and vice-versa. If I believe there is too little skepticism of society, and too little faith in the individual. I would be wrong not to say so. A silent example is as insufficient as empty rhetoric. Seventh, I am trying to sell a book. I do so in order to better provide for my family, ironically subordinating thought to biology. Eighth, I do so shamelessly because regardless of my disenchantment with popular culture and its conventional wisdom, I am a member of society. Even as a critic I fill a social role and acquire a social label, whether I like it or not. I cannot succeed in that role if I fail to contribute to “The Great Conversation” of social discourse. Ninth, being a social animal, I would like to associate with others like me, and be recognized by them as one of the breed.

This last is the heart of the matter. I believe myself to be an independent, critical thinker. I admire those whom I believe to be just that. The only way to prove myself their peer is to differentiate myself from the crowd by publishing something worthy of their notice. So the root of my human behavior is really nothing more than herd behavior, and signal creation and recognition. Single cell organisms can do this much.
But they can’t write. Of all human activity, the activity that truly separates us from the beasts is record-keeping. We create artifacts, intentional records of our existence. I do not mean mere tools, for these are not meant to preserve our identity over time. Obsolete tools are no more than industrials fossils, as subject to chance for erasure or preservation as footprints on a riverbed. What I refer to is art – graphic or plastic.

Performance art is the song of a bird, the growth of a tree, the leap of a dancer, or the life of a man trying to quietly live a craftsman ideal. These performances may be nearly perfect. Through natural selection and differential reproduction they may indirectly contribute a more beautiful world, or they may not. They may inspire the emulation of fellow creatures and so directly contribute to a more beautiful world, or not. They may do so with or without credit, and their contribution may be distorted and subject to change so that very shortly very little if anything can be attributed to them. Yet on they go, performing their show – song, growth, dance, or craft – happily, contentedly, humbly – unobtrusive as a tree in a forest.

Plastic art, on the other hand, asserts itself more directly, more loudly, across time. Born of pride, material art dares to challenge the gods and succeeding generations. It says, like the mark on the wall or picture in the cave, “I leapt this high or killed this many. I bet you cannot and dare you to try.” Art attempts to fix the vision and transmit it, unaltered, free from mutation and exempt from natural selection. Art insists on attribution. It seeks to establish not only individual identity, but to proscribe social territory by setting the grounds and rules of social discourse. Using words, pictures, shapes, art states what is, or by exclusion, what is not fit for consideration. In another idiom, art lays out the standards of the breed. In doing so, it creates the world.

This colossal arrogance, this cosmic pride, defines our species. So, to be fully human, I write. This amounts to saying that is my nature to do so. If that is the case, then there is no difference between my writing and the growth, or fall, of a tree. I have come to believe that this is not inconsistency because all things seem to contain their opposites. This seems so because we cannot capture all of existence with any one grammar or vocabulary. However we describe, draw, or shape something, it could also be described by what we have left out, hence its opposite. So I write in accordance with nature, and at the same time, in defiance of it.

Let me close by updating the opening conundrum for the twenty-first century: if a book is published and not read by a politically or statistically significant portion of the world’s population, was anything said? We must wait a thousand years or so to find out. After all, with imperfect preservation, who knows if we have any of Euripides best work? As I am as likely to be read in a century or two whether I write or not, I may as well write if it pleases me to spend my time so performing, just as you, gentle reader, may waste your time reading.