This is how my writing begins–my brain sends up an image that I then dissect into various components and layers with corresponding narratives. I’ll demonstrate with a photograph as posted above. Here is a written description of the above photograph: a picture of cars and a cameraphone reflected in the rear view mirror of a car–the photo also includes the frame of the rearview mirror and the front windshield and what lies ahead. Tl;dr a kind of selfie.

One way to structure the above photo:

  • the past (the cars in the rear view),
  • the present (the cameraphone),
  • and the future (the road ahead) all in one picture.

Now what?

The past: Writing is a complicated brain process that involves taking memories and sorting them into an understandable order, optimally one that complicates and deepens meaning. In the wake of my stroke, I would often begin stories with such an image and then–it was like a cliff. What was the next scene? My card deck had missing cards. I had a fifteen-minute short term memory and retrieving the next module of a narrative was impossible. It was then that I realized that this is how I construct a story even if I’m not sure if this is how all others construct narrative.

Knowing how a thing works is part of the work.

The present: It is the end of 2021. I didn’t publish a single thing this year. It has been awhile since I had a year in which I had zero published work. There was–a lot to navigate in the world and in my personal life, and publishing got pushed to the bottom of the stack. I’d like to say I’m the kind of writer who would write and publish under threat of illness and death, but I have found that I am not such a writer. Listen: I’m just glad I’m alive.

But. I’m pivoting back to a regular writing practice. Yes, I am under deadline. Yes, I am behind schedule. But I’ve decided to really understand what it is I need to write, because 2021 did not provide these necessities to me. And so I’m taking inventory.

The other day, I was on a particularly long drive, during which I listened to music. I don’t often listen to music as a primary activity, and I found myself breaking out in song. The music was making me feel joy and grief and hope as I orchestrated a playlist. I manipulated my own feelings, too, switching from dance music (Martin Solveig & Dragonette’s Hello, Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn) to nostalgic 80s music (Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart, OMD’s If You Leave, Pet Shop Boy’s It’s a Sin) to music I affiliate with beloveds in my life (Dusty Springfield’s You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon’s Let the River Run). I thought about how music brings me into a moment, how music unlocks my feelings. And how I was having feelings for the first time in awhile.

I thought about how I do listen to music to begin writing. I often need music to unlock my emotions.

And then I realized, I lived in a dissociative state for most of the year–in this case, feeling detached more than a disorder. I spent most of 2021 on the ceiling of every room I’ve occupied while playing Bee Swarm Simulator or Animal Crossing New Horizons, watching myself live my actions, much like the narrator of a story is separate from the character. Sure, I feel my feelings, but it’s often asynchronous, at a much later time when I feel safe and rewind happenings in my mind and then allow myself to process my emotions. I am very aware that this isn’t healthy behavior and it stems from earlier trauma. And over the years, I’ve had to do less and less of this as I’ve worked on feeling more as I have feelings–save for 2021, which also gave my OCD and germ phobia a deep purpose, bringing these disorders back to life.

So as I sit back down to write, I have to acknowledge what it is that has changed. That writing is not the same this year as it was, say in 2019, at least for me. There are more psychic obstacles to navigate. A little more work to let myself unravel. And as a result, to hold the unravelled threads and then weave them into story.

The future: What do I need to write? I often write the best in crisis, when everything in my life is falling apart and there is no place to run, and no choice but to let my dam burst. But this isn’t sustainable. And it sure doesn’t lend itself to a consistent writing practice.

Also writing is the place where I do process. And without writing, I am not a well person, even if writing is the hardest activity purely because it forces me to confront myself and the world and all the intersections between and around. Just as in the picture, how do all the parts work together? What am I trying to say? I often don’t know before I begin–only that there is an important vision I want to communicate, with narratives that eventually emerge to complicate that very vision.

I know something works when the picture evolves into one that moves, and when the picture itself becomes woven into something else. I often wonder, for instance, if Rothko’s color block paintings have another painting underneath. Did he paint something horrific underneath and then cover it with rich red squares trimmed in black edging? Is that why his paintings haunt me? Has the original vision receded into another narrative? His work is spare and unadorned–yet when I stare at them, they take me to a very detailed place of emotion.

Red on Maroon Mural, Section 3 1959 by Mark Rothko

For instance, Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals. (Segue: Mark Rothko was commissioned to make these murals for a fancy restaurant. He was so disgusted about painting something for a restaurant full of rich patrons dining on expensive food with his work as decor that he intended his murals to sicken them–he is my kind of DGAF). I first saw them at the Tate Modern a number of years ago. I have never forgotten the emotional experience of viewing them in person; they reminded me of double-edged safety razors and furthermore, they make me feel the tension of holding one in my hand. Knowing how Rothko died only concretizes this feeling for me. What–I wonder, is underneath? Is that hidden picture the structure of the story he tells?

I realize, too, that the title of this post is about safety. But it is also about risk and disregarding safety. Double-edged safety razors might have been safer than its predecessor–but the blades alone are full of risk. Maybe we can never truly be safe and safety can only be an approximation.

I am not safe when I write. I am throwing myself into the wind. I am letting myself break down. I am breaking down visions. And then putting them back together, intertwined.

To do so requires a wild freedom, the kind of wildness that crises afford me, when the rules have been erased, my foundation crushed, and the walls completely ruined. It requires a kind of self absorption that motherhood doesn’t always afford me. But maybe this year I will create a room into which I enter to write and create. Maybe a locked door will be the very thing that enables wildness. Or maybe I will break rules and make demands.