Writing as aliveness

This is the fourth part on writing as necessary friction.

“Mischief and Repose” by John William Godward (from Getty Open Content)

Last, but certainly not least, I write because it feels like an essential element of being alive.

British author and journalist Oliver Burkeman uses the word aliveness to capture the idea of living with a kind of energetic enthusiasm,

The concept that sits right at the heart of a sane and meaningful life, I’m increasingly convinced, is something like aliveness. It goes by other names, too, none of which quite nail it – but it’s the one thing that, so long as you navigate by it, you’ll never go too far wrong. Sometimes it feels like a subtle electrical charge behind what’s happening, or a mildly heightened sense of clarity, or sometimes like nothing I can put into words at all.

Even if I didn’t find value in writing for the other reasons (mental clarity, external processing, or technical proficiency), it has become a part of how I conceptualize my idea of self. I want to be a creative person who writes. The thought of being called a writer fills me with that undefinable electric charge. The writing itself is simply a process and practice to be this kind of person.

There is something weirdly satisfying about working hard to squeeze my disordered thoughts into the shape of an essay and tame chaotic ideas into well-reasoned arguments. I find it meaningful to craft bespoke writing using just my dumb brain and hands because the experience is, first and foremost, for myself. The struggle to write is just a manifestation of the interior battle between my taste and my current ability to execute to that high standard.

Aliveness has been called by many other names recently in contemporary discourse. Friction-maxxing, the hunt, choosing to walk, real work (not slop or bullshit), and making heavy things are all recent rebukes of a totalitarian productivity culture where efficiency is prized above all else. We have been inundated with so many products that promise to sell us convenience and optimization without fulfilling our deeper aspirations, all for what? Creating some kind of endlessly smooth existence where we just consume whatever the marketing-industrial-complex tells us to buy. The IRL brain rot will not help us build towards a life with more meaning and significance.

Choosing to do weird and hard things is not just a prerequisite for living, but is the whole damn point of life.

In Don’t let the machines do the living, cultural critic and writer Anne Helen Petersen explains how friction is intertwined with the fundamental aspects of being human:

It should take time to figure out which hike you want to take. It should take time to learn how to make bread. It should take time to read, to really read, Toni Morrison or James Joyce. It should take time to figure out what kind of music moves you, and what kind of clothes feel like you, and to discern the different calls a bird makes. It should take time to make friends. To grow a tomato. To learn a language. To learn how to play a tabletop game. To make a meal. To learn who you are, and what matters to you. Obsession, craft, improvement, and learning are all inefficient parts of life. They are also the part of life where you are actually doing the living.

Kurt Vonnegut, in a 1995 interview with Inc, tells us a story about the same thing,

I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I’d never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterward I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, “Are you still doing typing?” Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, “Okay, I’ll send you the pages.”

Then I go down the steps and my wife calls, “Where are you going?” “Well,” I say, “I’m going to buy an envelope.” And she says, “You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in the closet.” And I say, “Hush.”

So I go to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately.

I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it.

Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home.

And I’ve had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.

I think about this story a lot. Besides being one of my favorite authors and a writer of unparalleled skill, Vonnegut masterfully captures the essence of aliveness. The decision to take the long way has so much more joy and richness in every dimension. We don’t need any better reason to do something other than because we want to and it will be a good time. We are all just farting around.

My goal for writing is to have fun and look very stylish while I do it. Vonnegut is one of my writing heroes not only because of his life ethos but also because he is canonically very funny. I adore writers who can mix sharp insights with well-timed humor. They are blessed with perfect comedic timing and an insouciant, mischievous narrative voice.

I am not funny by nature. After all, I use insufferable terms like “insouciant”. So I must work hard at this, studying and copying the best to attain only a fraction of their powers.

I also have modest aspirations to not look like a complete idiot. I am very much in Charlie Munger’s camp, who once said, “it’s remarkable how much long-term advantage people […] have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” Or to put it another way, I really really want to avoid being written into one of Jesse Armstrong’s storylines. In an interview with The Atlantic, Armstrong said a recurring part of his work was finding the intersecting place “where clever and stupid meet.” I definitely want to be funny but not that kind of funny… the fatal combination of cleverness and stupidity.

Writing can be as vital a part of our human existence as other passions and interests. I can go on and on about the significance it brings to my understanding of self, how it helps me create meaning out of my experiences. I would still be doing this even if zero people ever read a piece of my writing.

In the end, writing is just one more thing that we humans can do to fill our precious time in the world. I think David Warsh said it best about his reasons for writing,

I’m not Tom Wolfe, much less Charles Dickens. I write non-fiction books about economics. The only people who pay me to write are some 300 subscribers who support the Economic Principals weekly. I don’t suffer from writer’s block. I am just running out of time.

So watch me fart around as much as I can before I run out of time.