Is my false wall... fiction?
Do I need to punch through and tell it as it really was?
“Over the years, I’ve come to look forward to the point in my own writing at which continuing seems both incomprehensible and loathsome. That resistance, rather than marking the dead-end of the day’s words, marks the beginning of the truly interesting part. That resistance is a kind of imaginative prophylactic, a barrier between me and a new idea. It is the end of the ideas I already had when I came to the page… On the other side of that threshold the truly creative awaits me, where I might make something that did not already exist.
I just have to punch through that false wall.”
from Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos
Hi friends,
Lovely to have you here on this leg of the journey.
If you’re a new subscriber and want to know what happens around these parts when I’m not traversing northern Europe in a motorhome, including all my expressive writing courses for autumn, then head to my welcome post:
Start here! Welcome to What Now? with Lindsay Johnstone
Denmark
Kolding - Nimtofte - Aarhus - Bøsøre Strand
As I settle the bill, the elderly man who runs the small forest campsite we’ve been staying at is kind when I try to use some Danish. Tells me in English, flashing a gold tooth, that a thousand or more years ago the Vikings of Denmark held land in Scotland, England, France, Ukraine and Russia. The mighty Danes have the ‘big job’ of claiming it all back, and though he has Putin on speed-dial, he’s got a lot on today. Danish world dominance will have to wait.
It’s the kind of warm exchange and gentle humour with a stranger that shouldn’t take me by surprise, but does. Of course he’s fluent in English; it’s the lingua franca in each of the countries we’ve visited so far. I do have a second language but it has limited application and I’m sure as hell not funny in it. In Gaelic, I’m transactional; toddler-friendly. Maybe if I had the right words I’d be able to be my ‘normal’ self, not the somehow-smaller, stilted me I am with native speakers or the children’s-telly-presenter version I am when I use it for work. This is why my kids refuse to use their school language with me.
Having access to the right words is important. They allow you to be your whole self. To fully integrate all the parts of yourself, as well as with others.