~~ dv13, but not really.
Jun. 12th, 2003 01:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkathe main response, i think, to something that matters to me-- stories moving me-- is just pure emotion, and i don't know where to put it. it's transitory, ephemeral in terms of precise memory, tracing the pathways and the actual reasons for it... it lingers, yes, but it acquires its own life, like the wind that has moved dry, fallen leaves into a frenzy. feeling like i have to -say- something in return, and yet when i really -should-, and it's intense and living, i just can't. i keep noticing that. the deepest response i have is silence.
that's why i write (or draw) in response to writing, because that too, comes out of silence. i feel a bit overwhelmed, trying to keep up with everyone's writing-- or anyone's writing-- and the last bit i did read, i can't say anything coherent about. the ghost story for dv13 is tangling in my mind with all the other ghost harry's, clamoring at me to hear something, to say something, but i don't know what. there is so much depth there, in people drifting apart but never leaving, in being bound so tightly you no longer see the other person, only feel this emptiness inside you, like wind through an enclosed courtyard, and you assume it's nothing, it's gone, it's all over because it never escapes. but it's so present you just can't feel it anymore, it has made you numb.
just, the idea of interlocking circles, people who touch but not close enough, not enough to actually -see- the other, and you end up speaking to each other on and on, and it's like you were alone in the room, because you could never say the right thing, the magic that made it be that, just that, is gone. and you're left with just words and scattered meanings everywhere. this isn't really a review, because what would i say? i always say that, and then i say things anyway, but they're not really enough... i just feel these layers stretching beyond what i can articulate. they frustrate me. i know they're there, all these variations on meaning, and i can't quite pinpoint them. if i did, i'd end up commenting on every little thing, laughing and gasping and transcribing, like a story about a story.
a good story, i think, just flows right through me. i'm not thrown out of it, i don't analyze it or wonder where it's going, even. i'm just -there-, and it happens, and then when it's over i wake up and feel disoriented, like i'm not quite myself, but often enough i want more, to re-submerge, to forget that the world exists that is different and not as true, somehow.
i was thinking, also, about why often enough sad stories don't work for me. it seems they just exist to affect me-- they don't have these layers, this internal life, and just seem to work steadily towards the end, where someone leaves or dies or is broken. and life is like that. i suppose in the end, we're all broken, but that's not the point, really. those stories always make me want to reject them, somehow. i want to see a life without a beginning or an end, where things keep going, spiralling in all sorts of different directions, always woven with tragedy and randomly serrated with joy. i don't know.
i don't know what i'm talking about. silence is better, maybe. it preserves the possibilities, all the different truths of the moments when i laughed and held my breath and wanted to cry but didn't. there is always that secondary story that is usually never told, the story of the reader. it's not the same thing as a review-- but really, i think it's the important other aspect of the story itself, its twin really. in the end, i don't really care for actual analysis-- where you say, "this worked but this didn't, this was funny and that was a good segue into this". a part of me will always feel that the proper response to a story isn't with words but with feelings-- small bodily movements-- a gasp, a sigh, a bitten lip, a sudden, loud burst of laughter.
ever since we'd sat around the fire, faces tense and bodies swaying slightly, unable to breathe until the telling's done, it's been like that. in each listener's mind, a slightly different story's woven, a slightly different dream is born. and every time i speak about it, i get further from it, i re-create it in a different image. that's why it seems like creating something new from it is so natural... i let the wildness seep through, the new connections forming in my unconscious mind. and sometimes there's nothing you could name without there being parts missing-- or maybe that's every time, i don't know. sometimes there's just the silence that isn't.
~~
and. hee. this is my perfect harry. must bow down before alessandra at first opportunity (also, more can be found here).
that's why i write (or draw) in response to writing, because that too, comes out of silence. i feel a bit overwhelmed, trying to keep up with everyone's writing-- or anyone's writing-- and the last bit i did read, i can't say anything coherent about. the ghost story for dv13 is tangling in my mind with all the other ghost harry's, clamoring at me to hear something, to say something, but i don't know what. there is so much depth there, in people drifting apart but never leaving, in being bound so tightly you no longer see the other person, only feel this emptiness inside you, like wind through an enclosed courtyard, and you assume it's nothing, it's gone, it's all over because it never escapes. but it's so present you just can't feel it anymore, it has made you numb.
just, the idea of interlocking circles, people who touch but not close enough, not enough to actually -see- the other, and you end up speaking to each other on and on, and it's like you were alone in the room, because you could never say the right thing, the magic that made it be that, just that, is gone. and you're left with just words and scattered meanings everywhere. this isn't really a review, because what would i say? i always say that, and then i say things anyway, but they're not really enough... i just feel these layers stretching beyond what i can articulate. they frustrate me. i know they're there, all these variations on meaning, and i can't quite pinpoint them. if i did, i'd end up commenting on every little thing, laughing and gasping and transcribing, like a story about a story.
a good story, i think, just flows right through me. i'm not thrown out of it, i don't analyze it or wonder where it's going, even. i'm just -there-, and it happens, and then when it's over i wake up and feel disoriented, like i'm not quite myself, but often enough i want more, to re-submerge, to forget that the world exists that is different and not as true, somehow.
i was thinking, also, about why often enough sad stories don't work for me. it seems they just exist to affect me-- they don't have these layers, this internal life, and just seem to work steadily towards the end, where someone leaves or dies or is broken. and life is like that. i suppose in the end, we're all broken, but that's not the point, really. those stories always make me want to reject them, somehow. i want to see a life without a beginning or an end, where things keep going, spiralling in all sorts of different directions, always woven with tragedy and randomly serrated with joy. i don't know.
i don't know what i'm talking about. silence is better, maybe. it preserves the possibilities, all the different truths of the moments when i laughed and held my breath and wanted to cry but didn't. there is always that secondary story that is usually never told, the story of the reader. it's not the same thing as a review-- but really, i think it's the important other aspect of the story itself, its twin really. in the end, i don't really care for actual analysis-- where you say, "this worked but this didn't, this was funny and that was a good segue into this". a part of me will always feel that the proper response to a story isn't with words but with feelings-- small bodily movements-- a gasp, a sigh, a bitten lip, a sudden, loud burst of laughter.
ever since we'd sat around the fire, faces tense and bodies swaying slightly, unable to breathe until the telling's done, it's been like that. in each listener's mind, a slightly different story's woven, a slightly different dream is born. and every time i speak about it, i get further from it, i re-create it in a different image. that's why it seems like creating something new from it is so natural... i let the wildness seep through, the new connections forming in my unconscious mind. and sometimes there's nothing you could name without there being parts missing-- or maybe that's every time, i don't know. sometimes there's just the silence that isn't.
~~
and. hee. this is my perfect harry. must bow down before alessandra at first opportunity (also, more can be found here).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-06-14 08:24 pm (UTC)One of the reasons I appreciate you, is that you still have a primal (memory) connection to that time, the time when the storytellers were all that kept us from thinking about the saber-toothed tigers prowling around in the dark beyond the fire, and when the stories were all that got us through the night...
every few months, i get to the point where i feel like if i analyze any more hp or read any more h/d fic, i'll burst.
Me too, but ... there's something to be said for plunging through. Seeing what will happen!
Thank you for the birthday wishes! Sorry I left for so long - I'll be lurking again now. See you on the boards! / eq