Reading affects writing

04 May 2005

Just an observation, no need to grill me over a seemingly obvious statement. I reserve the proceeding space for musings not guaranteed to be of interest to any other individual on the planet.

Finished Ondaatje’s “In The Skin of a Lion” this afternoon, some time between a catalyst and an idea forming unconsciously whilst reading, and leaping out once it was finished into nothing because I didn’t have time to write (I was on a bus), so I spoke into the air (I walk along a fairly quiet route home)… it said nothing back.

Then, a few hours later, I tried to write it again. It happened, it’s working, albeit somewhat differently to that first elocution and my subsequent expectations of how it would work out — because it’s taken on the voice of Ondaatje! I can’t escape that quasi-poetic/prose mix he spurts forth nearly endlessly! The sentences are fragmented, and it doesn’t feel natural — the voice is not my own. It’s not his, but mine is so affected meaning is lost in translation.

It’s like drink driving. Intoxication on the creation of others leading to accidents. Disasters. The disaster of inadvertant emulation.