Place your pot on the burner, turn the dial and watch the orange and blue flames burst out of the flame holes, then settle down and burn consistently. Pour some oil into the pan, enough to cover the bottom. Rummage through kitchen shelves to find the popcorn, rushing because you know the heat is on and the oil is hot. Find it, dump into a pan (enough seeds to cover the bottom) and throw the lid on with more urgency than necessary! In the minutes to come, those seeds will start to tingle, then explode. It starts with a few, and soon they are all jumping.
I think a moment captured in writing must be an organic culmination of ideas. The culmination comes when all the idea seeds and kernels are jumping and the pot is full and you dump it out, into a bowl, and that full bowl is a piece of writing and then it can rest for a while, and be eaten.
Ideas forced out prematurely are like popcorn kernels dumped out before they have popped. Instead of an enjoyable snack you have what looks on the surface like that snack, but below, a thick layer of unpopped seeds. In writing, these unpopped seeds are the things unsaid, unconsidered.
I was beginning to stop wanting to write for the Odyssey. Every time I wrote something, I later looked back and saw all of the unpopped seeds. Doug Martsch sings in “Center of the Universe,”
I heard what I said to you
And it was so out of sync
With the way I wanted to
Make myself Out to Seem.
When you are on the same page with someone, you build an energy together. You can communicate and that communication is based on mutual care. You are both living in the present, and there is a lot of freedom there. When you are not on the same page you may find yourself scrambling for questions, or diving into spiels you are only half engaged in. You are not communicating as well, the other person isn’t listening as well, and you both leave the interaction slightly drained and with a feeling of disconnection.
Similarly, you can force ideas out in spiel-form (I’m thinking of my piece “Taking Things Out Of Boxes”) or you can capture them in a moment of inspiration (“Fear of Human Completion,” maybe this one).
Writing for the Odyssey has made me consider what it means to publish something, and what our reasons are for doing so. The epitome of adaptability is being able to exist with your current mind state in any environment. So, maybe my role as an Odyssey writer is to publish whatever idea I’m thinking about and be honest about that. I think it’s a little more than that. While adaptability is essential to living life, I do not think it is important for writing. Writing is an art form. It is not about compromise or making it work, it is about capturing some uncatchable energy in its purest form, and sharing it because you want to share it.
