The last essay that I posted (There.) was the hardest thing I’ve posted. Maybe the hardest thing I’ve written. There is a difference. Like I said, I wrote it for myself. It was something I had to do at a specific time, when I was still drowning in the experience and I didn’t want to remember any of it, but a part of me that I’m learning to listen to told me that maybe I needed to. So I wrote for myself but didn’t post it. Later, when I did post it, I didn’t do so for myself. I posted it for the reason I post anything on here: the reader.
A songwriter might write a song about lost love (or found love) to console or to rejoice privately, then get on a stage and play that same song for others so that the experience which is already common can be realized. So do I write about pain sometimes (but hopefully more often about joy) to first help me work through it, and then “put it out there” and hope that whoever reads it recognizes some of their own thoughts, pain, joy, in it.
So, what is the role of art? More specifically, what is the role of prose? Does it cheapen an event, emotion, pain, joy, discovery, loss, to write about it?
If it did, wouldn’t every song about the pain of heartbreak cheapen love? Is a songwriter like Bob Dylan a master of what it is to be human or just an exploiter of human emotion?
Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question.
Can’t we all aspire to first understand the common ordeals of life and then try to describe it so that we aren’t so alone?
I don’t have the answers. Nobody does. That’s my point.
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“Can’t we all aspire to first understand the common ordeals of life and then try to describe it so that we aren’t so alone?”
Yes. In some ways, I think that’s why people write. It’s an act of community. We share our common experiences and in a way confirm our humanity.
Sending good wishes to your father and hopes for his fine recovery.