Fiction (supernatural, amorphous)

A lingering presence who watches and wanders

[Content warning: brief mention of disordered eating.]

A lot of the fiction I’ve written was made during a time that I was having an especially hard time living in the present moment. I realized that I could do something through writing that I wasn’t able to do in real life. When I described uneasy situations in writing, I was at ease as the narrator, in my ability to describe. In fact, I loved describing uneasy situations, because I felt a mastery over them while writing that I couldn’t enjoy in the moments while they happened.

My desire for control made sense. One of the things that made me uneasy or led to dissociation in real life was the lack of control in many real life situations which made me feel small and uncomfortable. There’s been a lot of big factors outside of my control that have weighed on me in daily life, and that have had an outsized influence on the direction of my life. Unable to feel masterful in these situations, I’ve often turned to writing, where I can paint things in a way that make sense to me.

One of my favorite things I’ve written is Ghost Town, for a 2012 art show of the same name by Hanna Liden. I remember writing it in a rush. It’s also the purest piece of fiction I’ve ever written in the sense that it’s not based on real life events per se, but simply draws and expands upon certain feelings and moods. It’s a short piece, more of a sketch. The narrator is a ghost living in downtown NYC. 

It’s not lost on me that this piece I identify with so much is narrated by a spectre: something or someone who’s both there but not. A lingering presence who watches and wanders. NYC, of course, is a haunted place, imprinted with infinite memories of innumerable moments in countless lives that have moved through the city and its spaces over time. I felt especially at home in this supernatural, amorphous character, which unmoored me a bit from the need to accurately describe or convey things that had already happened to me. 

Somehow writing could replace or stand in for me. My dissociation or lack of presence in the moment could be channeled into writing about it later: describing what I experienced or observed but couldn’t express in real time. It connected to other habits, like regulating my body, a taxing routine I had for some years of strictly controlling my daily intake of food and exercise that was its own form of creative practice turned pathologically inward. 

Living like this was a way of disengaging from my surroundings, of coping more effectively at a point in my life when other self-medications had lost their efficacy and become too problematic. Willpower and writing connected in a place where I could, if not always accurately convey my experience, at least maintain a feeling of control. It was an altered state of sorts.

Words are an idealized space where I can calmly process my experiences and turn them into stories for others. Digesting and reconstituting events through the written word is different from face to face interaction. I’ve often used writing as a self-mythologizing instrument, an epistolary mode of encountering everything.

Writing stories about myself in different places and times is a subtle yet unequivocal act of self-assertion. Even if I’d been numbed out in the moment, I could often recall certain details that stood out like photographs in my mind, helping paint a picture of my feelings in retrospect, finding my way to an understanding of what had happened. Even if I couldn’t remember what had actually happened, I could talk about not remembering, write around and give shape to the unseen.

I haven’t had a lot of interest in writing fiction in recent years, except perhaps in the form of song lyrics: poetics spoken in voices that may or may not be me, painting words through emotions and imagery rather than factual accuracy. Singing brings embodiment to abstract words. I’ve always liked existing on that threshold, linking words to formlessness as an entry point to something beyond language.

For awhile I wanted to stop singing because the stuff I was singing about was too draining. I was tired of being that serious person whose work was always heavy and deep. And I was tired of projecting it through my own image, my body and presence. I wanted to dissolve into the music the way I could dissolve myself into words and become a covert energy conduit for everyone in the room. 

I’ve been revisiting the past a lot in these newsletters as I try to explain where I’m at now. Another layer of narration. The past and the present don’t blur together as much as I often make it sound here, but ghosts of former selves want to have their say sometimes.