I often go to Gino's in the mornings to write and can’t even consider writing anything before ordering a long macchiato.
Gino emigrated to Australia from Italy and opened a tailor's shop in Fremantle, and then decided to turn it into a café, and Gino’s became the place. Gino loved drinking coffee with his old Italian mates, and the Italian made it the best place for me to write early in the mornings.
For a long time, I sat next to the Sicilians. Dom asked me one day 'What are you writing about'? and I said ‘Criminal Underworld Activity in Australia’. I don’t know why I said that, but they became much less friendly, from then on, and would only speak in Sicilian(they became paranoid about making it into the book, and come to think of it they have just made it into the book, and I might have to go and live somewhere else).
Some time before, I had mentioned how I had paid for some stone work in Bali and then it had never been sent. When Dom heard about the situation he said 'I have 'contacts' in Indonesia, if you need any help', which was a kind offer, but the missing $200 didn't seem enough to have the man’s legs broken or for him to go missing forever. That seemed extreme to me. Anyway, I love writing at Gino’s but there can be distractions like that.
A woman came up to me one day and asked if I had a real job to go to’? I just laughed and didn’t say anything(which is what I normally do when I don’t like what someone just said). I only knew she had once been a high-level political aide(and maybe even once a Head Prefect). It was hard to know what had triggered her? Was it the writing, the reading, the reflection? Was it the inwardness? She seemed to think I should be more focused on success.
To be fair to Barb I could understand some of what she was saying, and I have also wondered why I write. It is a mystery to me how I ever got involved in writing in the first place. It is like there is a creative instinct that doesn’t leave me alone. I am not always sure whether I have it or whether it has me. And even I have noticed there are people who are much more single-minded in their focus on the straight upward path towards success.
But then again we have become more steeped in competitive materialism than even we would like to admit. And very literal about the ‘thoroughly visible success’. And I am not even sure that the person with the most toys wins. And I can only handle so much of the Trump Towers and the Kardashians and the great shopping malls of the modern world before I get a nervous twitch and start reciting whole verses of Rumi out aloud or start wanting to delve more into the Upanishads or maybe the love drenched poems of Hafiz.
And even Carl Jung said modern man(or woman) is in search of the soul, and he also said the soul has its own peculiar concerns, demands and necessities and maybe writing is one of those peculiar necessities for me. Along with trying to satisfy the creative instinct. And if you read Carl Jung for long enough, you can start to wonder more about your own soul. And James Hillman often talks about ‘deepening’ into the soul. And Heraclitus said no matter how far you travel you will never reach the bottom of the soul.
And I was going to say all this to Barb, and also say I was looking for the green fuse that drives the flower, but then I thought I better not, mainly because I didn’t want her to ring The Alma St Clinic just down the road. But in a strange way it did make me think about why I write and one of the main reasons could be so I can say all of the things that I don’t normally say out aloud in public. And maybe writers are just introverts who have finally started to speak. Or people who are prepared to reveal themselves in public, when most people are quite rightly focused on the social standing in the world.
But I also like what James Hillman said, that it is not so much ‘Know thyself ’ these days, as ‘Reveal thyself’. And writing is one way to reveal more of yourself. And maybe it is good to reveal more of ourselves. We can’t just hide behind the ‘persona of success’ for the rest of our life. And writing is one way of becoming more of who we really are in the world.
And writing is also a way of understanding things better, and sometimes I seem to have an orgy of entangled ideas going on inside my own head, and writing seems like the best way to disentangle them. Writing is like studying, and you begin to know more about something when you begin to study it and write about it. It is a way to take something seriously.
And then I have also thought writers love the vivencia’s or the exciting and life-giving insights they sometimes get, and they have tasted some of the sweet ambrosia and some of the divine nectar of the gods and that is why they aren’t always suited to ordinary everyday life.
Anyway, people have been writing since the beginning of recorded history. And there is something deeper to writing than just personal expression, or saying what you really think, or revealing yourself in public. It is also like trying to find some kind of a language or expression for a tremendous mystery which so much greater than ourselves. It is like trying to find a language for that mystery. And people have been trying to find that kind of deeper expression ever since they first started painting pictures on cave walls.
This is an excellent podcast to dip into on a Saturday morning in bed, having dealt with the outer world respectfully enough during the week, to drift or eddy or sink within. I truly enjoyed your exploration of writing, as I am in the 2nd draft of my first novel. I assimilated the whole piece in metaphoric terms as something you bit into, sharing the taste of the topic whilst giving us the unusual opportunity of actually observing your digesting it fully. It is a very good descent into more than reflection but a soulful mulling. Particularly like the Heraclitus quote, which I've never heard, and writing as an opportunity for introverts to speak out, as I am now, and even to go wild which I have no need for at this moment. Don't know in what capacity you've written over the years but it feels very special to hear a writer muse on the process with such a depth psych capacity. You finished, as I will, by referring to the attempt to put the mystery into words. Amen.