Sunday 7 September 2008

Convers(at)ion

I really like thinking. I enjoy thinking actively, although sometimes passive unintended thinking can be a little disturbing. I enjoy thinking because I can do it on my own - I take pleasure in the relation that it gives me to myself as an inventor and originator of ideas. My best thinking starts as feelings and other fuzzy forms and inclinations, which then slowly articulate themselves into ideas. Then I write those ideas down in words and those written words reflect and reinforce my ideas - and my sense of creativity and of self - and at the same time slightly changes everything. It makes it all sharper, clearer, more accute, but also less personal... more defined, determined and accomplished. I like reconsidering my ideas in a new light and interacting with myself through my thoughts; crossing out, scribbling over... deleting, amending, adapting. Sometimes it is as though I am having a conversation with myself. I like having conversations with other people too. But then I always have to happen at the same time as my words. More often than not, the words take over. Sometimes they precede me and my thoughts, as heralds or revelatory unfurlings; self-makings. But sometimes they march me headlong into untested regions that I'd not have dared so uncarefully. When I speak me all at once, it is usually because I feel obliged to say something. That's the oppression in the dialogic nature of conversation between two people who can presume each other only in their words.