February 9, 2004

a very interesting conversation has led me to a new level of understanding of my work (which pleases me to no end, the work, that is...) in order to illuminate this understanding, some background...(students of semiotics might find this entertaining...) my process is informed by two assumptions:
1) there are no new stories, just new ways of telling them.

foundation- for me, the creative process is about expressing what it means to be a human being. specific to my pursuits, storytelling is the expression of human life. every emotion, challenge and crossroads in my life, has been experienced by the billions of people who came before me, and storytellers have told stories about those experiences millions of times before me. because there has never been anyone exactly like me before, and there will never be anyone exactly like me again, the only thing i can honestly bring to the endevour is the only thing that's truely mine; my point of view. this the only place anything resembling originality really exists- point of view.

(which feeds the second assumption of my process...)

2) objectivity is a lie.

foundation- everything we experience, we experience through the filters of the previous experiences that have come before. to find the truth of ourselves we have to explore who we are and why. the idea that by somehow separating ourselves from our experiences, opinions and emotions, we can get closer to the truth of our humanity, denies the truth of being human. by removing yourself from your self, you leave behind all the evidence of who you are. the truth of what it means to be human does not exist outside of humanity.

revelation: my work is formed by my process. this is the medium is the message truism, yet i find that since my process is about renouncing objectivity, and exercising subjectivity, my writing is not so much about men and relationships, which is my aim, but much more, the work is about point of view. the stories i'm telling are all told from the point of view of a handful of characters. each of them see the world as a reflection of their values and experiences.

which leads to an valuable question:

If i'm writing from another's point of view, and I believe that it's impossible to separate from my own point of view, who's point of view am I actually representing?

I'll answer that with a caution: never confuse the story with the storyteller.