Bearing Witness
Some thoughts on why we make art
The world we live in is funny. The pressure is on. We want to escape the rat race. Make it to a point where we can survive off something like what I’m doing now, typing words on a page. Or maybe not all of you are like that. Maybe it’s me and a handful of readers. Either way, I thought of you all when I read this.
I have a friend who is a writer. He has been since we met as children, and in hindsight, he was one of the reasons I stopped writing. Not because he discouraged me—quite the opposite—but because he was better than me, and I was young and easily dissuaded. He introduced me to Substack, and recently, he introduced me to this quote by Zadie Smith.
…I have no real qualifications to write as I do. Not a philosopher or sociologist, not a real professor of literature or film, not a political scientist, professional music critic or trained journalist… My evidence—such as it is—is almost always intimate. I feel this—do you? I’m struck by this thought—are you? Essays about one person’s affective experience have, by their very nature, not a leg to stand on. All they have is their freedom. And the reader is likewise unusually free, because I have absolutely nothing over her, no authority. She can reject my feelings at every point, she can say: “No, I have never felt that” or “Dear Lord, the thought never crossed my mind!”
—Zadie Smith, Feel Free
This hit me hard when I read it. I’ve been struggling in the way I do when I’m about to overthink myself into bad writing. When I’m trying to be clever and smart and deliver a product. But I have no product to give you. Unlike so many people on this platform, I have no qualifications. I am not especially educated in what I write. I don’t have any accolades to bring to the table. I only have my experience of the world around me, and as it pertains to this newsletter, the books I read and the stories that pierce my heart.
This paragraph bloomed in me when I read it. I felt that cool breath of autumn, a release from a burden I didn’t know I was carrying. In this great big universe, I have no answers or authority, only questions and a mind to discover despite my opinions. I can only seek to bear witness, to observe and report back, and to hear from all of you with an open heart. Do you feel this? Is this your experience?
That is what I’m after in this newsletter. Does this book move you? Does this story echo in you? Do you hear yourself in these words? Has this writer borne witness to our human story? I see this, do you?
I see.
You see.
I see you.
Writing = Feeling. And yours is one of my favorite Substacks.
I had no training to be a writer. I began writing fiction at age 70 because I could no longer see well enough to do something else properly. Something I'd counted on doing the rest of my life. I'm still writing. The writing is getting better. I'm getting older (82 so far). I still read stuff (some of it, yours) and think, "I want to write like that when I grow up."