Oct 24, 2020
If You Wish to Uncover the Truth in Anything, Write About It
Its writing that forces you to approach experiences with the truth
There is this quote from Sigrid Nunez’ book, What Are You Going Through that stands out to me. It goes as such:
“Understood: Language would end up falsifying everything, as language always does. Writers know this only too well, they know it better than anyone else, and that is why the good ones sweat and bleed over their sentences because if there is any truth to be found they believe it will be found there.”
While ruminating about this quote, I accepted that certain things just demand to be evoked through writing. Certain things are preformative in their mystic ways, and it is only through writing can we understand their movements.
I then thought of a foggy, semi-humid shore. A day when the waves and air kiss. A day where the crashing of the waves is a symphony of destruction and passionate embracement. A day where the clouds low above the gloomy sea are freshly evaporated, and there is no trace of the sun. I find that there is just something particularly special about a scene like that.
That’s what the beach looked like the other morning when I went to visit it, and writing about that scene reminds me of how the living truth of the sea consumed my being so discreetly. In attempting to retell that account, I discover that the unintentionally dismissed potency of the experience is reelected by my soul to dominate the forefront of thought. Through writing, I’m transported back to this masterpiece. Only this time, it is my soul’s opinion of it that is expressed on the pages.
It’s an intoxicating experience to reflect and retell, and by addressing a once dismissed fragment of infinity, you compose the sweetest apology.
Any truth in its final form is in writing, and this is what I think Nunez meant when she said that “language is falsifying.” Because any other form housing a truth (like spoken language) is malleable, interpretive, and uniquely artistic. But the search for a perfect harmony of words that succeeds at capturing a writer’s truest intentions, which requires a deciphering of what the soul is communicating, is a highly ambitious and frustrating quest. It’s this quest that would cause a man to “sweat and bleed” over the formulation of his sentences.
But despite the writer’s infuriating frustration, he knows that through writing, he permits himself to access the depths of the mind, which allows for a beautiful articulation of the soul, and a step closer to his fully formed truth.
So friends, keep writing and rewriting, for “if there is any truth to be found it will be found there.”
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