Blood and Wine

A word from my muse.

I write really long. You have to scroll down the page quite a bit before you can see the comments link. People have told me that. My recent shenanigans at Elaine's blog got me a tag from my friend and fellow Asean scholar, Carynl, telling me that.

"It's not about quantity but quality. Write shorter and I'll read. Long stuff are repetitive and boring... You focus on the length and advertise it. So there's my comment for ya," she wrote.

It's not that I don't know. I visit quite a number of blogs regularly and I'm quite sure that the average blog entry doesn't sprawl past a bloated 1000 words like mine do most of the time.

It's not that I like to write long. I never intend to write long. There has never been a single blog entry when I thought, "Let's make this post over 1500 words so people will know what a real Stephen King I am."

I don't do that. In fact, everytime I contemplate sitting down and writing for two hours just to keep this blog alive and updated so I don't disappoint my readers when they visit, I get so put off that I blow the whole thing off and do something else. Hence the long periods of inactivity on this blog... like that of the past week.

Yet I go ahead and do it anyway. I somehow write and write and write until I cannot write anymore and I finally lift my fingers off my keyboard only to discover that two hours have passed and my latest child counts at 1500 words. I save the draft. Then I come back later and rewrite the whole damned thing. What a great way to spend another hour.

Writing for this blog is a real chore. If I really thought about it as rationally as the economic man I purport to be, I'd be better off shutting this blog down and studying instead. Not only is blogging a big drain of my time each time I churn out these long posts, the effort leaves me completely drained and I can't do anything more strenuous than laugh at other people's stupidity on FARK.com.

Yet I go ahead and do it anyway.

Because every now and then inspiration seizes me and insists with no small persistence that I write. And it is in the feverish thrall of inspiration that I somehow go ahead and do it anyway. I somehow create my art.

That is what this blog is: an archive and exhibition of my art, open for critique and comments.

I write and I post my writings here because I am proud of what I write, just like any musician or dancer performing before her audience, like any painter whose works are displayed in the hallowed halls of art galleries everywhere. I write because this is my art and my passion.

I am proud of my writing because I see some beauty, imagined or not, that gives me the confidence to reveal them to the scrutiny of friends and strangers alike. I never intended my writing to be long or political (some people have complained about that as well). I just write, and go where my inspirations lead me.

What I want is irrelevant. My muse refuses to let me dictate demands to it. Art, like life, like people, does not like to be pushed and forced into shapes. Like an old potter told us during the Pre-U Seminar, you ask the clay what it wants you to do to it, not what you want it to do for you.

And like clay, my inspirations cannot be told what I want them to be. I ask them what they want me to do to them. And they tell me to write.

In return, they guide my hands as I elucidate these ideas in my head. I can't write any shorter; my muse dictates how much I should write. I write long because I have to, not because I want to. I can only trust that my muse and what little skill I have keep my writing fresh and interesting. That my rewrites keep me from being repetitive.

If what I write bores you, Dear Reader, then I can only apologize because I cannot change for you. I don't choose what I write about. My inspirations do.

This blog is not a diary to record the mundane and extraordinary events in my life. That is seldom where my inspirations take me. Some bits and pieces of my life story are enshrined in this blog, but rarely are they the central focus of my inspirations. Diary posts exist, like my post on the Pre-U Seminar. But I decided when I started on this latest incarnation of my blog four months ago that I don't want to write about things that don't inspire me. That kind of writing, like my General Paper compositions, is awkward, ugly, and, most importantly, fake.

This blog is not a diary. It's a gallery. And I am its sole artist, on exhibition 24/7.
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