“All this talk brings the ears so far forward that they make blinkers for the eyes,” Edwin Lutyens
Writing is a messy business; I find it a painful exercise that prunes away all the noise I have accumulated in my mind to get to some truth that is hidden in the undergrowth. Writing is also particularly difficult at a time when we are being overwhelmed with information that is proving almost impossible to digest.
Writing at a time of so much flux is great at catching a fleeting moment but it is almost impossible if you want find any real objective perspective because as soon as things come into focus, they change again and the clarity is lost. The effort to keep up with all these changes is exhausting as we try to hang on to our thoughts as history zips by.
At a time like this, writing and commentary in the media has not got the time to be contemplative, so it becomes more superficial and more alarming than ever. A lot of what is being written about at the moment will not last a solitary news-cycle and the real change that is happening beneath the surface will not be recognised for some time to come.
Attempting to write the blog at this time has been a frustrating and largely futile exercise so rather than just adding to the noise, I thought it a good stage to take a step back and look at the reasons to write in the first place.
First and foremost, my writing is a way of allowing my mind the extra space of the blank page to spread out and unfold, giving me the perspective to understand my thoughts and feelings more accurately. I have done this since my teens and it has always been a good tool.
As I’ve become older, writing has proven invaluable in allowing me to consolidate my views about the world at large but especially architecture. This exercise has given me a solid core of personal beliefs that has supported me as a traditionalist in the hostile intellectual and professional environment of modern architecture. My writing is all about getting to the truth of the matter in my own mind. Feeling under siege for having unpopular beliefs is troubling and disheartening, and so writing has been a solace and a crutch.
When it comes to producing the blog, it has largely been an accident because what I write is never intended to be read by anyone but myself. Putting my writing on a blog simply feels like throwing a pebble in the sea and I never expect to get anything back. However, I have found it a useful discipline and so to my surprise, I’ve produced almost 100 blog posts over the last 4 years.
In other ways I must admit that I actually really hate writing, not just the laborious process of transposing intangible thoughts into clunky words, but also the necessity to do it at all; as a way to process the torrent of information that we are constantly flooded with and to hear my own voice above the noise.
Being heard is the key.
We are all conditioned from youth to seek approval and recognition, but this excessive checking for assurance from a perceived standard curtails our thinking, our creativity and our identity. We judge ourselves by what is expected of us, and so we learn to listen to others instead of ourselves. We have forgotten how to listen to or trust our our own thoughts and we are constantly trying to drown out our own inner wisdom by consuming whatever information is closest to hand to fill the gap. It’s like we are automatically conditioned to defer to any information from the outside and anything coming from within is ignored. I have found this especially true in my teaching experience where I try to listen rather than lecture and encourage my students to trust themselves as much as possible.
Another thing that I find most frustrating about writing is that it seems to be the skill of choice for the self-appointed approval specialists that feed off those who have lost faith in themselves the most. I’m speaking of the culture-critics and opportunistic apologists whose only real skill is in judging the timing of the next bandwagon. These are the people that we have allowed to become the self-appointed gatekeepers to the imaginary approval-machine. The fraudulent wizards at the end of the yellow brick road who use writing and language as a smokescreen to defend their dubious privilege.
Modernism acts in a similar way to this kind of writing; promising to root out what it sees as ingrained prejudices by looking outward rather than in. But this abstract expansion of our creative horizons is wasteful and disorientating, often resulting in our true voice being lost and we become easily manipulated. Traditionalism on the other hand builds on our inner, deepest sense of self, and empowers us to grow and develop our innate talents and skills more naturally from within.
There is a lot to be said for those who are quiet and who listen; those who do not write but who act instead. Being quiet is also a key part of the process of finding answers. I love the idea of the Buddha not giving the answer to Enlightenment but instead showing us the path. To gain enlightenment is to find the path and to walk it. It’s a process that must be undertaken, not just a product that can be bought and sold, yet we are surrounded by those who peddle easy answers and approval, in our media and in our institutions.
So, writing is a skill and a process that I find very useful for myself, but also one that is deeply problematic. Writing about a thing is infinitely easier that actually doing that thing, yet writing gives the false impression of being superior and more worthy than any actual doing or creating. Because of its’ apparent relative good value, it can quickly supplant anything of substance that takes actual effort and cost. In this way writing can become a crutch and a vapid substitution for real action, like a parasite that feeds on your experience and instinct but then becomes an end in itself that constantly needs feeding and attention. Writing is like a cuckoo.
Lately we have all become cowards, sheltering in ways of thinking that are acceptable to the hive-mind of opinion writers and social media woke-mobs. Fear affects us in different ways. We can try to placate it, hide away from it or we can face it down and in doing so rediscover our inner strength and wisdom. Writing is a powerful tool to help us do this but it can also easily undermine us and enslave us if we let it. We need to be careful and attentive, if we are not just going to add to the noise.
Writing is not just about organizing our thoughts and having a way for others hear us; far from it. It’s about allowing the voice of our own inner wisdom be heard above the noise we are being bombarded with.
Primarily it allows us to tease out our confusions and fears, to trim away those triggered reactions that have obscured the truth and allows our inner strengths to emerge. And what if it happens to be something that others like to read? Well, that’s just a bonus.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, Paris 1910
The Impractical Architect 