Wriding on

Dear Blogfinder,

I have been unwillingly the single author of this blog since my last post, struggling desperately to hand over my authority to Radhika. But no avail so far, I am stuck in my role as the single author of this page. So instead of introducing her like I would have liked to, I will give you some of her poetry, and how it has informed my own thoughts. I won't go into detail of teaching today, but keep this post fairly short, to bring in a new idea I have been kicking around, on the same theme as before, but with a different twist. My question remains the same simple but yet painful difficult one, which I hope someday to at least overcome:

Why do we write?

Perhaps that question is a little too general, and should be more like "Why do we write literature" or " What do we gain from writing?". But for the moment, I need to keep it like this. I hope to approach it like a child sitting in the back of a car, asking adults annoying questions. Those are the questions which are the most important ones. "Where did I come from?", "Why is the sun hot?"... If I could approach this question like a child, I would be on a very good start.

Today is about wriding the question in terms of the need for writing. That strange urge which pushes so many people to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards) and splurge their thoughts for everyone else to see. It doesn't really make much sense, given what psychologists seem to agree on; that much of our social behaviour consists of concealing what we really think or feel. But then again, we have to express ourselves somewhere. It feels a lot safer to do it in front of a computer or a page than to another person.

Here are 3 poems which express what I think the author wouldn't have wanted to say out loud, without first writing them. She doesn't openly reveal a catastrophic or ground-shaking emotion, but yet the content is more than what we put into everyday conversation. She is reflecting, in the way that Jacques Lacan would understand it. Thinking in such a way that she is seeing herself and her own thought processes, like a child discovering itself in a mirror.

Dilemmas of a DPhil Student, Take One:

Woke up at ten

Had brunch at twelve

Read some Barthes,

read some Camus

Went out for coffee

discussed Bourdieu

at Clowns

Got back, had a nap

Soaked in feminist theory

Wrote some more poetry

Shall I read more theory

or indulge in poetry

One dilemma led to another

Shall I wear blue,

shall I wear brown

Just going to watch Fellini

down town

Then messaged a few friends

Tied up a few loose ends

Got back to feminist theory

Slept till night turned to day

One day like another

No two days the same

Dilemmas of a DPhil Student, Take Two:

Woke up with a back ache

Too many hours on the computer

too many theories to read

too many notes to type

Suffered a panic attack by twelve

By one, head threatened to fall off neck

By two, had taken to bed

Till four, of Devi-devatas I read

By six, from feminist theory

to new chair, new mattress my dilemmas had spread

Should I steal a chair

or should I buy a new one

Should I write to my tutor

or should I just barge in

With thoughts hanging in the air

lights on, darkness outside

I slept

till night turned to day

One day like a another

No two days the same

Dilemmas of a DPhil Student, Take Three:

Woke up at nine

an hour too early

Was snowing outside

green lawns covered in white

Meeting with supervisor today

must make sure I have my way

Its not until two

there’s time to read Marvell

another verse, another line

Its five to two, am running late

More theory, more work

‘Be specific, be more direct

be more explicit, be more articulate’

One word, “Rewrite”

Back from faculty

Get messages on the way

‘Lets have dinner

won’t you, pray’

Shall I go

shall I not

‘Fertile ground to find men’, said auntie

Where are the men

which line of admirers

I have a PhD to write

not, over men, contrite

I am in Cambridge

And here to stay

Where one day’s like another

No two days the same

Cut cut cut-

Good life, bad life

Its never been quite the same

I am in Cambridge

And here to stay.

(Winter 2004/2005)

------

Radhika is wriding in a very ordinary, accessible style here, but this doesn't stop her from revealing something new and out of the ordinary. For someone who has never done a PhD, Take One is an extremely cliche'd view of what PhD students do in the round of a day. A lazy lifestyle of reading and bourgeois concerns, divorced from the realities that the working world is faced with. But Take 2 and Take 3 draw us into her world a little bit more. She is more human, more real. We pry into the strange environment of constantly thinking and living your work. Of carrying the office inside your head all day and all night. Where most of us leave it behind when we call it a day and go home in the evening, PhD students can't.

Take Two gives a new angle one Take One. Where we first got the feeling that it is all terribly easy, Take Two starts to show some of the strange problems she is faced with. The last two lines show how time collapses for her, in a way which it wouldn't for you or I. Whereas for most jobs we have fairly clear starting and finishing times, and other people to interact with, the speaker doesn't. Doing a PhD is very lonely, and time telescopes in a way which it wouldn't in other jobs.

Then, when we get to Take 3, her work and her feelings are completely inextricable. Cambridge becomes a symbol not only of the intellectual side of her work, but collapses her social, sexual and professional anxieties. "Rewrite" is not only the echoed voice of the supervisor, always asking her to challenge her work, but an indeterminate voice pushing her to question all the other sides of her personality. She is rewriting herself, redifining who she is and what she's doing. Being "here to stay", in the reflective environment of Cambridge conveys a feeling safety, but also an acceptance of having to "rewrite" herself perpetually, admitting that permanent insecurity.

Writing is, for Radhika, a way of expressing an inner voice which usual interactions don't allow. When we're worried about what others will think of our clothes, or getting to the shops on time, we're not going to stop and imagine what it would be like to be a doctoral student. We're busy being ourselves. Stepping outside our ordinary roles - as mothers, children, friends, professionals... - is not something we can afford to do in the hubbub of routine.

To finish this post, I suppose I've digressed onto another question instead of answering the one set up above. Rather than saying anything very telling about the writing process itself, I think I've hit upon some ideas of what it means to be a reader. If by reading Radhika's writing we can stop being ourselves for a while (put away the person who's worried about the clothes and getting to the shops), then perhaps reading is about taking on identities. Similar to children playing cowboys and indians, testing out different identities, then maybe we are doing something like this when we read.

Not that I've got an answer now, but at least I can finish on a better question:

Do we read to know ourselves better, or to know someone/something outside of us?

Yours,

D