It's so hard for me to write sometimes because nothing is absolutely true
And a lot of times our sentences speak in absolutes and if they don't, they come off weak or end up saying something else
If I write that I'm sad, I immediately think to myself that I'm not all sad
And saying "I'm sad" to a reader could be read by them as:
"I'm a sad person" or "I'm a disappointing person" or even that I am in a far-more-simple-than-reality-permits state of sad
So it's really a lot easier for me to write in metaphor
Not only for myself, because if I really nail something down with just the right metaphor
Even though it can seem more ambiguous
it's so much closer to truth or maybe "accuracy"
That's on the sending end
And then on the receiving end it's easier for me to comprehend because that kind of abstract quality
that messiness of a metaphor, because it's broadcasting lots of symbols and emotions and memories to draw from
I'm not as worried about how the reader is interpreting it because I can more readily acknowledge
not only that it might be distorted the same way art is but even that the way it's distorted
because with art we kind of enter into it knowing that we are affecting what is observed by observing it
the way it's distorted feels more honest
Like that distortion is actually a part of what I am saying
And it's funny to me when I think about it
because a metaphor feels broad
and saying something plainly feels specific
But really if I just say "I'm sad" then all I have given is a single point
and not just a normal single point, but this extremely familiar, over-traveled point that we have so many associations with
It's like giving someone directions and telling them to turn at "the building"
They are gonna be so lost in their own interpretation of that thing
In the messiness of that non-specificity that, in I guess a more "reasonable" way, we associate with being accurate
They are gonna be so lost in that there is no way they can connect with me at all
Not in the real way I would want them to
They might be able to connect in that very popular way we do now
where we both are looking at something from our own perspectives and we say "I see this" and "I see this too"
and think of that as some kind of connection
And I think on a more base level it is
But I don't think it's what we need and it is far less than what I want in writing
I want to write in such a way where it's not just "I see this" but
I see this how you are seeing it
or even
I see you in this
Where the object isn't the focal point really
but it is the medium
the mode of communication through which we are actually seeing one another
Because on the one hand we are alone together and on the other we are together alone
and while that can seem like some rhetorical bullshit I think those small distinctions of seeing the same thing versus seeing the same way are profoundly different