<\/p>\n
Writing is a lonely art.\u00a0 Unlike the numerous other forms of art lavishly chronicled in this arts-fartsy online magazine\u2014genres of art performed before smiling, clapping, admiring audiences\u2014the things you read were almost always written by some poor lonely soul, sitting in a room by him or herself, working alone. Actors, dancers, singers, musicians, performance artists and mimes: they all get their fix of the addictive drug of applause at the end of their shows. Even beat poets could expect their early-1950s coffee house audiences to snap their fingers and hiss appreciatively at the end of one of their angry little poems.<\/p>\n
Okay, so painters and sculptors work alone in their studios. But even they get to meet up with their audiences sooner or later, especially on the opening nights of their gallery exhibitions. Yes, even they\u2014often even weirder and more dysfunctionally misanthropic than writers\u2014get to hear the \u2018oooos\u2019, \u2018ahhhs,\u2019 and occasional \u2018what-the-fucks\u2019 from living, breathing, human beings wandering around the galleries, looking at their creations.<\/p>\n
Not us. We never see our audiences, have no idea who they are, can\u2019t begin to imagine what they look like, or are ever really certain that they even exist. I mean, when was the last time you were reading a novel, happened to glance up, and saw the book\u2019s author sitting in front of you, watching your face as you read? Imagine sitting someplace, happily reading The Family Moskat or The Magician of Lublin and there is Isaac Bashevis Singer, looking over your shoulder, pointing to passages he wants you to read again\u2014only more slowly this time\u2014and asking you if you\u2019d like maybe a couple of blintzes and a nice glass of tea.<\/p>\n
No, my friends, writing is a lonely art\u2014and in my case, that is probably just as well. If I had an audience while I was doing this, I can only imagine what they would likely see during a more or less typical \u2018performance.\u2019 They\u2019d see me type a few words, go to Facebook, type a few wise-ass comments to friends\u2019 posts, check my email account, see no new messages, go to my other email account, see no new messages there either, go back to my writing, type a few more words, get up to make coffee, spill half of it all over myself when I bring it back to my desk, type a few sentences, get up to scratch myself someplace I can\u2019t reach while sitting down, sit down and drink coffee, go back to Facebook, return the Facebook\u00a0 \u201cpoke\u201d of an old high school friend who pokes me every day, visit my latest article on the Jerusalem Post website, type a few more sentences, scratch my armpits, Google myself to see if there are any new entries, listen to a couple of tunes while looking at…well, never mind at what, type a few more sentences, break for lunch. As the stage lights slowly dim, the curtain falls to thunderous applause. I take multiple bows and curtain calls, and then I take a nap.<\/p>\n
What\u2014you think it would be more interesting if I were somehow more \u2018focused\u2019 and worked more steadily? Do you really think an audience would be at the edge of their seats, riveted by the spectacle of me frowning with concentration as I just sit here and type? Spilling hot coffee all over myself at least provides a grain of entertainment\u2014if you\u2019re into slapstick comedy\u2014and people pay good money to go to zoos and watch chimpanzees and orangutans scratch themselves, so why not come and watch me?<\/p>\n
I am certainly more entertaining than, say, the Roman poet Virgil, who is said to have written no more than three lines of poetry per day. That\u2019s right, his epic poem The Aeneid, written three lines per day. Imagine an audience coming to watch that one. Before they\u2019re even seated and settled, three lines, all done, that\u2019s it for today. Thank you very much. You\u2019ve been a great audience. Now get the fuck out of here.<\/p>\n
Of course, when you are coming up with only three lines of writing per day, that writing is probably going to be fantastic. Sure enough, Vergil\u2019s Latin sang and roared with alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia and meter, not to mention every literary device known to mankind\u2014from metaphor to metonymy, and from simile to synecdoche. He could write about the blast of a trumpet in words that sounded more like a trumpet than, well, a trumpet. His use of meter and onomatopoeia to describe the sound of horses galloping across a dusty plain could make you both hear and feel the hoof beats. If any writer should have had an audience, it was Virgil. They would not have sat there for very long, but in the short time that they were there they would have seen a writers\u2019 writer write.<\/p>\n
Dear readers, I cannot write like Virgil. I am simply not that good. I will never be watched by an admiring audience, or surrounded by adoring fans. My writing is not adorable. But if you ever feel like performing an act of loving kindness that is certain to get you into Heaven, then this is what you can do: The next time you see me, smile very quickly, clap your hands once, or just snap your fingers and hiss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Writing is a lonely art.\u00a0 Unlike the numerous other forms of art lavishly chronicled in this arts-fartsy online magazine\u2014genres of art performed before smiling, clapping, admiring audiences\u2014the things you read were almost always written by some poor lonely soul, sitting in a room by him or herself, working alone. Actors, dancers, singers, musicians, performance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}