If this is your first time meeting Miss Ophelia Eden…see PREFACE below…otherwise, scurry along…she awaits, eager to whisper her whims…
PREFACE … This series is an open-ended exploration of the aesthetics of writing in an otherwise journalistic space. It is because of the standards and techniques of journalistic writing that it serves its end: knowledge. It cares to inform—Ophelia and I, however, care to inspire. We need not be seen (merely) as contrarian! We, too, serve truth abiding by different terms: imagination, (tragi)comedy, philosophy, poetry—whatever you dare to call it. My storytelling echoes philosophers and nobodies alike who write what the spirit moves them to write—not in self defense or in protest but for the love of picturing what there is to picture; I bow to fluctuating feeling rather than so-called fact.
Beyond foundational texts, much of this is inspired by contemporary artists, rockstars and authors et cetera in statements, interviews or memoirs: the begrudging attempt to express oneself in a foreign format—however (un)willing, forever unable to explain poetry in prose. When prodded, they’re bound to say something along the lines of: the work speaks for itself.
In this Opinion-Editorial series I will use a fictional character to share my beliefs, founded in an adoration for audacious expression…alongside a contempt for the inundation of our world—echo chambers and pseudo-knowledge made palatable for spit-takes. There may remain beauty in journalism—though perhaps irresponsibly so: tragedies relayed as if they’re merely a picturesque, distant heck, not Hell. To be clear, there is no true aesthetic of journalism; hence, it is a means of understanding that I no longer care for. Insofar as I speak to the imagination, this ought to resist a“read time.” May we dispel citations? And while I am not alone in my opinion, I am most definitely preaching to the heathens rather than the choir.
Amusement alone is not art; there is not poetry only in painting the moment as it is, lulling the reader into a restless sleep, telling them what they know: the history of the human world is horror. I don’t mean that these abstract considerations ought to console us. Why wish to be consoled? On the contrary, I wish to mourn perpetually the absence of what I love or might love.
Reading is not understanding. The reader has to do just as much as the writer, to read the work in the spirit in which it was written; just as a passive listener of music does not hear the music. By writing as Ophelia Eden, I aim to challenge the present paragon of straightforward (sham) expression. Insofar as a newspaper insists upon one interpretation per work, any writing that aspires to the condition of art is deemed irrelevant…say, forever untimely. Yet, if one were to approach my work in a philosophical sense, it is bound to serve the imagination. It ought to live only there.
Lest we forget: as a university founded by intellectual polyglots and most renowned for an ‘art school,’ a newspaper that fails to allow alternative means of expression is not at all representative of the student body. My intention is also to inspire the free press, readers and contributors, to challenge and to expand their expression moving forward. Since readers nowadays want to be persuaded rather than prompted: one can expect a continued sense of disillusionment and combative humor…as for Ophelia, a self-proclaimed (humble) genius parading an exaggerated trope of the artist talking about their own work.
Now, to say this moves towards no end is to misunderstand the fractured state of the world as only attainable through facts…or to seek in stories or in others a fathomable, uncontradictory whole, which—is an absurdly utopian ask! I am quite baffled that I am the first to ask to do fiction or anything other than school-centered news. I am quite demoralized that I must begin like this. Though, like all questions that are along the lines of “so?”this disruption lends to my insistence. Momentum may return as I begin again? I pray.
Now, forward…I’ll leave you two be…dear reader, meet Ophelia:
[DRAFT] three.
All I know is that a soliloquy need not stutter.
The performer may play puppet and puppeteer at once with minimal stage settings––language alone.
So much is lost in translation when one rehearses their storytelling as it is––on the page; best to improvise, stammer, apologize, backtrack, perhaps burden the margins only with where an umm would sound best. Audience notwithstanding, anything goes. If not in attendance, fear not. It is all to be found on the internet––the best and the worst of times. The internet is to be accessed through www.Google.com.
One voice remains, otherwise pulsing with embarrassment (if too many eyes), twitching with rage (if too few); as for characters, amateur accents, you know the schtick––only to reckon with the incredulity of one mind. If only I’d known people still care to be bored––sorry, sorry, to be rewarded as a reader. One kid once felt himself stop breathing while reading, and told me so, as in, suffocated. If you need me, I’ll be tallying the times I’m told a few good lines of mine poorly paraphrased, as if it were a compliment, and not a blaring admittance to their disregard of the shimmering whole of it. If I had known this quote then I would’ve stocked up on ammo for a half-hearted apology war: I didn’t have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one! Better yet, if I had known to hold dear Henry and his dream songs near, with his “WRITE AS SHORT AS YOU CAN IN ORDER OF WHAT MATTERS,” I wouldn’t have interrupted your makeshift lobotomy courtesy of [*bleep*]!
The only problem is: everything matters.1
(I won’t bold or underline or italicize that because you and I both know it’s the truth.)
1 How may I write something as true of anything so brief? Or, rather, anything so brief of something as true?
Vanity might as well be upon a more blinding monolith; I blindcopy my alter egos. My lesser selves chaperone my intermission, honor my pause, purify my maturation…,
Sometimes it could never be crowded enough for me to forget myself. Sometimes I could never be alone enough on either side to feel alive, let alone to care to be immortal.
I am condemned to be consumed. Muses are no empty fancies––they are ideals, what ideas may be. An idea, something like an incident between my perpetual oscillation of apathy and passion. Even so, where can I purchase an entire and majestic mind?
How to redeem a cliché? (The cliché being an underdog who makes it big, obviously.)
You may heckle. Go ahead. Why are you here and not canvassing? If the bible is poetry, say, all contradiction is no longer ludicrous but entrancing, then moving, then just.
I protest against being called a snob…what I love is simple, earnest, true…what ought to be common, and it is only a bombast of false ambitions and false superiority that I abhor.
An evil person may stay evil their whole life but that’s real life, not a story worth telling.
Nothing––and I mean nothing should be rehearsed. I don’t feign anything, baby. This is, like all else, a moral discourse without absolute authority. The editors do not read it, they merely go ‘click’…tap tap tap brrrrrringdingdingding. Do not insist, but allow: do not observe their doing nothing. Burn the user manuals, click ‘NO’ to parental controls…no, apologies––back click and instead clack ‘NO, THANK YOU.’
S is for sequencing meaning––of a life, which is short––or a day, which is long…either way: one night’s worth of work…sometime between too early and too late is the time for that.
T is for it’s the Truth...That––and its antithesis. Oh, no no, T is for Tertium Quid, that is, I…and, the title of father’s novel he was drafting while mother was pregnant with me, me in mind, me in womb…me a third to come, two parading their having had been in womb before, and I had yet to exit, still tethered and yet complete, but…ha! ‘twas in mind.
He only got as far as the index…I. Pain II. Pleasure and…Tertium Quid.
My narrative is not conceived beginning to end; by nature, it pleads to groove freely. Gyration. A jarring familiarity to all portraits…gnawing at the border between order and chaos. Meaning is thus a matter of adjacent data, rigid self-reflexivity.
I say, I write about what I want to be writing rather than writing what I want to be writing…to inspire others to write how I want to write––which is, the way, Ideal. “That’s alright,” the professor who changed and continues to change my life nods, or shakes his head, I don’t recall: “it just doesn’t sound real.” It is more than Real, it is Ideal…prodded like memory, pulsing like ambition. Inertia may return as I begin again...but how should I presume?
Here remains ignorance and fantasies behind truth and life. And still. All call in sick for the full moon shift.
I suppose I flirt with this instead of flirting with something else. My question now is how far to go? And when to stop? And…, I do not want to ask or argue or explain––at least not respond to an argument from without. I want to write prose.
Grammarians aren’t granted the pleasure of purgatory since they deny ellipses their say.
Well, I, too, could scoff and speak of whatever lies between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.
I could do many things. I could even remain the perpetual caricature of my ideal. The question is not one of could but one of would and dare I?
Write write write and rue its reading. I yearn, I tell you, I yearn to wittingly expose the nerve endings of our vulgarity…Know thyself; insist upon thyself.
When you read the illusion is felt not with the whole body but a toenail, uh, crescent, likeness, a frontal lobe ZING, awe apexing in…But when I look away from this screen I feel physical again and I think this is a bad thing…the pulsing of destiny reverberates only from the thumbnails cramped on my desktop, an ever so, oh so always attentive audience. To name and file them is a perusal of tedium…then less of my thoughts are there to remind me of their loyalty, to remind me of my mind. Sometimes they, the thoughts, drafts, seem to want to take me over too much and I don’t want to let myself go… they’re so ecstatic and pleasant that perhaps I can… let myself go, that is, let myself share, as they are, that is. What would be the consequences…?
Why worry about consequences, these or any? command x command v will always be there for me.
If not, when what it is that you’re doing has a driving meaning, an arrow spiraling going towards its nomadic mark…you must not worry about now, which, of course, has no meaning in itself…that’s too bad…thinking about NOW is like going backward, inwards, like a mirror repeating itself…
Remind me, lest I forget to let the bashful tone fall near the closure so you can wade in my humility…rather than choke on a gasp prompted by my unabashed genius…genius? I am tickled to learn that genius may be a slow and arduous progression rather than a thing that comes to a soggy, writhing thing before it becomes no longer an it but is upon, forced a name.
I continue to make objects to resist being one…even if just pixels, or an ensued headache, or a sort of pathetic gesture all to say––I am not unaffected by this world. Though, at twenty-two, one ought to be enamored. And by enamored, I mean enamored. And I am one who believes “believe me” is the only closure to any letter worth a send, worth a read.
I’d like to rescue myself from the idea that there are so many realities and I am only granted one. I would like to think I am in this exalted position, in this place where static applause holds steady…I must admit, I do fantasize…to speak outwards as a recluse in a padded chamber. I know good and well the camera is on. A shame. When someone is listening, there is a shifting credence rather than the tidy truth of a changing mind…
No matter how chubby your finger or how firm your shake, your heirloom jetski, however honorable, its Polyurethane just beginning to chip as your closeted polyamory’s surely sparkling…it will sputter, failing to flail faster, despite the fountains flourish.
As an artist striving for the Utmost Sincerity of Expression, there is too many a narrative for which I am willing to STAND or FALL…Yet, it is only under my own roof, under the auspices of my good side, with whom I may fib until the day we lie next to one another for eternity, I shall speak my truth. Only here, only now.
The mind is kind. Have I told you this already? Memory, though, is a poet!
I will tell you what I’ve been wanting to tell you...I feel benevolent. I feel as though I have no enemies in the world and this is lovely––and fragile, so delicate, but, for now, lovely––one must be contrite publicly, so I will share the premises of my private perfection once we have silence to spare.
Ah, but until then…,let us notice how the soundtrack or film or breeze reeling going through the machine sounds like children singing…until then, I’d like to let loose my jaw, reckon with the littlest neglects, now, crack each knuckle now, to listen for a moment, or awhile…
I suppose, one may break oneself down to power and adrenaline…why don’t you?
Feel no shame for desire, feel no lust for fear: there is too much to know and too much at stake; yet, a mouth, too, may shut, falter, break.
E is for egoists, who do not wander very far from their ether.
In the ether, however, there ought to be no winds of doctrine.
There are places we all must go someday. The moon brightens even the battle camp.
I once wrote: postcards, podcasts, fairy tales are all terrorism; bludgeonings and vacuous friendships spare those who matter; aphasia or aneurysm come to those who wait…I redact and expand that: Chaos was the law of nature; order was the dream of man. The caress sweetens the attack. A fervent harmonious energy of a polyglot of any sort seems torn between desires, one fills each palm: to be a chanteuse or a headbanger?
Take your prescriptions of a nightly pillow scream. Relish the fit of delirium, the thought that comes; in a word: erethism.
The quintessence of man, however––disgraced, uprooted, defined from the start to either inauthenticity or martyrdom. As if certain failures on certain fixations were in the name of cathexis.
Unfortunately––not the whole story. Believe me. Or…,
Admit it!
Admit you’re doing what you’re trying to do…
Nothing more.