Creativity is unique and different for everyone. For me, every idea starts from a desk full of books.A little reflection on the value of writing in the twenty-first century.Why writing?
Why consuming hours and hours of your precious time to do something that does not seem to have an obvious utility. Why writing for yourself rather than for money? Why writing to move and excite rather than to solve problems? Why wasting time in an abstract realm of fantasy and emotion in a world that is in a hurry, a world that has no time, no fear, that cannot wait and does not want to wait? Answering this question is something that is close to my heart.
For me, writing has never been a choice, but a natural and necessary inclination. I was only eight years old when I started imagining my first story, and from that moment my eyes would see everything with a new filter… every object and every colour became a good excuse to imagine a story, build a character, slowly, with passion … first his eyes, then his character, his story. I have always felt the need to enrich my reality with new surroundings… why? I could not explain it. It was a need, natural and endless, without reason. This led me to wonder what the meaning of writing was, what were the different aims for different people, what it meant to be an author in the twenty-first century. After all, I ended up wondering what literature could still mean today, apart from marketing, business, advertising and investment. I do not have an answer to this question. I do not think anyone has it. It is up to us, citizens, human beings and artists of the twenty-first century, to redefine our role and our contribution to society.
I found a piece of paper this morning, on which a few years ago, when I was sixteen, I had quickly written my thoughts on writing and the meaning literature has for me. I think I want to share my reflections, because it is important to understand what lies behind every author, be it great and famous, or small and invisible like me.
I think it is impossible to put into words the disconcerting power of a sincere and fervent mind, the melodious and unique trait of a creative hand … it is impossible to explain rationally the inebriating limitation of a dreamer, that annoying and pleasant feeling of defeat observe and touch the limits of our reality. Imagining and writing, imagining and painting, imagining and framing in a new reality so that a thought can become eternal, infallible on blank pages, so that its message will not be erased by time. Maybe it will be read and understood, maybe not … I do not think it is up to a writer to worry about how his legacy will be understood or rejected by society. I believe that writing is not the result of an immediate thought, but of an entire philosophy of life, of an entire conception of this as art, as a great mass consisting of many small moments, many precious colors and nuances. A writer lives on images, and in every bright or dull color, in every excess and in every absence, in every expression of every passerby, in every landscape and in every feeling, he experiences a sensation of deep complacency or of inexplicable annoyance, of completeness. or an unbridgeable emptiness. Because it is the great and sweet perception of the emotional nuances of human sensitivity that makes such an artist and that elevates it to a vague sense of alienation and estrangement from common things. There is one work in particular, among the books I read and loved, which gave me a particular emotion … Trigorin, in ‘The Seagull’ by Checov, perhaps one of the most profound works ever written, confesses the distressing pain and anxiety that consumes the writer, his already great condemnation: the need to write, and the need to see the world as representation and art. I believe that writing is a superior force, as if the hand was guided by thought external to the mind itself, as if the words flowed selfish and violent out of concepts and images even before the writer has fully understood them.The artist therefore lives in the condemnation and the gift of a pungent sensitivity, and the need to save this sensitivity from the forgetfulness of time. And he lives his life on a stage, he lives to write, he lives to tell, he lives to feel, to sense, to perceive. In short, an artist lives for the sensations given by life itself and its essence, and to all the rest he risks to remain blind. Money, work, commitments, will perhaps be exceptional and full of success, but will also be illusory, and apparent …. a writer finds himself looking out the window at night, in solitude. And at that point he will realize, along with the other crazy artists, that while the remains of the world have their eyes on tomorrow or stand still on the past, his eyes will reflect the pure shine of the moon, timeless… he will then feel full of art, and perhaps empty, and he will cry tears of happiness and pain.That night, while the world is sleeping, the artist will be watching the moon. He will not see in it neither future nor past, but only an intense feeling, a concept that this time he will not be able to grasp.
So why writing? What I wanted to emphasize with this reflection is that I believe that writing in the twenty-first century is something precious and special. It means overcoming the constant fear of not having time, it means stopping for a moment while society goes on too fast, breathe, reflect, wonder why many things, listen to yourself. I am not at all opposed to today’s world in many ways, nor do I believe it is right for young people to reject the society we live in away from this … but I think it is right to have balance, remember who we are and why we are so, to remember that life is not all money and career and efficiency, remember that it is nice to be imperfect, it is good to fail and suffer. Writing and reading give us something precious and fundamental, because they help us to breathe for a moment, and to go deep. By its nature the human being avoids a problem by rising above it: and so the modern society, which can not tolerate having problems, has built a thick layer of superficiality on which to float to guarantee an apparent serenity. Literature and art try to curb all this, to alleviate routine and superficial damage … we must not hide from a complex society like ours, but we must live it, live it fully, with great maturity and awareness.
Why writing, then? I believe we must write in order to better understand ourselves and what surrounds us. But the question has no real answer. It will be up to us to respond and redefine the role of literature, adapting it to the times that move forward but in moderation, generations after generations, savoring the pleasure of small things, colors and fragrances and feelings … perhaps, while reading and writing, we will feel more human , and we will understand that we are all the same, children of the same fears and of the same love.
