Desire as a compass

BarcelonaIn June I have my birthday and this year I received many books, which always makes me happy. One of them has been Principi, mig, fi, by Valeria Luiselli (translated into Catalan by Elisabet Ràfols Sagués, at Angle Editorial). I haven't finished it yet, but I can already say that I am enjoying it very much. At one point, Luiselli collects some reflections from the poet Layli Long Soldier, who talks about writing in terms of a relationship, as if it were a person, in the sense that it has conditions that make it possible and strengthen it: reciprocity, generosity, time, and patience. And others that can damage it. It is not the most worn-out metaphor of talent and discipline, but that of a bond that needs to be cared for and that, like all, can be damaged.

Luiselli then explains that her relationship with writing began in her late teens with intense curiosity, with desire, play, enjoyment. And that, over the years, it had been turning into insecurities and doubts, drinking, insomnia, and an expectation of results above attention to the process. She declares herself exhausted by how extractive this relationship had become, by finding herself giving and giving without taking into account the consequences of this self-exploitation.

Writing and work

A few weeks ago, in a conversation about creativity and neurodivergence at Palau Macaya with my writer friends Elisenda Solsona and Roger Coch, we reflected on just this: how when writing has become a job, we have lost joy and spontaneity, and how this expectation of results that Luiselli mentioned can end up conditioning it, and also, the gaze of the other. Not the gaze as an interlocution, which is positive, but to feel it as a tribunal. Writing thinking about how that text will turn out, who will read it, or how what you have shown will be treated. And in this displacement, forgetting the only thing that truly belongs to us, which is the process.

But understanding writing as a relationship, as Long Soldier proposed, is what then allows us to overcome nostalgia. If writing is like a bond, and not a gift that one has or loses, we can think about how to recover or re-seek those conditions that made it possible. Thus, the desire and curiosity of the early days would no longer be a lost paradise, but a compass that helps us know, as we write, if we are still taking care of ourselves or if, on the contrary, we have given and given until we are empty. In fact, it is what Luiselli herself does with Principi, mig, fi, which she wrote without knowing if it would be a novel or an essay, taking the necessary time and freedom to explore it.

I'm not sure that the fear of the result can be unlearned; surely not entirely, and it's good that it is so. It's what makes us keep trying until we write something that surprises and is worth reading. As Valeria Luiselli has done with this book.