“. . . some of us may find it easier to believe in a certain than an uncertain story, especially when the uncertain future would be so different to today that it is difficult to comprehend” - Jem Bendell
This issue of predictability is important to a writer. Even Emily Dickinson had to have known someone would find her fascicles in her drawer sooner rather than later. We say we write for ourselves, but we really write to be read – by someone in the future (including our future selves). So, the current climate of uncertainty (if I may express myself thus) is both deflating and intriguing. Deflating, because if civilization is going to collapse, we’ll have to hope some future archaeologist or antiquarian finds what we’ve written. That’s a lot to hope for. What percentage of texts from the ancient world survive today? Would the Epic of Gilgamesh be such a bestseller, if it had much competition from other late-second or mid-third millennia B.C.E. poetry? It’s all about supply and demand. And if humans go extinct, as some predict . . . well, what we write will not be read. Writing will not be read. It will be as though we had never been, but we won’t be there to see what that looks like. As Bendell puts it, the death of civilization “involves not only oneself but all of what one could contribute to” (17). In other words, you will not be immortalized by your work – it will not “live on after you” if it does not exist, or if there is no one reading it. Yet this is an intriguing situation, too. For one thing, focusing too much on audience or readership is the kiss of death for a writer – much better to write a note in sand than to write in stone. Or, said another way, one always writes as if someone else will read what one has written. Sometimes, the only someone else is the writer.* More importantly, we are witnessing (potentially) the most important historical event in . . . well, in history. Civilizations have collapsed, been reduced to rubble and buried. Peoples have dispersed or been assimilated to others. But nowadays, it’s not too much of an overstatement to say that there is only one, big, global (post)industrial civilization. Many live on its margins, many more just barely maintain a toehold. But we are all interpolated and interpellated, like it or not. Surely it will be very interesting – as water supplies melt, evaporate, or become salinized; as the coastlines retreat; as hurricanes and cyclones hit more major population centers. Sad, yes; excruciating; appalling, even. Sad and appalling times have a way of galvanizing writers. We want to witness; we want to record; we want to satirize and scramble bullshit verbiage and evil deeds. In On the Beach, the people in Australia (the only part of the earth the post-nuclear-war radioactive cloud has not enveloped) desperately send out messages in the hope of finding other people still alive in the rest of the world. Humans have been sending messages into the distant reaches of outer space for years. Do you read me? Do you copy? Do you read? Me, I’m writing as if someone will read what I’ve written. You are, anyhow. And maybe a couple of others now and . . . who knows, after that. After us. But really, you can try to put your MS in a bottle, or your computer in a waterproof, nukeproof vault – but that’s no guarantee. You can’t take these things too literally. Just know that you’re writing language that others can and will be able to read after this moment, at least for a while. And you’re writing at the beginning of something big. _____ * I’m talking about desire here, which is different than intentionality, it seems to me. Intentionality is about meaning; and while writers imagine themselves being read, they can’t control how others understand their works.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |