F 0.2 — Who is a writer

I was listening to Bill Evans and reading a James Baldwin interview the day I realized I was a writer. I had to stop my train of thought and get out of bed at 8:26 am, 8°C in the strange winter of Curitiba.

How can I show where I am right now, how can I show who I am right now if it wasn't for this words that come out of me.

I'm still not sure about what I want to say but I feel the desire to write.

I see my drafts and everything I want to say. Until today, I was writing trying to say something to someone. The abstract reader I have in mind when I'm re-writing and editing.

From this sentence on, I'm writing for myself. As I always do.

What is it that I want to say? What is the thing that makes me go out of bed and start typing in the mornings?

Is the desire, burning inside of things that I want to say. After staying quiet for so long, waiting for permission to speak (not literally, but almost).

I've said this before: I used to stay quiet and pretend I was dumb in order to socialize and I accepted that as my life.

Re-learning how to speak and have my own voice, understanding that I don't need permission and I just need to say the things out loud. With confidence. My voice matters, what I have to say matters.

I still feel the fire building inside me, in my belly, telling me to keep going. There is something to explore, something here that wants to come out.

Learning how to hear what my body is saying have been so beautiful and rewarding. I started to recognize when something is painful because it makes my belly shake, hurts. Then something wants to come out and is a fire, a desire, a burning orange flame that makes me move and create. Then is the tension, that is almost always with me and sits between my shoulders and my neck, in the middle of my back and is only released with dancing or meditation. Or sex, but that is something I'm not going to discuss right now.

I don't know what it means to be a writer. I don't want to put names for myself than then I have to live up to.

Do I have to write a novel to be a writer? Publish? Be recognized as one in order to become one? By whom?

Is annoying to think about it and I feel something between my ribcage and my chest.

Fear is keeping me from writing more and I'm not sure if I have to push through or not. This is in general, for right now and for the rest of the drafts I have here.

They are going to see the light, for sure. Just no idea when.
(What is it about time that interests me so much?)

And this is not about making commitments, I don't have to commit to write, I do it because of the desire inside me.

Accepting that I'm a writer means I'm going to read more, think more, publish more and write with a different sense of determination.

--

A part of life is sitting in the discomfort of your own thoughts. Maybe writing is my way to let go of that discomfort by experiencing it deeply and trying to describe what it feels like. Hoping that is going to go away as soon as I describe it correctly.

Someone told me a few days ago that I was good at describing and explaining what was going on. I can only say that it is a conversation and it has two ways. I can only describe things exactly to someone willing to listen and to the people I think are going to understand me.

In a way, I only write for the people that want to read me and are willing to understand what I'm saying. Some sort of mystic impulse that drives people close or apart. I'm sure the right reader is reading this right now, but while I'm writing I am the right reader now.

In a different moment, someone is going to read this and is not going to be 9am of a sunday at 8°C, you're not going to be without glasses squinting over a screen, trying to understand what is this about. It is not a cold morning, you're not feeling alone and sad while listening Lonely Woman by Ornette Coleman. Is another reality that you're living in, but the words are the same. The words I'm typing now.

I realized that I'm a writer after reading a James Baldwin interview, at 8:26am, 8°C in a sunday.

And I accept this self-imposed label, in a solemn way, but I've always been a writer.

27.04.21

No one becomes a writer by accident, I have been writing my whole life.