The Influence of Anxiety ~

Writers are continuously seized by a throbbing urge to write; weather abruptly by a sudden touch of inspiration, or deliberately upon an important event in their lives, or .. upon an aching unfathomable feeling that needs to be worded. Perchance it is love or sadness .. or both. Writers can relate to these fits of the heart.

However, this inward tumult does not always result in writing as it is expected.  The past cripples their drives and harness their artistic flow. It is a concept called “The Anxiety of Influence”; the fear that everything we write or experience has been written and experienced before, and this fear takes over a writer’s soul and filter his\her ideas.

In my writing experience, insignificant as it is, I recall many times when I felt stifled in front of my computer at night; was this idea mentioned before ? Is this image illustration trivial or mainstream ? Are these lines ridiculously worn out ?

The Anxiety of Influence feeds on these internal wonderings and the idea that past literary glories are present failures if repeated.

I came to realize, however, that there is no such thing as repetition in literature or any form of Art for that matter.

Writing is the fruit of intimate feelings, of personal ponderings .. And because words can never wholly describe what we experience as human beings, ideas and images can never be reiterated. Texts may hold some resemblance to each other, but the feelings that culminated in their production are so wonderfully and subtly different.

It is what I like to call the Influence of Anxiety. The soul of any writer creates and annihilates, chases an evanescent idea, struggles to depict an eerie landscape, a scent, the touch of a hand, the taste of a kiss, the eyes of a stranger … The head  is a battlefield of words, disordered ideas and piled-up images .. The heart speaks conflicting emotions and inexplicable perplexities. His entire being agonizes to produce “The truest sentence” of it all.

What I want to say is that the journey that any writer goes through to give birth to his text is what makes it eternally unique. The palpitations of his heart, his uncertainties, his frustration, his constant un-creation of words are what renders very original and very specific to its creator.

The text, like Love, is a feeling .. Perhaps the most sincere feeling ever so nakedly and fearlessly exposed .. And like all feelings, we try to capture it albeit we know that it’s uncatchable. We think that we are able to see similarities between texts, but our eyes deceive us so …  a metaphor can recall another, an image can summon its root in other writings, that is true .. 

However the experience of the pre-word, the struggle of the pre-idea, the musings of the pre-image can never be repeated, translated or truly detected.

That is the reason why I believe that each text is enigmatically singular .. Diverse and particular like Human feelings, like Human loves ..

To partially employ F.Scott Fitzgerald’s words:” There are all kinds of “texts” in this world, but never the same “text” twice ..”