Dream of Explication; The Exquisite "meh" of Aloneness

For Paul's Explicate Thingy

This is an exploratory piece, after the tradition of, say, surgery, or a colonoscopy, possibly by an inept amateur health professional.

Rest assured, as I wield this scalpel, what I lack in skill and experience I make up for in enthusiasm, a brisk can-do attitude, and a willingness to basically blag my way to the end of any essay with an undeserving air of competence and expetise.

Here goes then. Paul spreads his legs here - fetch some lubricant and a speculum, forthwith; we are going in:

The first slice (not cake)

My first thought, upon reading this piece was

fuck me, the man is insane.

If I have learned anything from reading books, it's that second thoughts are extremely valuable. Read it again. Think some more. Mine for insight. And behold:

blimey he's an arrogant bugger, too, isn't he?

🎶 Begin at the very beginning

Let's start with the title, because for us non-insane types, this appears at the top of the work and therefore, one can reasonably surmise, signals its beginning. (See, how we fight derangement with logic.)

Ledger

Now, don't start thinking I caught some of the crazies, but I lingered here awhile, rolling this juicy bastard around my mouth and brain. Like twenty-sided dice in an old skull.

Why Ledger? Why not "book"?

First of all, the aforementioned arrogance. LEDGER sounds, not to put too fine a point on it, a lot poncier and up-your-arse than "book".

Or, if we are to be more charitable, it's a lesser-used word, and a lover of words (a "logophile", FYI, such as Paul surely is) will be drawn to it.

It's more formal. It commands a certain respect. It is also a form of accounting, and accountability. This here is real and true, he says. It has to be. It's in the "ledger". A common or garden book can contain any old fairytale nonsense about witches or dragons or One Rings or apples and snakes...

Is he referring to a specific volume here? Or his collective works? Might he be saying, When I write, I put my marrow in my pen. I mine my own self for what gets writ, good or elsewise, and it might be shit as it happens but it's real and true.

Speaking of apples and snakes, ledger has a bit of a biblical vibe to it, does it not? We've all heard the tale of the chap with the big book of all your deeds and whatnot (for some of us, rather more whatnot than we can be proud of).

It's an accounting, then. Account-ability. A judgement. I'm putting myself out here for you to judge, but maybe I am judging you write back right back.

That is the feel I get from it, a challenge, a go on, read it then, I dare you. Make sense of it, I double dare you.

Is it any wonder he picked this one for explication, then?

There is a kind of masochism in writing, particularly when you open up to critique. Do it! Pick over my bones! Pick me harder. JUST PICK ME.

(Yes, Paul, we are all picking you.)

He says,

It's not my job or my commission to make you feel at ease when you turn the page in my ledger 

-Paul, obviously

This, to me, means, How I write it is my business, how you read it is yours.

Accountable, yes, but not to each other. We are a world apart.

This feels paradoxical. Surely if we put any writing out there, the desire is that it'll resonate, connect with someone. At the same time, how we experience the same writing can be so wildly varied. You will never read the piece I wrote, because you are not me.

Next he has fun torturing us with clashing words weaving about on the page and skipping down lines. His love for words and wordplay is obvious. We are taken on a jolly boatride down his stream of consciousness, and it feels a lot like the boat ride in Wonka's chocolate factory, if I'm honest.

This isn't supposed to be easy.

It's supposed to be uneasy.

Which is not the same as difficult, but it might be the same as "trick-y".

There are some lines I dawdled over without understanding them, and finally concluded that the man was drunk. Another two fingers and he might be ready to perform surgery of his own.

But really, there's no point you reading any of this, is there? When you read "Ledger", you read a completely different poem than I did, and a completely different one than Paul wrote. That was the point, I think, of the piece, and the challenge he put it at the centre of. We feel it in the broad picture, the overall vibe. And we see it in the little strokes (a word, a letter, a sound - strung up, examined from all angles, tarred and feathered and smacked on the arse on their way out-)

It has a near-nihilistic feel, with hardly any angst at all: It doesn't matter what I write because you won't get it anyway - not really.

This isn't I'm so deep/you're so dull either - it's just the nature of the beast. We (the bookworms, the story-lovers, the logophiles, the scribblers) are all little time lords in our TARDISes, endlessly alone on our adventures. Yearning. And plumbing that for content, too, because why not. It's futile. It's beautiful. It's silly. It's a challenge. It's human. It's the little elastic band in our soul.

~ explication complete ~

~ error error error ~

You have two days to take part. Here's the challenge:

Tick tock!