An English major—my freshman-year self would be shocked (I even took a music course my first semester to fulfill the “Arts and Literature” requirement in the most painless way possible by dodging the dreaded college English classes). But my seven-year-old self, who scribbled stories in legal pads, really knew all along. So how did something so natural, so certain, become unfathomable?
Over spring break, I rediscovered a “time capsule” from elementary school—a collection of assignments my sixth-grade teacher had us seal in a folder, only to be opened upon high school graduation. On the page titled, “My Favorite Things,” I had written, “My favorite subject is Literature because I love writing.” On “Sentence Starters,” I filled in “When I grow up I want to be…” with “a writer or artist.”
Reading this ten years later from a place of zero recognition, I was surprised to remember that a younger version of me was so passionate about writing — and a bit embarrassed that I had forgotten about this. In the years following elementary school, my interests morphed from the humanities into the sciences — a result of external pressures.
But while reading from this time capsule, I was not only surprised at what I had written, but also how I had written it. This was Angela’s writing, from a time before she learned and internalized the rules of “proper” English and academic writing. I just wrote what I was feeling in the clearest and simplest ways I knew how.
Ever since I came across it, a quote by Picasso has rattled in my head: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” In reading this time capsule, I was quite literally finding the child in myself, a voice from ten years ago that I had forgotten. She was taking risks because she didn’t know what risks were yet, writing unexpected things because she didn’t know what “expected” meant yet. In a sense, my voice back then was more my voice than it has been in a long time.
Ever since I came across it, a quote by Picasso has rattled in my head: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” In reading this time capsule, I was quite literally finding the child in myself, a voice from ten years ago that I had forgotten.
Growing up, I loved leafing through a children’s poetry book from our living room shelf. It was eight dollars, hardcover, purple, and had everything from old nursery rhymes to Shel Silverstein. I read poems over and over again, dwelling in images that I liked looking at and sounds that felt fun to say. Then poetry turned from a pastime into a subject studied in school, from counting Jack Prelutsky’s pancakes to counting commas, marking scansion, and deciphering symbols.
Poems were something to untangle, straighten, and understand. There were hidden meanings, correct interpretations, and I was always worried that I couldn’t “get it.” I often hear my friends say that they loved books as a kid and haven’t read anything since. I guess if you hand a 12th grader Woolf or Joyce and barrage them with lessons on symbols, themes, and literary movements, they usually end up adverse, rather than interested, in literature. And although there is a delight in putting a name to a feeling previously indescribable —rhyme, caesura, enjambment— the joy becomes lost when these labels become the end, rather than the means.
I often felt like a hammer, looking for any symbol to nail an interpretation onto. It became so easy to end up defacing the art that I worked so hard to care for.
I often felt like a hammer, looking for any symbol to nail an interpretation onto. It became so easy to end up defacing the art that I worked so hard to care for.
Reading with care is a tender combination of devoting the attention a work deserves, laboring to understand it, and inviting emotional connection. In the past few years, I’ve been finding my way back to reading that excites and inspires me. Part of the process has been unlearning what I’ve been taught for so many years, and relearning ways that are more playful, open, and spontaneous. I don’t read only to “interpret” or “uncover,” but to simply experience.
There are many examples of scholars who have shared similar feelings and continue to inspire me. One is Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation,” which argues against the “infestation of art by interpretations,” claiming that it makes art “manageable, conformable”; it instead asks us to explore how we can make works of art more, rather than less, real to us. Sontag articulates that “what is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.”
A former professor also gave me a piece of advice that hasn’t left my mind since: she asked, how close can you get to the text? Now I ask myself: am I getting closer or further from the text by categorizing it as a certain genre or by calling something a “symbol” of something else? Before arguing, claiming, or summarizing, I simply try to get close. This means being sensitive to a work’s peculiarities, paying attention to its sensory experience, and entering with questions rather than conclusions.
There are fewer rules and examples to lean on when reading this way – sometimes the rules are comforting, and in their absence there is uncertainty. But I think it is also more rewarding to read, think, and experience works of art in ways devoid of expectation, and thus truer to their creation.
Like my reading, my writing is also messier, more confusing, and more uncomfortable than it has ever been. While learning English in school, I sensed the looming necessity of chaos, but I ran away from it instead. I thought, surely “good” readers and writers were people who saw something I didn’t, who could magically connect things into neat thematic boxes and argumentative flowcharts. It’s only now that I’ve realized most good writing starts with chaos, not order.
I thought, surely “good” readers and writers were people who saw something I didn’t, who could magically connect things into neat thematic boxes and argumentative flowcharts. It’s only now that I’ve realized most good writing starts with chaos, not order.
Starting with questions and contradictions has been far more interesting and worthwhile than pre-forming answers that are meant to be outlined and filled in with lists of evidence. And while argumentative writing can be important and “productive,” I wish there was greater significance placed on other forms of writing — those that seek to explore, question, and wonder, rather than to prove. What happens when we expand the possibilities of what writing can be?
I’m glad I learned the rules. The outlines. The literary devices. It’s good to teach them. But I wish someone could have screamed in my ear (rather than whispered as an aside), that they’re not the only way. And that the excitement comes not from mastering the rules, but venturing outside them. It’s harder to do, but I can at least try. I owe that much to my sixth-grade self who longed to be “a writer.”
BERKELEY FICTION REVIEW 