Initial considerations: “i proceed in an intuitive way and without seeking an idea: I am organic. And I don't question myself about my motives. I plunge into the almost pain of an intense happiness— and to adorn me leaves and branches spring up in my hair.” (lispector) “Everyone trying to remedy everyone's life: even beggars, even the incurable aspire to it: the sidewalks and hospitals of the world overflow with reformers. The longing to become a source of events affects each man like a mental disorder or a desired malediction. Society-an inferno of saviors! What Diogenes was looking for with his lantern was an indifferent man. “ (cioran) Where does a writers authority come from? Where does your authority come from? these quotes, albeit somewhat arbitrary and disconnected, make me already question the concept of purpose and how we link purpose to selflessness — in writing it might be good to ask if the line is more blurry than this. an art form isn’t made, but rather becomes art, which is to say that a writer may create something simply out of a muscle spasm or an emotional outburst or a roadtrip or a drunk evening and then purpose is created by how that work then interacts with the world it has been born into (like existentialism). to say — my belief is generally that is it unimportant if a work finds an understanding audience, one has to do it because one believed that it is the right thing to do — so i ask then perhaps selfishness isn’t even the focus, because selflessness cannot be the focus either? there is maybe a bigger question of how do you best do what you feel? “We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess - across the night, eastward over the Plains, where somewhere an old man with white hair was probably walking toward us with the Word, and would arrive any minute and make us silent. “ (OTR ) “i write entirely to find out what i’m thinking, what i’m looking at, what i see and what it means” (didion) “don't recall why it was that I wrote to Pleshcheyev about hanging myself. I expect I was drunk at the time.” (chekov’s letters to friends and family) “when you throw a stone into the water, it finds the quickest way to the bottom of the water.” siddartha i hope you are following/ these quotes make sense in the brain path i’m trying to follow. basically, i can now see also, that maybe we can even go as far as to say that writing is a means of entirely deconstructing the wall that exists between selfishness and selflessness. so many have written things for themselves, to understand the world and express it or simply to send a letter back home — but because the act of writing was done with such rigor and earnestness, audiences picked it up and embodied it too, understood it in a way which transcended its original meaning. genuine and innocent selfishness of a writer becomes a tool for connecting with the world. the act of kindness and charity, of love for others, becomes so grand then because it is born at its own pace and will, out of a fundamental simplicity and idleness and looking inward-ness of the writer which does not taint the final product (the charity). this is also to say that selfishness is not what we know it to be, in the context of writing. perhaps we must ask ourselves if the selfishness of a writer is not, in fact, the most necessary and pure tool he has at his disposal in order to be selfless. also to say, then, that you as a writer know what you have created, but never know what the audience will receive. [[pina bausch]] [[collectives, communal learning and empathy]] [[knowing all kinds of people, my travels]]