Revision & Proust

Marcel Proust was a memoir writer in the early 20th century. He suffered a severe decline in health in his early twenties, and then seemed to commit himself to living via the memories of his former life. Every time he sent a work to the printing press, he would end up writing comments and additions in the margins of a printed copy, demand the press be stopped at his own expense, and then resubmit his new altered work for publication. Often, this happened several times for a given piece of work. I agree with the philosophy that Proust applied to his revision process, in effect, that a work is never truly done. Working on this last essay, "Wings" I found myself revising and revising, pulling things apart, putting them back together, redacting, adding, over and over again. I have turned it in as a final draft, but for me, I know it is not done. Some how I guess in the course of my college career I have rekindled my love of writing, once thought lost and irretrievable, and am finding myself working at it for it's own sake. Though I want a good grade, when it comes to "Wings" in my heart I am most concerned with writing something that is truthful, even if it is not completely true. I feel some how I will know it when it is right, but then, will it ever be?

Part of me feels as if every telling and retelling of the story must be preserved, those parts which are not blunders, for they are like facets of the many-sided jewel that is reality. Human memory, neuroscience explains, is not a filing cabinet full of drawers for different things; its an ever-changing canvas, painting and repainting our past experiences in the changing light of the present. This idea has returned to me a sense of art to the experience of writing, for so long I thought if I spoke of my own life I had to get all the details right. Instead, I need to tell a story that takes the reader some where. My partner is always quoting some one, who's name I don't now remember, "If there's a gun on the wall in act one, it better go off in act two."

I don't believe in a soul, and my perspective on the mind is "materialist" which is a philosophical view. Materialism in philosophy of mind is the position that all that exists is matter and energy, or, in other words, things that are in some way observable. In this perspective, the view held is that consciousness itself is a product and phenomenon of the physical world, as opposed to a seperate kind of phenomenon. I believe that my self is an emergent phenomenon arising from the electrical/chemical activity in the malleable cellular structure of my brain.

The most common social attitude towards self and the mind, is that, "you are who are." That in some way, the self is in a fixed state. I, however, am of the opinion that the self best described as a story that we are constantly revising. The truth of human experience itself, may not be a fixed reality, but something that is always shifting and altering. Because of this, art need never be considered "finished" by the artist, except in such a circumstance as the ending of the process is an element contributing to the identity and meaning of the peice.