These days reading a book feels like an act of will – rebellious even. There are screens everywhere tempting me in a million different directions, and tapping into my low level addiction to them - promising me immediate, if empty, gratification at the slightest tap of a finger.
And yet, last week I read a long book.
With a small font.
And it took some focus.
The book was amazing in ways that would take a whole series of posts to explain. It immersed me in a world I knew next to nothing about. It offered me insights into brutality and scarcity that my gently privileged mind could barely comprehend. It offered me a window into political unrest that puts our present, very British chaos into a kind of perspective that is lacking in all the frenzied reporting and tweeting that underpins every moment (if you choose to look in that direction). It offered me a chance to lean into perspectives that are confronting, but which make abundant sense when offered up by a narrator whose life experience in no way mirrors my own.
Like I said: Amazing. Expansive. All of that.
But that’s a side issue.
For today anyway.
It took some real discipline reading that book. There were a hundred and one easier activities I could have done. Screen based entertainment is so much more immediate. It asks so much less of me. I mean, the font was SMALL. And I’m a little resistant to wearing my glasses, so I had to move around to ensure the light was good enough to be able to read the words. And it was neither funny nor light nor easy. It was confronting, and violent – unsettling, raw and uncomfortably human.
And yet, it was a mountain I wanted to climb. And because I live a freelance kind of a life, I actually had the time to invest. I had also listened to a podcast interview with the author (yet another more immediate, less demanding form of entertainment) and was intrigued by what I heard. I loved that as a black author he was unconcerned by the needs of white readers as they navigate the stories he told about Jamaica. I wanted a window into a world that in no way reflected my own. And boy did he deliver.
But again, that’s not the issue. Not today anyway.
What has left me reeling in a good way, is the audacity of writing a novel. The audacity of creating something so remarkable, long and expansive from nothing other than your own creative impulse. To trust that there are people out there who will choose to turn away from the fast-food diet of attention-grabbing media and toward something more demanding of your own making.
To someone like me whose writing output is typically brief and perhaps more aligned with the fast-paced, scan-it-and-move-on world we live in, I was left in awe. It made me more aware of my own almost apologetic approach to writing, and so deeply curious about the sense of conviction that surely accompanies the decision to write in such depth and at such length, especially in a day and age that feels so at odds with reading a book. To extend an invitation to an invisible readership to invest hours of their lives engaging with a creative vision that isn’t even designed to make you feel good.
And no doubt to the novelist, it’s not remotely audacious.
It’s what they are here to do.
But to me, an occasional blogger, it’s mind blowing. It’s bold and authentic and unapologetic. It’s open and vulnerable and wildly creative. It allows the world to see something of you, and your experience of the world, that may never be seen were it not for this creative act. And undoubtedly, I have just listed all the values that are important to me. Undoubtedly, they are values I’d like to express more in my own life – probably through my own writing…
Recently, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing close friends share their own creative visions with the wider world. The impact on me has been profound. Their willingness to take up creative space, and invite others to interact with it, creates a ripple effect.
We are all changed, emotionally and psychologically, by their inclination and drive to do it.
In their different ways, they (and the author of The Very Long Book with the Small Font) have inspired me to write this.
Because they all remind me that it matters that we’re all a little less apologetic about sharing our creativity and our thoughts with the world.
It matters that we’re all a little bit more audacious in our self expression.
The world benefits from our collective willingness to take up a little bit more space – to trust that someone out there can be moved or expanded or altered by something you’ve got to say.
This post is my offering. What’s yours?