Dear Jerry
John L. Waters
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Dear Jerry:
Copyright 2000 by John L. Waters.
All Rights Reserved.
Just a short note.
You have heard of glossolalia, speaking in tongues
under the influence of the so-called "heilige geist,"
the holy spirit of God? People get together in the
church and they reinforce their predisposition to get
non-linear and just spout off hosannas and other bits
and pieces of expression of enthusiasm generated by
the social atmosphere. But the fact is that all or at
least some of these people truly feel uplifted by this
process. They feel that they access God.
"Make a joyful noise unto the Lord!" writes the
psalmist. This euphoria-producing energy which is
expressed in Sufi dancing, autistics spinning their
bodies 'round and 'round, and a writer or chanter
repeating the same phrases over and over, maybe with
some variation, this is the energy which needs better
to be organized and linearized, and formed into
succinct paragraphs of lucid prose. You are asking me
to be more careful in keeping an outline, an
organization, and a chronology.
You are walking along Hollywood Boulevard and the
energy of the Hare Krishnas grabs you like a mother
cat moving her kitten to a safe place away from an
approaching fire. The rhythm of the drums, the
sunlight reflected off the slender writhing bodies and
the sounds of heavy breathing strike you and you feel
transported back five hundred years even as the new
Subarus and the new Cadillacs roll by and raise dust.
You feel a tear form in your eye.
You might not wonder how ecstasy enables a scientist
to conceive of ideas he couldn't conceive of without
ecstasy. You might not wonder about this because it
hasn't quite yet occurred to you to wonder. But you
look intently at the face of an ecstatic dancer and
you see the glazed eyes and the blank expression. By
ecstasy I don't mean PCP.
A person can go searching for samples of ecstatic
entrancement, and this is like searching for shells at
the seashore. You can't always be certain where or
when you will find the next nautilus. But my writing
isn't supposed to be like that.
You say at the bottom of my first paper, "The problem
is that you're trying to describe a process-a story or
narrative- by which you arrived at a theory, and these
require Organization. Outline. Chronology."
So it looks like I need to work on this in my writing.
I need to pay more attention to the time factor, the
chronology.... What happens first, what happens
second, what happens third, and so on from the
beginning of the story to the middle of the story to
the end of the story. Or by "story" I could mean "the
explanation" or "the answer to your question."
This is a problem for me sometimes. Someone will ask
me a question, and I won't be able to answer the
question right away. I will have to wiggle around in
my chair, and look at something other than at his
face, and hemmm and hawww and grunt and whistle and
chirp like a bird maybe, and fidget and draw a few
pictures in my notebook. Jim Dodge has already noted
this with considerable chagrin.
And sometimes when I'm answering a question some idea
will intrude and it's a new idea and I feel it's too
important not to utter or write down. And it breaks
into the flow of thought like a fish leaping out of
the still water. But you went out with me in this
rowboat to find birds, not fish. Or maybe at heart
you are really a hurricane hunter or a tornado chaser.
You say to me, "Your style reminds me at times of
Gertrude Stein, Wm. S. Burroughs, and the surrealists'
attempt to let the "supermind" do the writing. The
problem is that you're trying to describe a process- a
story or narrative- by which you arrived at a theory,
and these require organization. outline.
chronology."
So I will work at this. The trouble is that when I am
trying to be conscious of myself as I working on this
improvement of my writing, that I consciousness tends
to block the process and then I am feeling even more
like a blockhead.
My research 1963-2000 in a nutshell is this:
integrating the natural uncultured mind-body with the
mind-body that is well-cultured and highly trained.
The uncultured, natural ur-intelligence is what gives
a person a rare insightfulness. But then there is
this problem of making the insightfulness useful to
the culture in which the unusually insightful person
is embedded. So often the culture isn't able to
assimilate the insights of the ur-intelligence. And
quite a few people have warned me that I am trying to
do the impossible. They just didn't understand my
work, which is why I'm trying to improve my writing.
I'll keep working at it.
John
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