He was a judge in Louisiana.
For me as a reader, that one line comes loaded with assumptions. Absent additional context, I immediately thought white, older, perhaps a good ol boy, perhaps racist or I assume the story will have racial tensions and hints of southern gentility. I asked my friend Stacy to respond to the sentence – a sort of rorschach / word-association test. She said her immediate thought was a racist, white, old dude. I’d be curious to know what other people think – what images they create. What does a person in Louisiana “see.”
One of the things about writing that fascinates me is this interplay between author and reader and the linear aspect of the entire interaction. Unlike a painting or a photograph in which you get the whole picture at once, written stories move the reader/observer from one scene, one action, one sentence to the next. The author can hint at one image and just as quickly undercut it or reinforce it. I think good writers understand this balance between showing and letting the reader imagine. They describe, and then either reinforce or reverse with intention. “He was a judge in Louisiana – a few years out of law school, a rising star in the courts. He was the son of a prominent baptist minister with little formal education who stood tall in the pulpit. His father was a pillar in the black community. His shadow was long.” Now I’m using a whole bunch of easy descriptions to intentionally counter my initial assumptions… but that’s the “power” of storytelling. On the one hand, it requires the reader to do some of the work, and on the other hand, there are decisions being made, boundaries being set to guide the reader along.
I started this particular post a week ago. It wasn’t going anywhere (still isn’t), so I left it. Last night I wrote about my slight obsession with detail and song lyrics (and to a lesser extent writing) – which I think was, in some ways, a continuation of this post.
As I’ve struggle to find time to write – at least in terms of this blog, I’ve had to ask myself, so what? What’s the point? Why does it matter to me? And on this, I can’t really be succinct or precise. What I can say is that writing, especially creative writing, forces me to slow down and pay attention – either to the things right in front of me or to memories or visions entirely made up. When this happens, this slowing down, my mind starts to narrate just about everything… and while much of it isn’t worth anyone else’s attention, the process of seeing in this way is a process of discovery.
And maybe this is where it gets a little weird… but for me, in some ways, writing is a little like being in a relationship. Time slows, I notice everything (I see a hand turn saintly on the radio dial), and I feel a little (or a lot) more alive. I think good relationships, vibrant ones, are acts of creation and story telling. They have origin stories and build a rising tide of memories. They live in the past, present, and future. They have conflict and setbacks which set the stage for failure, triumph, and if we’re lucky, redemption. They are a process of breaking down and building up. For me, writing (along with music and art) and good relationships show snippets of what it means to be human – flawed, complex, simple, and beautiful… to be pleasantly surprised and utterly disappointed…. to see a moment, a sentence, a scene as being full of both back story and possibility. Looked at this way, every middle is an end and also a beginning. “He was a judge in Louisiana.” We can choose where to go from there, what we want to see, and how we want to see it.