A pen(ny) for my thoughts
Updated On: 23 December, 2022 05:56 AM IST | Mumbai | Rosalyn D`mello
The writing I do that is intimate and personal is closer to inscription. The words ooze out of my body, and I must attune myself to their silent frequencies so that I can tap into them and collect the nectar
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I miss the feeling of being ‘in flow’, when my ink pen desires a mobility that my fingers struggle to supply. Representation pic
My recent trip to Turin amplified my ongoing reflections on the materiality of paper and its relevance in terms of artistic practice. It had to do with all the papyrus manuscripts and scraps I saw. Despite my incredulous typing speed, my practice as a writer is premised on long-hand note-taking and mark-making. It is how I differentiate the various registers through which I transcribe my insights. All forms of commissioned writing are performed directly on a word document on my screen. Having years of practice behind me means I have learned to circumvent the need for framing my structure on paper. I can easily access the flow of word and thought as it spills over from subconscious to conscious mind. But the writing I do that is intimate and personal is closer to inscription. It emerges from a space of deep embodiment. The words need to ooze out of my body through sweat, blood, tears, or breath; and I must attune myself to their silent frequencies so that I can tap into them when they spill and collect and distil the nectar. This is a slow process and is wholly dependent on ink and paper. The cursive nature of my handwriting impels the flow.
Full-time mothering coupled with a full-time job has disrupted this process. It has been months since I found the time to sit with my ink pen and my journal and commit my thoughts to paper. This means that I must live with whole sentences trapped inside my being, aching to be rendered into material form. “This is it,” I thought the other day, this is how female subjectivity gets invisibilised and erased from canonical discourse. I won’t pretend that this inevitable development hadn’t confirmed my worst fear about motherhood, that it’s all-enveloping nature would eat at my writing time; that I would be hustling between earning a livelihood and caretaking to the extent that I would never find the right moment to perform mark-making, to arrange these verbal notations into some form or other that could endure over time.
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