Author: Brand Smit

WEDNESDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2004

22:59

I have learned that not appearing means silence. And that silence, if you can handle it, is good.

23:57

When I was younger, it felt like I was doing something wrong when I spent “too much” time on my own. Which is not surprising because from an early age it is discouraged; “You should get out more,” “Spend some time with other people,” “It’s not good to be so alone all the time!” people will often utter their well-meaning opinions.

It may take years before you develop some alternative views on this matter, for example that social appearances – which incidentally require much more personal information than anonymous appearances, and even appearances in professional capacity – mean a lot of “noise”. And this noise silences voices that many people fear – and perhaps in some cases need to fear.

These “voices”, if you pay attention and if you think long enough about what you “hear”, ultimately reveal insights that are only destined for those willing to listen, and for those who are willing to keep the airways clean to encourage the process.

———–

[Many people in the history of the world have been known to have heard “voices”, and they responded by taking actions that have affected, and still affect, the lives of thousands and even millions of people.

There are also many people who will never make any tangible impact on their environments who also hear voices every day. The fact that many of them are locked up in institutions confirms how these characters are viewed by society – whether it is justified or not.

What “voices” do I hear? Although the term is a useful one, I should mention that I don’t really hear voices (most of the time I don’t, anyways). The times I refer to when I supposedly “hear” something are usually times when my own voice fills the airways while I am in deep conversation with myself. That my self-talk is uninhibited – I’m not trying to impress anyone in a social appearance, for example – means I can throw the proverbial table full of cards. These “cards” may be answers to questions, or solutions to the problems I regularly harass myself with regardless of whether I am on my own, making an anonymous appearance, or appearing to the community as “Brand Smit”. Once these cards are on the table, the validity of each one can be considered on merit. No answer, no solution is ever accepted blindly because some or other voice had dictated anything to me.]

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TUESDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2004

A (new) existence in three essential steps

[Not the first mention of these thoughts, but who keeps count if something can be expressed in steps?]

Step One: Confront your Given Self, and accept what you cannot change.

Step Two: Taking into consideration unchangeable aspects of your Given Self, define who you want to be, how you want to appear to the world, and what role you want to play. Decide whether you would prefer to be on your own or with another person. Also decide where you would like to spend your life on your own, or where you would like to spend it with another person.

Step Three: Considering all the above decisions, figure out how you can provide in your daily needs without denying the Self you want to be, and in ways that are conducive to who you want to be, to the role you want to play, and to your ideal contribution to society.

Zig-zag

It is always possible to see the truth. The question is, at what price?

People often say, “You’re shameless!” when they want to chide you. Isn’t that strange?

From the China Post:

“People don’t have to like what I do. I’m happy as long as I get them to talk about the issues.” ~ The opinion of photo-artist, “Olaf”

In Hong Kong, Health Secretary, York Chow told reporters: “Suicides are committed for different reasons, but the most common is that (victims) feel disconnected from society.”

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TUESDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2004

The brain is like a computer – the first few minutes after turning it on in the morning, the files and programs that were active the previous night slowly reactivate. After a few minutes a familiar character makes his or her reappearance: you are again embarrassed about the previous night’s incident (because the “program” that had been installed years ago also reactivated to stimulate a feeling of shame); you are excited again about the same things; you’ve got the same dreams, the same ambitions and the same beliefs. Some uncertainties, embarrassments and anxieties may have died down somewhat, but you’re essentially the same person.

Can it therefore still be said that it’s a new day? As I am sitting here writing these words it is “Tuesday morning” at “08:06”. I just had breakfast. It’s fairly early in the morning, and yet it is thirteen and a half hours after my dinner “last night”.

Janis Joplin once said (or screamed), “Because as a matter of fact, as we discovered on the train, tomorrow never happens, man! It’s all the same fucking day, man!”

Yet, the idea of a new day is much too valuable to abandon on a technicality. Every new Time Unit of Daylight followed by Darkness offers several possibilities that can never be underestimated: opportunities to make a mess of things, opportunities where your life may be at risk, opportunities where your life may end the next moment … and opportunities to stop messing around, and to get on a better path than the one on which you’ve been wasting time so far.

A new day then – even if it is only because it sounds more poetic – is waiting for me, and for you …

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WEDNESDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2004

Note about the protagonist

By the time one gets to “Personal Agenda, Book Three” the material is not about me anymore – it is about a character. This character’s name is “Brand Smit” – same as mine, and his story coincidentally corresponds 100% with my life. The reader, however, sees the character, “Brand Smit” in ways that are influenced by their own identities and agendas, and not exactly in the way I as “writer” view the character.

THURSDAY, 4 NOVEMBER 2004

On the material currently under review

Many questions had to be answered in the evolution of my chosen role as a writer: In what genre do I want to write? What do I want to write about? How do I want to make my material available to the reader – print, CD-ROM, Internet? If in printed form, would I like to publish it myself, or am I going to send it to publishers until someone “approves” it? Also, what purpose do I want to serve with my material? Do I want to entertain people or lecture them? (My choice is to shed light on some issues that affect most people on a personal level.) Do I want to earn money with my material? Put differently, how important is financial compensation for my writing, which will of course affect content, style, genre and manner of publication?

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TUESDAY, 2 NOVEMBER 2004

Writers send the material they produce in privacy into the world for a variety of reasons. They also express the thoughts that eventually manifest as the literature that end up in bookstores and on bedside tables in various genres with which readers are more or less familiar. Poetry, novels, short stories, articles, essays, and opinion pieces in newspapers are examples of these literary types.

As both a reader of literary material other people produce and interpreter of my own thoughts on paper I am aware of the above genres. The poem, I can certainly admit, is a literary type for which I cherish some sentiment. The (usually) shorter length of the poem, the way each word and each line matter, the challenge to say what you want to say while keeping up with rhythm and rhyme make the poem an exceptional challenge. Other authors prefer the novel – the longer narrative with its characters, its back story, its dramatic incidents, beginning, middle and end, and so on. The short story is a medium I find more appealing, length being one reason – you start, you write a few more pages, you finish up, and you start the next one (to simply it somewhat). Opinion pieces for newspapers I have never written. Articles I have tried to write, but I am still stuck at the second assignment of a writing course I registered for three years ago because I haven’t managed to come up with five topics on which I want to write articles. The essay is a genre with which I have become comfortable in the last few years. Essays can be short – as few as 500 words – or they may go on for page after page without necessarily reaching a satisfactory conclusion (not that great for the reader, but what can you do?).

The literary form of expression I find most agreeable is the written note. The note is immediate. Titles are luxuries to be reflected on much later. The emphasis is on freshly squeezed ideas. Sometimes a few hours pass before a thought makes it on paper. Sometimes the delay between thought formation and words in pencil or ink can be counted in seconds. Of course, the sometimes rough wording of thoughts and emotions does get polished up a bit at a later stage. Paragraphs, headings and other formalities of literature eventually send the note into the world like a gutter dog ready to bark for the cameras after a good wash and a decent haircut.

One is often reminded that other people are usually not that interested in your personal struggles and accompanying diary notes. As book entrepreneur I also have to consider the difference in sales between genres most readers know and expect and the more obscure types. The note might be a convenient format when you want to immediately express ideas that present themselves to you, but the genres apparently preferred by most readers are novels and short stories. If you think you’ve got something to say that you cannot shape into a story like an H.G. Wells or a George Orwell, then the essay would be the preferred choice.

This brings me to a technical crossroads: Am I going to reshape the scrawling in my last few notebooks in the form of essays, which will give the book it will form part of a better chance of reaching that dream sales number of an entire dozen copies, or will I simply polish the notes into a more digestible style and then send them into the outside world in almost the same format they originally entered my inner world – which will probably limit sales to a more modest two or three copies?

I say, let the words stand as they are, for now.

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