i wrote a play today ~

[lookingland]

i wrote a play today ~ granted, a very short one ~ and really it's a monologue ~ and not even a very good one, but still, i wrote it.

i haven't written a play in years.

i meant to write one for March to submit to a contest, but i couldn't come up with anything appropriate for that particular contest. when i was a playwright, i was a different person ~ how strange that is: to look at a whole body of one's work and completely not believe in it anymore. it's as if the whole of that philosophy no longer exists in my head anymore.

and it doesn't.

a whole body of work i will never stand behind.

sometimes i wonder about gerard manley hopkins, burning all of his work before entering the jesuit novitiate and how furious it makes some people (even me sometimes!) and then i think about it a little deeper and i realize that, comparisons between myself and hopkins on a literary level aside, the only thing that really differentiates us in this is that he actually had the courage to destroy his work. mine still sits, cancerously tempting me from the shelves and file folders.

i just may need to stoke a little fire this coming round of spring cleaning.

: D

Comments

[dsyndicate.livejournal.com]

But do you think Hopkins burned his work because he couldn't stand behind the ideas behind them or that he felt the need to relinquish all worldly preoccupations and feared the attention his work would receive. I happen to believe it is the latter and I have read that this was so. Also, he didn't burn them before he entered the novitiate but actually a few years into it. Of course, I'm going off memory at the moment and realize I could be wrong.

[dsyndicate.livejournal.com]

BTW, I really love Hopkins... no you don't understand... I love Hopkins =)

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

i really love hopkins too ~

: D

yes, a whole lot.

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

i could be remembering wrong as well ~ but i guess i always had the impression that it was sort of a combination of both: trying to get away from the worldly preoccupation itself, but also the possibilty that his poetic explorations may not have been entirely "kosher" (not saying they might have been improprietous per se, but perhaps work that might not square 100% theologically ~ or otherwise ~ with his calling) ~

i'm completely speculating, obviously, since no one knows exactly what he burned. but i guess that is the point: for whatever reason he believed the work was incompatible with his vocation.

it's interesting to think about either way.

[markredmond.livejournal.com]

when i was a playwright

It would appear to me that you are a playwright.

Regarding Hopkins, what a shame. I too purged a lot of my writings and belongings when I was in the monastery. I still regret it these many years later.