How often do we really know why we do something? And once we (if we) decide we know, how does that knowledge stay relevant or meaningful as anything besides a kind of referent for future situations?

I feel like “where” and “when” are more meaningful questions than why.  Why seems closed and finite: “I did this because of x,” whereas “when” gives this sense that  whatever happened and however you felt about it existed in an infinitesimally short amount of time, and that you have “forever” for other things to occur and other ways to feel about them: “I did this when I was 10.”

This week’s contest was partially an examination of how certain juxtapositions of time and space can lead to these kinds of spontaneous revelations–not necessarily epiphanies but more a kind of “airing out” of certain thoughts or feelings.

The most interesting entries, the ones that seemed “successful” in the context of the intentions  behind the contest, were the ones where the thought or emotion revealed didn’t even correlate necessarily to what the juxtapositions were. In other words, the external scene may have helped “trigger”  the narrator’s revelation or confession, but the confession wasn’t necessarily a direct “response” to the scene.

[I should note that the instructions in the contest didn't necessarily lead people in this direction; it just happened naturally in some people's responses.]

I feel like this disjointedness–say for example we’re in Paris looking at the Eiffel Tower but we’re actually thinking about being in basketball camp 20 years ago–is very common in life but is super uncommon in writing.  Even “good” nonfiction can seem “untrue” to me when everything is linear, each observation, description, action, and thought in direct relationship with one another.

[This  leads to a conversation about what nonfiction's "purpose" is--some may argue that the whole point is to create linearity out of turbulence--but I'm more interested in nonfiction writing as something which breaks out of traditional forms in a search for more closely and transparently approximating the writer's way of seeing the world.]

With this in mind, here was Anna Brones’s story:

An old man sits on the park bench, paintbrush poised in hand. Behind him, a dog sprints away from its owner. I have a hard time saying no.

At first when I read this I just felt a certain emotion, something like “damn, I have a hard time not saying no.”

Then I went back and started analyzing the lines.  I thought about symbols–the old man painting as someone both inside and outside of the scene, someone “motionless,”  while the dog is forever in motion and forever “in the moment” (and yet strangely “sprinting away from its ‘owner’”).

Then I tried to “figure out” the story. Is the narrator the dog owner? Is she having a hard time saying no to her dog? That could be one reading, and if it were true  it would still seem interesting to me. Does she literally “have a hard time saying no” because she doesn’t want to disturb the old man?

But then I thought that like the symbols, these questions were all based on “what” or “why,” and seem to matter less than the effect the story had on me and the way I interpreted it the first time I read it, which was the narrator is just someone watching the scene with these disparate elements–a dog, a dog owner, a man on a bench, and for reasons that are only known (or perhaps not known) to her–she realizes she has a hard time saying no.

Even if that wasn’t the way Anna intended for the story to be read, it still feels very true.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a story, and congratulations Anna, for winning!

Here’s a mixtape based on Anna’s piece.  Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?1uztzjtyzjw

Tracklist:

1. Billie Holliday – I’m painting the town red

2. Beach Boys – That’s not Me (Outtakes from Pet Sounds Recording Sessions)

3. Zizek – Excerpt from Fauna Megamix 03 (mixed by Daleduro)

4. Babasonicos – El Loco

5. Atlas Sound – Walk a thin Line (Cover of Fleetwood Mac)

6. Brian Wilson – Put Your Head on my Shoulder (Outtakes from Pet Sounds Recording Sessions)

Final notes: if you enjoyed reading about or participating in this contest, please visit the MIXTAPE WRITING page on Facebook.

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