Language

"It is. . .inaccurate to speak of entering into dialogue, as if the components that do so could exist in any other way. To be sure, particular dialogues may break off (they never truly end), but dialogue itself is always going on."
(Gary Saul Morson & Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics)

Dialogue is the key. Bakhtin understands dialogue in several ways, and I am in conversation with his work. Dialogue require people. People who speak, listen, and respond. "There can be no dialogue between sentences. " When we speak we "turn to someone." Without this turn, the utterance "does not and cannot exist." (Bakhtin, The Problem of Speech Genres)

I am turning to you, and in turning I face the language of your life. According to Bakhtin every utterance (speech genre) is dialogic by definition. Words do not pop into an existence where nothing has been spoken. The world, in this view, is not made of up signs, but of transformative speeches. When we speak we enter the stream. When we are silent, we enter another. Like all energies in motion we can allow ourselves to be moved, we can resist, and we can join the energy we have into the conversation. Together we exchange words, words carrying their own energy with them.

"No word can be taken back, but the final word has not yet been spoken and never will be spoken."
(Gary Saul Morson & Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics)

Often people want to suppress dialogue, by declarations: it's over. Enough has been said, and I've said it. These authoritative means wield power over speakers and listeners and claim to be (not represent, but actually define for all time the content and form of the world) undeniable. If we remember the lie underlying these authorities and participate in the dialogue we can face life ethically and communicate.

"The very words [we use] carry the intonations and evaluations accumulated in daily life, in diverse contexts and heterogeneous speech genres whose existence has not been recognized."
(Gary Saul Morson & Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics)

I am speaking of speech. Every day talk. Sometimes the dialogue is familiar, we recognize and agree on the terms. Sometimes the dialogue is strange and we are required to invest some aspect of ourselves (time, patience, intellect) to finding a way to relate, a means of offering some meaningful response in return. These processes are never complete, life requires that much of us. The dialogue goes on. We utter our words. The dialogue continues.

"The most interesting and most unfinalizable aspects of any interaction arise from the relative disorder of the participants."
(Gary Saul Morson & Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics)

The relative disorder requires each of us to show up: awake to the shape of each moment, aware of our place, and willing to "turn to someone." From Coltrane's Ascension and Meditation to Auten's Sense and Sensibility, "we all need someone to listen to us." We speak, we moan, we take a moment to catch our breath and blow.

Novels

"The one discipline you need in the first draft: to follow where anger, or delight, or laughing take you."
(Carol Bly, The Passionate and Accurate Story)

The one discipline needed of any artist is to follow—themselves. This is also the one discipline that requires the most vigilance and courage.

The way of the artist is unpaved. Each artist must make their own path through terrain known only to them. Vigilance is required as many editors, critics and audiences ask you to be, see, write, and feel something you cannot. They then ask you to create from this space, a space that negates you and your vision.

When you experience a person's art you follow them, and the choices they've made. In writing I've heard it say you follow their breath. As you shape the words, reading out loud or even in your mind's ear, you pause and shape the words they've laid before you.

When working, writing, I follow the voices. They come to me and I scramble behind. I've always respected them and devoted, to them, my full attention. I'm not sure I follow anger, delight or laughter, but I've learned to work without an immediate knowledge of direction. Sometimes, when I write, I think this is crazy. I'm cannot write this. If I wasn't destined for hell, I am now—with this chapter I have made my fate certain. During those moments vigilance is required—hush now—keep writing. And I do. In this way the writing asks more of me than I thought I was capable of giving, revealing aspects I had never considered. I've learned to let my idea of the work go and listen.

Like Coltrane I practice everyday, aware that scales (reading and writing, speaking and listening) keep me agile of mind and spirit. Creating requires agility, endurance, and strength.

(In the history of Jazz men and Blues men)
"Who had to find their voices, and not be echoes.
Who had to have a vision, not just a stand.
And in the end, had to be true to themselves.
Because all imitation is suicide.
All emulation is a sign of an adolescent mind.

All of us imitate.
All of us emulate.
But the ones who love us,
the way Monk loved Coltrane,
you don't need to imitate. . .
go on and find your voice."
(Cornell West)

"It's all about the choices "
(Terrance Blanchard)