(The) Writer's Mind: Observation Assignment Rationale
What we're doing with the Complaint Narrative and the Observation Assignment is working to invent within the creative nonfiction genre, with the aim to distinguish the instruments or topical lenses that we always already project and use with integrity, and to revise these instruments through developing greater receptivity to "what happens" in everyday life.
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Integrity means being whole and complete. At the most everyday level, it means maintaining our identity (its integrity) no matter what the circumstance. In order to maintain the existence of identity we project, or ex-posit what we already understand onto any given situation. This is a creative strength, but it turns into a weakness when we fail to respond appropriately to a situation that calls for us to be other than what we identify with.
Opposed to integrity is receptivity, which means listening to the scene, letting the scene guide our performance. When we are receptive to the scene, our identity undergoes revision as we must alter our responses to account for the nuances of the scene. This too is a strength, but it turns into a weakness when we lose any sense of integrity to our commitments in life. |
Integrity of projecting versus Receptivity |
What if you viewed a controlling value as a kind of instrument, a topical lens that reveals the world we interact with? We don’t see the world directly. Rather, there is always a lens through which we project our values and interpret the world, and the way we value and interpret the world constrains (controls) our responses.
Consequently, I suggest that working (through writing in scene) to distinguish the instruments we project into our everyday situations and into ours and other’s writing lets us begin to invent new instruments that may allow for new kinds of performances beyond the customary. |
Controlling values are instruments, lenses that reveal the world to us, and that disclose our range of responses to the world. |
Thus, what makes invention possible (beyond the predictable) is the activity of distinguishing the instruments we employ whenever we engage in a given writing situation—noting in particular to what degree these instruments may in fact “use us” mechanically. Seeing the instruments, seeing the controlling values that direct what we write (often without us knowing beforehand), allows us to begin to invent new topics that will allow for new possibilities to write beyond the familiar.
Here’s how it might work: Consider that the instruments we use again and again give meaning to our experience, acting as lenses that disclose and manage how situations look to us. These instruments then determine the quality of our experience, that is, the instruments we use (or that use us) give us the realm within which we live and work. In other words, the instruments we use let the world and people show up in particular ways. For example, if we have an instrument called “people don’t appreciate me,” we may very well be on the lookout for how people don’t appreciate us. We are “people don’t appreciate me” waiting to happen. With customary use, we forget the realm into which our topical lenses throw us; things just become the “way they are” (like yellow sunglasses) when in fact our relationship to them is rhetorically constructed and forgotten as such. Remembering that our world or realm is rhetorically constructed through topical lenses will allow us to respond with authority to everyday life. And so, the transformation of the quality of our experience comes from revising our customary topical lenses in one of two ways:
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Invention is coming up with things to say, whether given by what you already know, by your being right, and by the dictates of what you think looks good. However, it may also be given by "topics" beyond these three always and already given topical lenses. These topics are not ready-made. They must be created newly and then practiced. This is one of the tasks of the artist: to create new topics to reveal the world to us newly. |
There is a significant problem with moving beyond our customary rhetorical practices, a problem that emerges by virtue of an always already topical lens and the integrity with which we employ it in any given situation:
All three of these rhetorical sets of practices mechanically enact what I call the topical lens of similarity, which dictates that whenever an alien or strange controlling value confronts us, one of our first reactions is to dismiss it or convert it to something we already know, about which we are right, and that ensures our looking good.
However, if the alien-ness of a controlling value persists (through various challenging performances—such as might occur during this observation assignment), then we experience resistance, or confusion, or some other fixed way of being designed to avoid the domination of the alien controlling value. In such moments, called breakdowns, we gain access to new ways of understanding mood or pathos. |
Breakdowns
At some point, either we take ourselves completely away, or we begin to become receptive to the "recalcitrance" of the situation (to be “recalcitrant” means to be “stubbornly disobedient”). Recalcitrance “shows up” when the instrument we customarily use:
For instance, if someone is skilled at “being nice” in any given situation, that very same instrument will get in the way if what is called for is being “straight” or “real” with someone.
And so, with receptivity to the recalcitrance of a given situation we might design new repertoires for performance as writers such that we converse, relate, grow, and express in ways that are surprising and that open up new possibilities for performance. These new rhetorical possibilities include:
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Whether you could tell it or not, this is what the class is actually about: we are studying rhetoric, and specifically rhetorical performance in writing. However, rhetoric cannot be studied or learned like learning math or science, for the method used here is something called phenomenology: we are observing the phenomenon called being a human being (through the medium of our own writing), and being a human being is only possible through being with others (a rhetor always has an audience). Any encounter with the other is a rhetorical phenomenon.
Let me remind you that wherever you are in relationship to this process is exactly where you need to be, even if where you are is totally seeking to invalidate the course and me and the processes you're having to go through. That experience is actually part of the process too (go back and read the course purpose once more). There's nothing wrong with resistance or confusion, in fact, I invite and even welcome such moods. Our ability to tolerate uncertainty is a practice that allows for new possibilities of creativity to show up (that's one of my controlling values—the purpose). Already knowing how to write only gives us empty writing (context). One of the many ways to take this is to consider this notion’s usefulness in creating and writing characters interacting with each other. Any narrative will likely have a character who faces an impossible request, who must then find a way to perform in the face of uncertainty, overcoming various obstacles, and either reaching or failing to reach the original goal, while having undergone development in the process. |