selfdivider

Remember how I told you in a previous post that the Pacifica Quartet is offering the Beethoven cycle for free at Columbia University And remember how I said I’d go to every single one of them and post reviews up here Well, I lied. I missed the first two concerts (Op. 18, No. 3 and Op. 74). I missed one of them because of the Ahmadinejad nonsense, which I felt the compulsion to watch as one watches a house on fire. I missed another because I had to listen to Gayatri Spivak chastise everyone for not being able to intuitively figure out how to read classical Greek, thereby lacking any faculty of intelligence required to read Aeschylus.

But I had to go to the Opus 131 in C# minor, one of my favorites. The concert was held in the small Philosophy Hall at Columbia University. People brought their lunches. There was a woman with two toddlers, really cute and remarkably well-behaved boys who intermittently got up to dance, especially through the Scherzo. The Pacifica Quartet entered and gave a brief talk to contextualize the quartet, with demonstrations. Then they sat down and played.

I’ve never heard this quartet live in such a small room before. There were maybe 100 in the audience, 50 of them standing. The fugue of the Adagio leading up to the Allegro was especially fine, played with ruminative concentration by the Pacifica. The intensity of the reading didn’t flag until the final Allegro, when the second violin seemed to lose his concentration in patches. On one level, I’d have to say the Pacifica didn’t quite have the impetuous attack and the relentless passion of the Takacs, especially in the culminating Allegro. But on another level, this was as perfect a performance there could have been of this quartet, on that particular day. I sat right behind the first violin. The big, over-sized windows of the Philosophy Hall were gauzed by opaque scrims, through which you could see the overpass between Columbia’s main campus and the East campus, and the people walking to and fro, white iPod earphones plugged in their ears, moving in their various degrees of busy-ness. And it just felt so good to be there, that moment of caesura from the clock-time life, listening to the sound and thought of late Beethoven filling the small space, completely invading my thoughts and feelings, too. As the quartet’s final movement was building toward its trenchant C# major ending, I thought of the character Kretschmar in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus talking about another late Beethoven composition, the ending of the Arietta from the Opus 111 Sonata, which he calls “a brief soul-cry” -

Much else happens before the end but when it ends and while it ends, something comes, after so much rage, persistency, obstinacy, extravagance; something entirely unexpected and touching in its mildness and goodness… After an introductory C it puts a C# before the D… and this added C# is the most moving, consolatory, pathetically reconciling thing in the world.

Some of you may know that I started a series of interviews called The Blue Notebooks at Columbia University. We invite different authors, artists and intellectuals and talk about their body of work. This Thursday at 8 pm, if you are in NYC, I hope you can come to our interview with writer Matthew Sharpe, whose latest novel, Jamestown, was recently released to great reviews. My good friend Bethany Rower will interview Matthew. I haven’t read Jamestown yet, but I liked The Sleeping Father very much. Both books will be discussed, in addition to his two earlier books. We’ll have some of Matthew’s books on hand for sale & autograph, at a considerable discount; it’s one way to support The Blue Notebooks.

Anyways, the event is this Thursday (9/27) at 8 pm, 501 Schermerhorn inside Columbia’s main campus. We usually end up taking our writers out for a couple drinks after, so if you can make it, please come out with us after the event, too, and say hi.

On a completely different note, I’m really happy to find out that the soprano Dawn Upshaw and writer Stuart Dybek have just been awarded the MacArthur “Genius” Grants. That name of the award makes me laugh (in my head, I always hear Dr. Evil’s voice pronouncing the name) but the prize money doesn’t. In any case, I’m really happy to see that Dybek won. His short story, “Hot Ice” from the collection The Coast of Chicago, is one of the stories that had inspired me to read and write more carefully, with a greater passion.

(Image, by Ryan Tozzi of The Blue Notebooks) 

With the Nobel announcement looming in the near future, people are talking again about the usual suspects in contention for the prize, Murakami among them. Murakami did win the Franz Kafka International Prize for Literature last year; Jin Young Lee, for GQ Korea, caught up with the visibly tired writer for her follow-up interview, ten days after he returned from the prize ceremony in Prague, back in Hawaii. This is the final part of the Murakami interview I’ve been posting on this blog. (With apologies, once again but for the last time, for my crappy translation. You can read the earlier installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

…

Lee: Thank you for making time for me. Even as I was dialing your home and cell phones, I couldn’t shake off this feeling that I had no right to be doing so, because I know how much you cherish your freedom and privacy. Although I’m sure you are not so convinced, as I sit here in front of you with a photographer and various assistants in tow.

Murakami: I believe you. I couldn’t answer you in time because I was very fatigued from the Prague trip. I’ve refused every interview request since the award. But I made an exception for this interview, as I consider my previous experience with you special in many ways. Thanks for understanding.

L: How was Prague You do look a bit tired.

M: Prague was great, but the Award Ceremony wasn’t a happy affair. Too many reporters. I made it clear from the beginning that TV broadcasts of the ceremony must be limited to the regional stations in Prague, only. But I found out later that the film was sold to Japanese stations. The news was broadcast throughout Japan. I still feel perturbed about it. That’s why I’ve cut myself off from all media contact. My defensive mechanism for such things became even more hyper-sensitive.

L: You seem like a type that doesn’t get angry easily, Haruki-san. What kinds of things give you displeasure

M: Reporters and photographers. People who work for the media.

L: Wait, please withdraw my name from such a list!

M: Okay. You’re an exception.

L: I understand the kind of ambivalence you feel toward such literary prizes, but isn’t being awarded by such a prize a cause for happiness, as a writer?

M: Honestly, it’s not. I have no interest in literary awards. Most people don’t remember who won the Nobel last year or the year before. All they remember is a good story, a good novel. For me, readers mean everything. If readers remember my novels, that’s enough for me. Since literary awards are meant to be forgotten, they have no special importance for me.

L: Your works are now internationally recognized, and many people will probably remember your name in future generations. Despite this, do you feel that you have more to learn, as a writer? Or are you satisfied now with the ability you possess?

M: Have I really become such a writer? I’m just enjoying this process of writing, that’s all. Even if someone were to tell me, “Haruki-san, you don’t really have to write anymore,” I’d continue to write. When some people have time left over, they go to the movies with their girlfriends, while still others might go to baseball games, but I write. Because I want to.

L: What’s usually on your desktop when you write?

M: Keyboard, computer, coffee. I’m addicted to caffeine. When I lived with a cat, I always had a cat by my side, too, although I can’t have a cat anymore, now that I travel exclusively. Also, before I stopped smoking in 1983, I smoked a lot at my desk. But when I write, I’m the type to organize and clean my desk systematically.

L: Does your life become as systematically organized when you write, like your desk?

M: Yes. When I’m not working on a book, my life is confusion itself, but once I start a novel, I become very bureaucratic. I wake up at four in the morning, like a businessman, and I write until nine or ten in the morning, undisturbed. I don’t skip a day, so I can maintain the flow and the direction of where I’m headed in my writing.

L: Are there times when you become tired of words or sentences?

M: No, at least not yet. I think I’m a workaholic. If I’m not working on a novel, I’m still writing something. For the past five or six years, there was not a day when I didn’t write. Whether it be an essay or a work of translation, I write without fail.

L: When you reminisce back to your childhood, what comes to your mind?

M: My cat. My cat was my friend, my younger sibling. I don’t know why I’m so crazy about cats. I like how they are soft and warm, and individualistic, kind of like me.

L: What were you passionate about during your teens?

M: Hmm, back then, I only read books and watched movies. When I was in high school, I had a girlfriend with whom I watched movies. I liked films by Godard or Truffaut, but my girlfriend preferred happy melodramas to anything serious or sad.

L: What did you focus on in your 20’s?

M: I have no other memory of my 20’s aside from working. I worked like a man possessed. Because I got married when I was still a student, I had to make money. I opened Peter Cat, my jazz bar, so I had to pay back the loans I took out to open that place.

L: What would you say your biggest ‘event’ was, in your 30’s?

M: That I became a novelist. If one became a novelist after desiring to be a writer, it’s nothing to be surprised of. But I became a novelist despite the fact that I had no inclination at all to be one. I’m so thankful for that; it’s really the biggest blessing this life has given me.

L: You are fifty-eight now, right? What kinds of things make you happy these days?

M: When I was twenty years-old, I liked going on dates with girlfriends. Now, I’m the happiest when I’m writing.

L: I’m sure this discussion we had about writing will continue, even after this interview is over. But no matter how many constructive and fruitful discussions there are concerning literature, there’s no escaping the fact that this world is headed in an unfortunate direction, nor can anyone be pragmatically saved from real pain and duress by reading words. What is the power of literature, then, according to you?

M: I received a fan letter once from a reader in Korea. She was a twenty year-old girl, but after reading Norwegian Wood at two in the morning, she said she couldn’t resist the intense feeling of wanting to make love to her boyfriend, so she ran to his house right away. If it’s a good story, I believe the story should be able to move not only its reader’s emotion but his or her action itself; it should not stop at merely moving someone emotionally. It should be able to elicit a direct reaction. A great story works in any language. People use different languages in Korea, America, Russia or Vietnam, but when they see a good story, they all react with the same emotion, in sadness or happiness. Political strife among different nations in the world keeps worsening, but I believe that literature is working, even amidst this chaos, with a power that can change the world. Story has power. More so than any political or societal conflict.

I’m sure many of you read moistworks.com as I do. Then you’d be familiar with Megan Matthews’ intensely personal takes on music and life. I just clicked over to moistworks just now, and found out that she died this week, leaving behind her nine year-old daughter, Renee. I only know her through her posts on moistworks, but I feel incredibly heavy-hearted, especially after talking to my wife about it. Megan was only thirty-six; on the moistworks site, it says that she died of complications following a pulmonary embolism. Perhaps it’s completely inappropriate to mention this, but when I read the cause of her death, I thought of a character named Ireneo Funes in Borges’ story, “Funes, His Memory,” who felt and remembered every trivial detail in the world with an unbearable urgency of feeling and lucidity: Borges tells us in the last line of the story that Ireneo Funes died of pulmonary congestion.

There’s a donation button on the moistworks site which lets you contribute to the funds for Renee. I think this link works, too, here.

(Image of Megan and Renee, from moistworks)

For the foolish few who refuse to believe that parenthood fundamentally changes a human being, just look at the picture on the left. Yes, that is Tim Harrington, the certifiably crazy frontman for Les Savy Fav, stone cold rockin’ a $800 Bugaboo, the Bentley of baby strollers. When Adorno and Horkheimer wrote about the end of Enlightenment and the self-capitulating process of capitalism, I’m sure they presaged exactly this picture. He looks so… happy (even though he probably left his Vuitton man-bag at home).

I’m kidding, of course. I’m just bitter because I can’t afford a Bugaboo for my kid. The picture comes from the slide show on the Village Voice website.

Yet, there are still other evidences which suggest that parenthood might not affect a person’s “edge,” after all. Sam Lipsyte, a young father himself, recently wrote a dementedly funny and sad short-short in Tin House, about a young, fucked up father whose devious and self-destructive charms could out-Denis Johnson any Denis Johnson character (except for maybe Bill Houston from Angels). And Anthony Bourdain, who just became a father this year, has this to say in response to this stupid menu item called “Mesquite grilled Amish organic free-range chicken… accompanied by foraged mushrooms” -

Foraged mushrooms Amish chicken Who gives a shit about who picked the mushrooms or if the people who raised the chicken wore bonnets

This is one of those sentences which needs no context. It comes from the first volume of Javier Marias‘ multi-volume novel, Your Face Tomorrow, called Fever and Spear, fluidly translated by the always excellent Margaret Jull Costa. I’m not even going to try to sum the novel up with a by-line; Wyatt Mason had a sympathetic appraisal of Your Face Tomorrow in The New Yorker a couple years ago, but it seems that the link is dead.

But no matter -

And it is that known ending which allows us to dub everyone ingenuous and futile, the clever and the stupid, the totally committed as well as the slippery and the evasive, the unwary, the cautious and those who hatched plots and set traps, the victims and the executioners and the fugitives, the innocuous and the malicious, from the position of false superiority - time will see it off, it will be time, time that will cure it - of those who have not yet reached their end and are still groping their way uncertainly forwards or walking lightly with shield and spear, or slowly and wearily with shield all battered and spear blunt and dull, without even realising that we will soon be with them, with those who have been expelled and those who have passed and then… then even our sharpest, most sympathetic judgements will be dubbed futile and ingenuous, why did she do that, they will say of you, why so much fuss and why the quickening pulse, why the trembling, why the somersaulting heart; and of me they will say: why did he speak or not speak, why did he wait so long and so faithfully, why that dizziness, those doubts, that torment, why did he take those particular steps and why so many

(Image: painting of Ulrike Meinhof, by Gerhard Richter)

This past Friday, I went to the Hungarian Pastry coffee shop on Amsterdam & 111th to get started on a book called Mothers and Shadows by Marta Traba, a work of fiction about The Disappeared in Argentina and Uruguay. When I walked in, seated at the front table was writer Nathan Englander, who is known to write at the Hungarian Pastry. He had black ear plugs in, and he looked at me blankly for the briefest of a second, before diving back into his notebook. As you know, Nathan Englander’s recently released The Ministry of Special Cases is about The Disappeared and the Dirty War in Argentina. So as I was reading about the junta in Buenos Aires at my table, about so many lives irreparably and stupidly lost, it was difficult to resist the temptation to walk over to Englander, start talking about The Disappeared, and his amazing novel. But alas: the black ear plugs.

It’s a strange but great wonder that so many writers - both Latin American or non - have chosen to remember those tyrannical years in Latin America through their recent works; I’m thinking of Junot Diaz’s tremendous The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which was just-published, virtually everything written by the late Roberto Bolano, in addition to Englander. It would be great if someone chose to chronicle what happened in Korea, too, on May 18, 1980. (I can only imagine what writers like Chang Rae Lee might do, as his fictional depiction of the comfort women in the World War II in A Gesture Life was miraculously rendered; so lyrical, but unbearably painful to read.)

In the city of Kwangju, 30,000 students and civilians gathered to protest the coup of General Chun Doo Hwan on May 17 of 1980. On the following day, General Chun declared martial law in the city, launching a counterattack against the masses; his Airborne Brigades quarantined the city and after a particularly hostile confrontation with the crowd, the soldiers lost their objective discipline and started killing citizens indiscriminately, rioters or not. Chun’s forces stymied the press and media, but word spread quickly - even though the official casualty was listed at 192, the actual count was closer to 2000 dead civilians. The military had swiftly burned some bodies, buried others, and dumped the rest into the sea. General Chun became the President of Korea soon after.

Choe Yol-lak, a 37 year-old man, was killed near Kwangju prison, with gunshots in the front left chest and right hip; his body was dug up from the hills in front of Kwangju Prison. Kim Nae-yang, a 5-year old girl at the time, was shot by a member of the 3rd Brigade, leaving her lower body paralyzed. Yi Mae-sil, a 68 year old woman, was killed from multiple gunshots to the right of her head. Im Chong-sik, a 18 year-old high school student, was shot while giving aid to his uncle who was injured. Pang Kwang-bom, a 13 year-old boy, was shot to death by a paratrooper of the 11th Airborne Brigade while swimming with friends in the reservoir of Wonje Village. Pak Yon-ok, a 49 year-old woman who came out to look for her youngest son, was hiding in the sewer pipe near the entrance of Inseong High School as shootings began; the paratroopers found her and shot her to death.

And more. So many more names of innocents, that could have easily been lost and forgotten in history. According to my knowledge, perhaps the oddest testimony in existence is left by Kim Haeng-nam, a 47 year-old man who was raising about 200 domestic birds at the time. He survived with minor injuries, but all 200 of his birds were shot to death by the forces of General Chun’s martial law.

I’m sure a lot of you have already read Mark Singer’s absorbing account of the Joyce Hatto debacle in The New Yorker. If you don’t know what all this is about, here’s what happened, Cliff Notes style: Hatto is a concert pianist who, after a lengthy bout with cancer, died in 2006. Her husband, William Barrington-Coupe, had been putting out her discs, which were hailed by many critics as the output of a prolific musical genius. Well, it’s since been found out that Barrington-Coupe had cribbed from other pianists’ recordings to fashion Hatto’s performances on discs.

If there’s a cautionary message here somewhere, it is this: don’t fuck with GraceNote. Yes, the same GraceNote database system which automatically retrieves album info into your iTunes when you pop a CD in your computer. It turns out that one of the readers of Gramophone had inserted Hatto’s Rachmaninoff concerti disc into his computer, only to have GraceNote recognize the disc as Yefim Bronfman’s performance of Rachmaninoff.

It seems that Barrington-Coupe grew progressively bolder and more innovative in his forgeries. He was cutting-and-pasting different artists (Marc-Andre Hamelin, Minoru Nojima, etc.) to create a compelling, composite performance by a singular pianist, Joyce Hatto. This is no mean feat, as Mark Singer astutely recognizes and comments on Barrington-Coupe’s “accomplishment” -

With his collection of more than a hundred Joyce Hatto CD’s, Barry had created the most diversely prolific and gifted pianist to emerge in decades, with a corresponding narrative that aroused the esteem and good will of music lovers around the world… The alchemy that transformed Joyce Hatto into “Joyce Hatto” was, in its twisted way, a tour de force, a dazzling work of art, literally the performance of a lifetime.

Does this ring a bell, fiction readers It should, if you’re fond of William Gaddis, especially The Recognitions. In Gaddis’ novel, Wyatt Gwyon, who has the uncanny ability to reproduce paintings by the Flemish masters, says this -

Originality is not invention but a sense of recall, recognition, patterns already there.

What do you do in the presence of a fake which transcends the original You either laugh or shudder.

(Image: Detail from “The Portrait of Maria Portinari,” by Hans Memling)

I always find myself waiting for the new issue of Book Forum to come out once every few months. I’m sure this isn’t news to anyone, but I believe it’s one of the best review papers around. This Sep/Oct/Nov issue is a good one, too, with empathetic reviews of Junot Diaz, Andrea Barrett and Ha Jin’s new fiction. Another thing about Book Forum is that there is always one review or a feature that piques my interest in a new writer: in this issue, it’s a novelist named Terézia Mora, a German writer of Hungarian descent, whose first novel is translated by Michael Henry Heim. Read Donna Seaman’s review here.

The funniest opening lines of any review published this year Written by Richard B. Woodward, in reviewing Ben Ratliff’s biography of John Coltrane -

Never underestimate what a “tragic” death can do for an artist’s reputation… imagine a seventy-five year old Sylvia Plath on her third marriage, exhausted after leading thirty years of leading poetry workshops, reciting “Daddy” on Fresh Air.

Noah Isenberg reviews a couple of books about the Frankfurt School philosophers’ exile in LA. Jenny Davidson on two books that connect Proust with brain science. And the best reading of all might be Arthur Danto’s salty take on the last book of essays by the late Richard Rorty.

There’s also a survey of the private library of Alex Ross, the classical music critic for The New Yorker. If you are in NYC and at all interested, I’ll be interviewing him about The Rest Is Noise (Oct 07; FSG), a 600-pp book about the history of music in the 20th century. The event will be on October 29, at 8 pm; 501 Schermerhorn inside the main campus of Columbia University. More details will be forthcoming soon, through the website for The Blue Notebooks, which is currently being built.

FYI: I was not paid to write this post for Book Forum, although it strangely turned into a commercial for them. Not even pizza coupons. I don’t even know them folks.

The interview below follows Part 1 & Part 2 of the intensive interview conducted by Jin Young Lee, in Hawaii, for the January 2007 edition of GQ Korea. My flawed translation, once again. (Two more parts to follow this one; I told you it was long!)
…

Lee: What do you do with all that money you actually earned from your popular books

Murakami: Freedom. I buy freedom and my time. Those are the most valuable and expensive things in life. Since I don’t have to worry about making money, I gained freedom, which I can use to concentrate solely on writing. My freedom is most important to me.

L: I’m sure additional stress is attached to such a gain of freedom. It is a happy thing to be an author who sells a lot of copies, to be read so easily by so many people, but doesn’t that happiness also become a source of stress for you Isn’t there a literary prejudice against such a “popular” writer?

M: Prejudices are only opinions. I don’t care for them. I only want to carry out a serious story through the lightest prose and easiest vocabulary achievable. Say that a writer has created a work in which complex prose has been achieved through a dizzyingly difficult language, but the story is empty. That’s a real tragedy; there’s nothing more tragic than that in the world. There is no rule that says you can create a literary masterpiece only through writing difficult prose.

L: How do you handle all those criticisms concerning you as a writer?

M: I became stronger. Imagine that you have become famous suddenly. In order to survive, you must become stronger. People who start out by saying that you are an internationally great writer, so on and so forth, ultimately end up using you. It’s like riding a rollercoaster. When Norwegian Wood sold like hotcakes everywhere, I became depressed. Such a heavy burden on me. As you know, it’s a publishing truism everywhere in the world that critics hate writers of bestsellers.

L: But even Goethe once said that a writer who cannot expect one million readers to read his work should not even attempt a single word. Was Goethe wrong?

M: Of course he’s wrong. According to my standards, at least. Even if the number of my readers is very small, I’d still write as I do now. Because I need to express myself, however I can. I can’t stop. It’s my destiny; I write because I have to.

L: Then, is there a book that you wrote, even with the knowledge that it won’t sell so well? Like a film director who makes a movie, despite anticipating its commercial failure?

M: I never wrote to write a bestseller, but at the same time, there isn’t a novel I wrote, pushing ahead like a bulldozer, thinking that I’d be the only reader of it. How would I put it… I’d say my readers are in a certain way addicted to my style of writing. They are loyal readers. That’s why I know that they will put up with reading my next novel, even if it’s just so-so. Although they probably wouldn’t buy my book if it’s really bad, I at least have confidence in myself that what I write won’t be that bad.

L: Where is your final destination, as a writer?

M: My goal is to write a book like Brothers Karamazov.

L: What aspects of that novel are you talking about? Its complex and varied characters and structure?

M: Sure. But that’s not everything. There is an entire universe contained in Brothers Karamazov. So many different facts of life, life systems, world-view, stories… these are all in that novel. There is always something to learn, no matter how many times you read it.

L: It’s already well known how much you admire The Great Gatsby, too. But there are many readers who read Fitzgerald’s novel learning of your preference, who ended up not liking it. What do you like so much about The Great Gatsby

M: That’s a difficult question. How shall I put it… The Great Gatsby is like a textbook for me. I learned how to structure a story, how to move characters and create dialog, how to shape prose, all through that book. I read it countless of times, and I still read it. I always learn something from it when I read it. Fitzgerald’s choice of words is excellent, his prose impeccable, and the story itself is marvelous.

L: You finally translated The Great Gatsby, after preparing for years and years.

M: Yes. I was thirty-four years old at the time. I promised myself to translate The Great Gatsby as best as I can, before I turned sixty. I still have a few years to go until I reach sixty, but I finished the translation of The Great Gatsby last October. I heard that in ten days of publication, 140,000 copies were sold. I think there were many readers who were waiting for the translation.

L: How would you criticize your translation of The Great Gatsby, objectively speaking

M: I think I did well. There are five or six translations of The Great Gatsby in Japan, but my version is probably the best one.

L: Where does such confidence spring from?

M: There’s no need to think about it. It’s a fact. As I was translating, I carefully thought about which Japanese words or phrases would substitute well for the original Fitzgerald version. It was an excruciating process, but fun at the same time.

L: In addition to writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, Richard Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut, is there a Japanese writer you like to read?

M: Kenzaburo Oe. I don’t read many works by Japanese authors, but I like Oe’s work. Since I was young, I preferred the western literature. I was especially addicted to Russian literature, and after I learned English, novels written in English.

L: Is there a writer working today that you can compare to the writers mentioned above?

M: Mm. Not yet, as far as I know. There are writers I like, but I haven’t found a writer that made me say “I’d like to write this way” upon reading the work, as I had when I was young.

L: Once, in an essay, you wrote that a student of writing sent you her manuscript for your feedback. You said that you agreed to read it because she promised a bowl of unagi-don (eel-rice). Can anyone expect your feedback/criticism if he or she promises you free unagi-don?

M: Did I really say that? These days, I tend to not criticize anyone’s manuscript. I politely refuse when I receive such requests. Besides the point of being of actual help to the writer or not, I personally don’t like to criticize, item by item. But if a fabulously beautiful woman came to me and said “Please read my manuscript,” how can I tell her no? (Laughs)

L: Fine. If a pretty woman came to you and asked, “How can I become a great writer like you?” What would you say to her?

M: Let’s see… I believe that in order to be a great novelist, what’s involved is not a matter of ability, but a matter of instinct. I never thought to myself that I was born with the ability to write. In me, there is only that instinct which forces me to write. Only if you have such an instinct, you will feel the desire to write, its compulsion. Like fate.

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