Multiple Overlapping Drafts...

In the prose piece 'In The Garden of Lunar Grapefruit', Garcia Lorca writes 'I have seen drafts of unpublished life- multiple, overlapping drafts, like the buckets on an endless waterwheel...' It is considered that in this piece Lorca was talking about the lives he did not live- all the things he might have done, or been, had things been different for him. And it has an added poignant and prophetic element when we consider that he was dead at 38 years old, this genius life cut so short.

Recently I've been reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. My sister's wedding is coming up and I've chosen a section to read. It is a piece about the open road and travelling and how connecting to the earth means constant motion, not looking back, never staying still, even if the 'still' place is comforting. I think Lorca lived like that too, perhaps he would have continued to live like that. 

At the launch of Kei Miller's excellent 'Things I Have Withheld' the other night he said he was not interested in telling stories which had already been told, and that he was interested in the family and community stories which are not spoken about. It is a really remarkable collection of essays which I think anyone who is interested in writing should pick up. 

It made me wonder about the stories I do not tell- I know exactly what they are and why I do not tell them. The event made me want to be a much better writer, and a braver writer, to stop seeking out the comfortable space and perhaps like these poets embrace the forward journey even when it means facing all those multiple drafts which go unpublished. 

I'm writing this in the hope that I remember it...