Writing as Art & Learning

To write is to think on the page.

It is to have a thought, a thing which emerges out of the unknown repository of the psyche, that at first instance takes shape in the mind before it travels along the body in electrical form, and through the hand and fingers, and onto the blank canvas in the form of words. Thought is transformed from one sort of symbol––a symbol of the mental––into a symbol of written language. The process of turning thoughts into symbols is natural to us. We can give thoughts different symbolic and material form––pictorial, musical, or bodily, as is the case with art, music or sign language. Yet it is through the process of writing that we turn thoughts into a form that we can readily manipulate. If words do not cohere with thought, we press the delete key, and begin again.

As we know, writing is much more than a system of symbol manipulation. It is a means we use to express ourselves, to test and understand ideas, or to develop a narrative endowed by letters, words and sentences. However, ideas often sound better in the mind. An idea is lit by the stage of the mind, and it reigns supreme on its own. By giving ideas material form, we see what we truly think. In taking thought from the realm of the mind into the realm of the world, we can take a metaphorical hammer to ideas. We can mould, arrange, and test them, prior to their re-uptake into the structures of thought, our web of knowledge, justifications and beliefs, and the warehouse of memory.

Few can remember vast sums of information obtained through reading. Memory curves down with time; unless information is revisited, it moves further back into the warehouse of memory, until the processes that govern the warehouse deem it no longer useful, trashing the idea into the aether. So it is through writing that we run ideas over the body twice; once through reading, and secondly by transforming the idea into written words. To use the metaphor of etching, in running the idea twice through the body, we strengthen the etching. To write is to remember.

The view of connectionism, that our mind is embedded in the brain through connected units of neurons, serves as a radical tool for exploiting our own ability to develop deep understanding and narrative through writing. In the belly of the mind, ideas mingle, move and meet. But, unless we attempt to follow a chain of reasoning, how ideas will socialise together to form a harmony that we can employ, will be left to chance. What I mean is that, in giving ideas form through writing, we employ both the power of reasoning, and the power of creativity. By letting ideas socialise as they see fit in our minds, we employ the power of creativity. In placing ideas onto the page and moving them as we see fit, we employ the power of reasoning. We might ask one idea to shuffle here or there. Writing easily enables shuffling, which we can view as transformations that cohere with our rational capacity.

In bringing ideas out into the world to play as words, we make art through them, and we can employ the power of reasoned sight over them. In doing so, we can develop coherent narratives and understanding, a means of testing for consistency and reliability, and most of all, for keeping our warehouse of memory in good shape.