Might crayons better serve your purpose?
[Some liner notes for …“What if all of this made sense?”]

… a voice emerged and I was not really willing to tell it not to speak …¹

It’s not as though it speaks in tongues, this voice, yet there is a sense in which it tends to skate sideways ‘round the literal in this particular piece of writing. Cryptic at times, clever in places, the voice can not seem to resist hearing itself speak. (This, in itself, would be problematic if the voice did not also leave some space(s) for listening … and I hope/believe it did.) This voice that seeks to hear itself speak is, in my view of writing process, not necessarily speaking merely to be heard but, importantly, to find out what it might be saying …

… and while it seeks mostly to play, the voice in “What if all of this made sense” is not averse to polite brushes with the profound. In my experiences with writing, writing pedagogy and writing inquiry, “voice” tends to spend most of its time somewhere between playful, painful, and profound seeking mostly to find itself. Problematic in this pursuit of “finding voice” is, of course, the assumption that there is, in fact, A Voice To Find, leaving one with the task of negotiating, creating and constructing (a) voice(s).

What got me started on Voice anyway? Forgive me …

I’m writing these “liner notes” in response to a(n editorial) request to provide some sense of how this piece of writing came to be. “What if all of this made sense” was written over multiple sessions spent on the second floor of a bookstore café where the large and generous windows offered glimpses of life beyond (my) writing: parking meter mathematics, the subtle and not-so-subtleties of main street, the erotics of Spring’s Turning, lovely distractions here and there …

I had been invited to reflect on writing as (a form of) inquiry (as part of a larger review of “Ways of Being in Research”). The resulting piece of writing emerged as a quirky series of poems and musings that I’ve come to think of as kind of prose-itry. Like much of my writing (which never quite fits the package once it’s complete) these musings did not seem to direct a clear and unbending light on the myriad relationships in and among writing and research. In fact, one could claim they had nothing much to do with the writing of research and the research of writing …

… a voice emerged and I was not really willing to tell it not to speak …

I knew this of course, yet I also liked what I’d written and felt comfortable offering the piece up, if only as a kind of lovely exemplar of writing that swims in tangentials, employs circuitousness, and grazes quietly/loudly in the stall of inquiry.

This voice …

… comes from a place that once wrote its way through a doctorate. It contains resolve, hope, irony, anger, humour, patience, pleasure, frustration, indecision and urgency. It knows there is not much it wants to say by way of advice or offerings of theory or practice for those writing a graduate life yet it still seeks to be in touch with other voices it knows are out there writing.

… it seeks ways to keep saying (to itself and to whoever else might be around to bear witness): get to know your own writing. You will love much of this process. You will also hate much of this process. You will be bored. Lost. Exhilarated. It believes you might deny again and again your own inner "fill in blank here": wisdom, self, child, adult, seeker, writer, doctoral candidate...

But maybe somewhere along the line, you'll get so tired and exhausted, pumped up and determined, turned on and turned off, that you'll fall into a helpful forgetting and will begin to tap into this/these voice/voices and will get things done in ways you could never have imagined or predicted (whether it's a poem or ‘comp’ question or dissertation proposal or, heaven forbid, the DISSERTATION itself ...)

… a voice will emerge …

And like any Gift, you will try to squeeze it. Make it yours forever, milk it, bottle it, can it, keep it, graduate with it. But you can’t. You just can't. So you move on. Forward. Backward. Stumble. Trip. Take off. (Then repeat these in any order of your choosing or being chosen.)

… a voice will emerge. What are you willing (not) to tell it?

¹ I took this line from an email I sent to Lynn Fels by way of ‘explanation’ for the first draft of this piece of writing I’ve called “what if all this made sense?”