The Anxiety of Influence

Part of what makes it so difficult to write about Raf after all these years is that it becomes impossible to recall experiences exactly the way they were. Because I know how the story ends - the anger, the resentment, the impossible stalemate, I find it difficult to write without carefully meting out my words.

My roommate Lex is the only other person who knows about this blog (and probably its only reader). Last night, as he was perusing my first couple of posts, he said to me "I think this will be good for you...but I know you, and you're editing yourself."

I suppose he's right, but part of that comes from the desire to want to recall every experience exactly as I took it in with my whole being. Harold Bloom called this dilemma "The Anxiety of Influence" and describes it not only as all writers' inability to produce a wholly original thought because of their precursors, but also as the problem of memory superimposing itself on recollection.

I keep wondering how I should structure these posts. Would it be easier to write them the way my brain works - i.e. in flashes and snippets from the past mixed with my present stream of thought? I'll have to get some input on that after I've experimented for a while. I also wonder how long it will take for my recollection of a decade worth of memories to sync up with the present. Hmm...

For now, I'll continue with the story.


Flashback

I'm sitting on the dining hall porch at camp. It's raining, but that doesn't prevent me from intuiting Raf's presence. He's sitting at the other end, about 20 feet away with his chin on his knees, staring out at the muddy lake at the base of the hill. In a self-described effort to rebel against his father's idea of "normal", he has grown his hair into the biggest afro I've ever seen on a white man. We exchange snatches of sarcasm and somehow fall into reluctant conversation. Everyone has retreated into their cabins to wait out the storm, but we sit and talk for almost an hour, letting our legs be splattered by red clay and raindrops until we're covered in the stuff.

He tells me about his family, wondering how to tell his father that he wants to be a photographer. "My father wants me to get a real job, yeah? But what does that mean? Photography is real to me. It's what I love doing." I balk for a nanosecond - I've never been good with sudden intimacy. His honesty makes me uncomfortable, and I'm puzzled by the apparent wisdom he thinks I have to impart.

We sit in silence for so long that I think he's going to get up and leave, but he just waits for me to mull his existence over like it's the most normal thing in the world, until finally I say: "well, have you ever tried just telling the man what you want?" This is a completely foreign concept to Raf, who looks at me as if I had just suggested he take a nailgun to his eye for kicks. "Well.....? Have you?" No, he concedes, he hasn't. Tentatively, I suggest that maybe he should write his father a long, honest letter and see what happens. The earlier perplexion has disappeared from his face and suddenly he's gone, running across the grass to his cabin to start the opus. "This guy is bonkers..."

I go inside the dining hall and grab an apple. When I swing the porch door open I nearly clip his face. He's standing right smack dab in front of me holding all the writing implements he could find.

"Will you help me, then?"

Damn it. I like him.