the undisclosed life
Temperatures rise and sink in the debris of seismic oceans. This is what it feels like to wade through the waters of memoir. I am lying down at Leighton Beach with my partner who is reading H.G. Wells’ Star-Begotten. We had a delightful swim in the currents of the Indian Ocean. Floating and rushing into wave after wave, I was struck by the weight of unravelling. Coming together and apart on the page for the edification of readers longing to discover themselves and the world through the delicately crafted words of the writer. I considered the secrets we harbour and how they erode the truth when faced with a blank page. Selective memories honed and deployed to mark the passage of time and the joys and sorrows that animate our waking hours. It struck me that the writer of non-fiction is faced with two choices: to write about herself or the affairs of the world. This is a misleading dichotomy. For to write about the world is to reveal something about the Self and to write about the Self is to reveal something about the world.
Lying on a bright-coloured towel on the sand, I am struck by the call to self-disclosure that underwrites non-fiction, the sharing of secrets and the exposition of the Self. Meanwhile, the tides rise and a once warm day cools as the chill etches itself inside my bones. The call of home sounds as my partner and I pack our belongings and tread the well-trodden path back to my apartment in Mosman Park. It is one o’clock and I am unsure how to write without sharing too much of myself. I wonder about sharing while withholding. The clock winds and winds and still, I fret, always fretting about my reception in the reader’s critical mind. The sun sets and I am poised at the foot of my couch, wondering about the contours of the undisclosed life. To be seen and unseen, felt and unfelt, heard and unheard. This is the wish of a writer who yearns to but is afraid of speaking. I put on my night clothes and my partner and me fall asleep on the couch, later rising to transfer our bodies to the bed. There, I am assailed by my fear of speech—of disclosure.
***
Writing fundamentally expresses a desire to be recognised—acknowledged. For one’s words to be tied to a name attached to a living and breathing identity. One that touches the lives of others and is touched in turn. One that has responsibilities and fails or succeeds in meeting them. One that is coloured by joy and sorrow and the individual’s efforts to negotiate the contours of these experiences. One that has convictions or wonders about the necessity of convictions and shares or shuns them in turn. One that loves or shies away from love even when it abounds. One that is driven by or shuns ambition and its alienating demands. One that desires or strives to free itself from all desire. One that speaks or recedes from speech. One that dreams even when those dreams cannot be grasped. One that embraces or foregoes the world. This is what writing expresses, an identity that is not merely imagined but that is etched deep in the recesses of a sentient lifeworld. Writing expresses the experiences and feelings that most readily preoccupy it. It bestows speech upon the identity, giving it the tools to articulate itself. Writing is exposure and dancing naked on the pages of hundreds of screens eager to devour curated sentences that gratify. It is a confrontation between an identity begging to be expressed and the world.
Marked by ego and voyeurism, non-fiction writing collapses the reader and writer’s assumptions about what is suitable to be shared and consumed. The writer wants to be seen, felt, and heard, and for her words to be attributed to her. She wants to be celebrated and to tell stories about her living identity. She wants to be consumed and be the bread and butter of the lives that eagerly await magazine instalments, speaking opportunities, and the much-coveted book contract. She wants to be the envy of other writers who struggle to put a compelling word to the page. Yet, writing rarely lends itself to celebrity. It might lead to an insular sense of community, the sense that one is not participating in the craft on their own, but in the company of others. Here, she learns that each writer feels a great urgency to disclose something about themselves or the affairs of the world. Each writer fancies themselves well-positioned to reveal certain truths about the order of things. The writer of memoir believes that her life is sufficiently enlightening so as to impart useful learnings to the reader. At the very least, the act of writing allows the writer to process the experiences she writes about, with the hope that they will be enlightening to the reader. For those putatively writing about the affairs of the world, there is the belief that one understands the issues at hand sufficiently to teach others how to regard the world and its phenomena. There is a certain arrogance to the art of writing—hubris.
As I sit on my red couch typing these words, I look outside the window and see grey clouds shrouding the sun. My partner is in the bedroom placing a phone call to his mother. He has advised me on numerous occasions that I should write under a pseudonym if I am fearful of sharing too much of myself with readers. There are certain matters I would not dare to publicly speak about, matters so delicate I fear that my livelihood would be jeopardised. Yet, such things cannot be foreseen. Still, the idea of writing under a pseudonym did not appeal to me because I am a writer like any other. I, too, strive after recognition and acknowledgment. I, too, am in the grip of hubris, believing my life, experiences, and observations, will be enlightening to others. Erstwhile, my partner believes that I should, under no circumstances, deny the world my writing and should seriously consider pseudonymous writing for those pieces I cannot publish under my own name. His justification is precisely that it would be useful to some, if not most who read it. Still, for so long this ego myself and other writers harbour would not allow me to do so. So, I grapple with what it means to be seen and unseen, felt and unfelt, heard and unheard, always grappling with the depths of a new page.
***
They say that to be a writer, one needs to be a reader. Well, I have twelve books gathering dust on my coffee table, waiting to be read. I have picked up each of these books with the intention of reading them, but these days I lack the concentration and focus required to read an entire book. I do not know when this transformation occurred, but it is frustrating because these books would harbour many insights into the machinations of the world and the psyche of the writers who wrote them. There is Real Presences by George Steiner, The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, Privacy and the Good Life by Lowry Pressly, The Principle of Hope by Ernst Bloch, No Straight Road Takes You There by Rebecca Solnit, and A Philosophy of Hope by Lars Svendsen, among others. These are the texts I am supposed to gather inspiration from in light of my aversion to disclose myself to the world. Granted, Solnit both comments on the affairs of the world while speaking about herself, yet most of these writers have shied away from self-disclosure in their respective works. As a writer, the imperative to read is rather suspect to me. These writers, no matter how much research informs their work, are still partly driven by the belief that they are enlightened speakers. They have something that is both important and necessary to say. I wonder how much a reader can trust works of art that are deeply rooted in hubris.
There is a certain urgency that has coloured my work in the past. I felt very deeply that I needed to excise myself of the rot of the troublesome experiences I had with unbelonging. Growing up in Australia, I always felt that my black skin was a barrier to making friends, finding love, and professional success. So, I wrote about those experiences as a means of expelling the frustrations that came with them from my life. Writing was a means of sense-making and processing those experiences. In those pages, I disclosed a lot about myself—familial relationships, romantic relationships, early twenties debauchery, travels. I also wrote about the political affairs of the African continent through the lens of my own personal experiences. I was a writer of memoir, and I do not know when this became so. Today, I rage against memoir while acknowledging that it is not possible to write without dabbling in some form of self-revelation. Even academic writing with its disdain for the first person voice reveals the preoccupations of the scholar. Still, the childlike naivete that informed my past self-disclosure has been replaced by a fear of sharing and an excessive focus on the implications of doing so. I have convinced myself that my world would come crumbling down if I shared anything of substance about myself, but then again, what is substantive is always subject to debate.
These books that sit on my coffee table; they mock me. They tell me that I am neither a reader nor a writer because of my failure to read or write a single page. The act of reading is almost as confronting as that of writing. To read, one must empty themselves of time and allow the text to consume them. It is a dialogue that demands the full attention of the reader as it did that of the writer. I worry that I am incapable of dialogue—conversation. I want to come to the page unencumbered by the weight of others’ words and the world. To this end, I rarely watch or read the news and rarely do I leave my apartment except to fulfill the usual obligations. I am afraid of engaging with the world and words of fellow writers because then they might make demands. Protest Israel’s ongoing occupation and genocide in Palestine, they will say. Care about the rising cost of living and the difficulty faced by first homebuyers. Donate money to support rough sleepers. Weep about Zimbabwe and its unemployment rate that rises and does not know how to fall. I would internalise all of these demands and feel deathly powerless. I would feel that the semblance of stability I am building and striving after is a myth. For all intents and purposes, I have become a recluse in every sense of the word. One who cannot engage with books no matter how hard she tries. One who pines after the page and cannot find it.
***
What does it mean to write without self-disclosure? This is for every writer to negotiate. What is shared and withheld is always subject to negotiation. What cannot be shared cannot be disclosed and what is shared is not disclosed, it is given. Disclosures can only occur where something hidden is revealed. If something is not hidden and there is a reasonable expectation that the people one encounters will be privy to that knowledge or will be welcoming of it, then any revelation thereof will not constitute a disclosure. There is nothing hidden in me writing about my time at Leighton Beach with my partner. Nothing hidden in my prior refusal to write under a pseudonym, and nothing hidden in my inability to read, engage with the news, or leave my apartment. However, there exist truths and experiences that each writer would only ever share with those closest to them, trusting that a certain degree of confidence will be observed. These truths and experiences form the basis of self-disclosure. While each act of writing represents an act of curation, what we decide to share determines whether we have meaningfully disclosed anything whose disclosure would cause discomfort. Disclosure, therefore, requires discomfort. If what is shared does not cause discomfort, then a writer has not disclosed anything. For whatever is disclosed is assumed to be better left concealed, and what is concealed is not easy to disclose.
The question of self-disclosure is relevant not only for writers, but everyone. One rarely divulges the full details of her life to a stranger she has just met. Between observations about the weather and whatever else forms the contours of the conversation, each party deliberates what is appropriate to share with their conversational partner. In the halls and corridors of workplaces, talk is peppered with surface level details of how each colleague spent their weekend and how their work is going. Unless a relationship of trust has been established, these relationships rarely invite any self-disclosure by the relevant parties. Yet, while it is possible to build trust with strangers and colleagues, it is nigh impossible to do so with one’s readership. Trust only enters the equation to the extent that a reader initially chooses to engage with a writer’s work. Here, there is the assumption that the sensibilities of the reader and writer will converge and result in an edifying experience. The writer hopes that her work will fall into the hands of a sympathetic reader, and the latter hopes he will walk away with some insight. At the very least, the reader hopes that the writer’s work was not a total waste of his time.
Self-disclosure requires courage more than trust. The courage to speak without worrying about the implications of doing so. The courage to trust in one’s reasons for sharing one’s life, experiences, observations, and insight with the world in the first place. The courage to dance on the precipice of discomfort and jump off of the edge into tumultuous but calming waters. The courage to strip naked and walk through uninviting streets. The courage to sing and let one’s voice be heard. Still, I lack courage. I am watching the tree branches dance in the gentle wind under grey skies with the occasional rain. I am drinking Yorkshire tea with milk and honey. The teabag dances in the cup with each sip. I can feel the cool air as I sit, unbathed and cross-legged on my red couch. A beige blanket is draped on the right side of the couch. I remembered to water the hoya plant that crawls up the side of my apartment. My partner sits journalling. He has just eaten peanut butter toast. It is a good day to disclose nothing, and a good day to hope that the undisclosed life is a choice, not something wrought out of fear. This is what it means to be seen and unseen, felt and unfelt, heard and unheard. Journeying, always journeying towards the twilight of a new page.