Writing for no audience is writing what is in consciousness now. Look neither forward nor back. It is a process, a self description--with all the voices, all possible topics--no inhibitions, no intent other than itself, a kind of being through what looks like a doing.
It could be stream of consciousness, a label. But labels are applied to something after having looked at it, a kind of analytical post scriptum, or description of what we have come to know. But writing for no audience is not intended or a purposive art. It is more like art for art's sake, sans even that label. It may be what is done. But who knows or cares if process-now writing has no audience?
Writing for an audience is to have something to say, to share. Writing for no audience is therapy? recreation? re-creation? an outlet for what unarticulated things may be brewing in the great stew of the soul's manifesting? a way to let me become? the playground of conflicting selves where we can work through and then stop and move beyond. So with nothing but all of that license, there is no audience, no aim I want you--you, you, and you-me--to get.
Does this writing matter? Silly question. Only to do it when the up-welling needs to have a place to go--and then that purpose may be too Western, too serious, too tasky.
When does it take place? Anytime, anywhere. But empty Chinese restaurants in towns I visit--where I am unknown--are my favored places. You-other will have to sort out your where. I like it when the family is eating and talking at their own table before other guests arrive.
What is it like? It is pleasure. It is affirmingly being, my being alive and here. It is flexing and discovering. It is asking questions and writing to learn the answers. It is filling a notebook, a record of the good times and bad, where I have been and when.
Will I read all that stuff? Maybe. When I am old and wear purple and sit in front of the fire, scanning then burning--so no one will have evidence of my having been here--except their memories.
Writing for no audience with only what flows out as the something-to-say is like touching my self to make sure--to pinch myself and respond. It is for no other--not him or her or them, not for me sometime-when. But for now. Moments to hold before they're all gone. Moments to treasure and count up the riches now. Moments to let go of--after their clear acknowledgment. Moments to hope for should life surprise me with being as I would have it. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on"--you know the rest.
And when I put my pen down, I close my notebook and relish that home cooked meal in silence, wondering if the Chinese food is so beloved because of nature or nurture. If my writing for no audience were to speak aloud, s/he would say the answer is like all things--apparently, probably, sometimes, mostly--it is a little of all. And that as answer will have to suffice until the next time I think about and want to sort through the dustbin of my living.
My writing is about what it says it is about, that as ambiguous as that is and then some. I suspect the some is really sum--it is a whole, of a piece, and nothing. It is about a life trying to affirm itself as it tries to erase the trace of self which is of little account in the world of measured things. It is every time with every word the flicker of that flame before it goes out, or is given another moment to shine its light for someone, somewhere, somehow . . . if even that. Silence.
[Phenomenology exercise, summer 1999]
