This is for all the writers out there, and there are a lot of you. What I have in mind is anonymity, or–more to the point–the limits of not being anonymous. The irony is inescapable. That I seek anonymity in an art form that aims at immortality for its practitioners seems counterintuitive and just plain wrong. Writing gives you a direct means of expressing yourself and marking your territory through voice, style, theme, character, etc. The last thing a writer wants is to be anonymous. Or, if they have to be anonymous, then the goal would be to become conspicuously anonymous.
That reminds me of the time I went to a faculty event, of which there were many in my day, and conspicuously avoided another faculty member, who returned the favor. The animosity my colleague showed me was probably due to his awareness that I saw him as an entitled dude with a doctorate in self-promotion. But that’s another story.
Sometimes, I wish I had started out anonymously, including this blog, my website, YouTube channel, podcasts, X, and Facebook. I’d need a pseudonym, of course, but then I’ve already thought of that. I’d take something from The Federalist Papers, Cicero, or some obscure crypto inventor. I have a file with possible names somewhere in the basement, which is where any good Jungian would look.
Regarding other social media, I don’t use LinkedIn anymore. I’m not keen on networking. It’s disingenuous. I never had an Instagram account even though the reason for the platform has been explained to me a dozen times. I have known about Discord for a while but am intimidated by the title. And Reddit’s on another level. I wouldn’t want to expose myself like that. I’ve eaten enough jabs and been thrown to the mat enough times to keep me humble. I don’t need humiliation.
But I find myself longing for anonymity now, not in the sense that celebrities claim to want it, but because of the freedom it would give me to write without inhibition. Notice I didn’t say without responsibility as in the toxic assaults of keyboard warriors on YouTube and X. I mean the ability to write what I think without having to explain myself or self-censor because it might offend readers with thin skin.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not out to offend anyone, thin-skinned or not, but I have particular views about things. And even though I care less and less about those things as I get older, you can still get a rise out of me if you mention certain events or people. I’ll leave it at that.
The main advantage of anonymity is the persona it creates for me as a writer. That persona gives me cover. To do what? To lie, bend reality like a spoon, exercise poetic license, etc. The truth is, I fabricate and embellish quite a bit. I don’t actually lie, but I let you, the reader, think what you want simply by what I leave out. For instance, I may say that I once slept on a mountainside in Guatemala with leftist guerillas marauding nearby, and that I found a scorpion in my bed—all of which is technically true. But my life certainly wasn’t in peril. That doesn’t stop me from letting you think it was as if I were that bombastic character from Seinfeld, Mr. Peterman, who is enthralled by his own voice.
On the other hand, the carabinieri nearly did arrest me in the Milan train station in the middle of the night after leaving my possessions with a tattooed guy and his pit bull. The three of us (including the pit bull) could not find lodging anywhere and so slept in a stairwell at the station (see Mano-a-Mano a Milano). It is also true that I snuck onto an inbound train to use the toilet and almost got locked inside when the train took off. Some things are, in fact, stranger than fiction.
Anonymity would prevent me from being found out. Writing, for me, is an exercise in potentialities–what might have been in the past or could be in the future. I take no implacable stance as if drawing a line in the sand. I don’t care enough about most things to do that and so don’t feel the need to defend what I write. I don’t want to mislead people, but just as I am comfortable enough in my own skin to laugh and not take myself too seriously, neither do I take the things I write too seriously. You take it or leave it. Of course, that doesn’t include posts about physical suffering, death, and children. I would never do that. God will not be mocked (Gal 6:7).
Finally, I am aware of Hemingway’s advice about each sentence having to draw blood or it’s no good. I suppose in the act of creating a sentence that’s true. Filling a page, a letter, or post ain’t easy. It can be like drawing blood, but I’m not one for bleeding all over the place. I never want to attract that kind of attention. Make of that what you will–or a whippoorwill.
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