Hear the Wind Sing
by Haruki Murakami
1
“There’s no such thing as perfect writing. Just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.”
A writer I happened to meet when I was in college told me this. It was a long time before I finally understood what those words meant, but just knowing them was a kind of comfort that put me at ease. There’s no such thing as a perfect writing style. However, in spite of that, the thought of actually writing something always filled me with a sense of hopelessness, because the things I was able to write about were fairly limited. For example, if I were to write about elephants, I’d have had no idea what words to use. That’s what it was like.
I struggled on with this dilemma for eight years. Eight years—that’s a long time.
Of course, there’s a limit to how much you can try to learn about things, but it’s not as painful as being old. At least, that’s what they say.
From the time I turned twenty, I strived to live my life this way. Thanks to this, I took painful blows from others, I was deceived, misunderstood, and I also had many strange adventures. Lots of people came around to tell me their stories, and their words flew over my head as if crossing a bridge, and they never came back. During that time, I’d keep my mouth shut, not telling anybody anything. And that’s how I came to the end of my twenties.
Now, I think I’ll tell a story.
Of course, there’s not a single solution to the problem, and once the story’s over, things will probably still be just as they were. In the end, writing a story isn’t a means of self-therapy, it’s nothing more than a meager attempt at self-therapy.
But, telling a story honestly is extremely difficult. As much as I try to be honest, the words I’m looking for always seem to sink into dark depths.
I’m not trying to make excuses. At least what I’m writing here is the best I can do. There’s nothing else to say. Still, here’s what I’m thinking: way before you’re good at it, maybe years or decades before you’re good at it, you can save yourself, I think. And when you do, the elephant back on the plains will be able to tell his story with words more beautiful than your own.
* * *
I learned a lot about writing from Derek Hartfield. Almost everything, I should say. Unfortunately, Derek Hartfield himself was the embodiment of a
‘simple’ writer. If you read his work, you’ll understand what I mean. His writing was hard to read, his plots were haphazard, and his themes were childish. However, in spite of all that, among the few extraordinary writers who brandished their writing as a weapon, he was unique. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the other writers of his time, even compared to them, the militancy of his writing has never wavered, in my opinion. Unfortunately, even at the very end, Hartfield could never get a clear grasp of the shape of his own enemy. When it was all said and done, it was a very simple affair indeed.
Eight years and two months, that was how long his own simple battle lasted, and then he died. In June of 1938, on a sunny Sunday morning, clutching a portrait of Hitler with his right hand and an open umbrella in his left, he jumped off the roof of the Empire State Building. The singular manner of his life, nor that of his death, ever became a subject of great intrigue.
I had the good fortune to receive a copy of Hartfield’s already out-of-print first novel during the summer vacation of my third year of middle school, while I was laid up with a skin disease that had taken over my crotch. The uncle who’d given me that book came down with bowel cancer three years later, had his body cut into ribbons from head to toe, and with plastic tubes jammed into his bodily entrances and exits, died upon their painful removal. The last time I saw him, his shriveled up, reddish-brown features had contracted severely, his body resembling that of a sly monkey.
* * *
In all, I had three uncles, but one of them died in a suburb of Shanghai. Two days after the war ended, he stepped on one of the land mines he’d buried himself. The third uncle, the sole survivor, became a magician and went around touring all of Japan’s hot springs.
* * *
On the subject of good writing, Hartfield said something that went like this:
“The writer who writes literature, that is to say the writer who ensconces himself in his work, always checks his distance. The important thing isn’t what he perceives, it’s the ruler he uses.” -If it Feels Good, What’s the Problem?, 1936
I stared at the ruler I held timidly in my hand the year Kennedy died, and from then it was fifteen years later. In those fifteen years I’d found that I’d really given up a lot. Like an airplane with an engine on the fritz, expelling luggage, seats, then finally the sorry stewardesses, in those fifteen years I discarded every possible thing, but I’d gained almost nothing in the way of wisdom.
As a result of that, and I don’t know if I’m right about this or not, I’ve lost all my convictions. Even if it makes things easier, my worst fear is that when I get old and I’m facing death I’ll wonder what the hell I’ve got to show for any of it. After I’m cremated, I doubt even a single bone will remain.
“People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream,” went a favorite saying of my late
grandmother.
The night she died, the very first thing I did was to reach my arms out and softly close her eyes. As I did this, the dream she’d held for seventy-nine years ended the way a summer shower stops falling on pavement, and after that there was nothing left.
* * *
I’ll write about writing once more. This is the last thing I have to say about it.
For me, writing is a terribly painful process. Sometimes I spend a month unable to write a single line, other times, after writing for three straight days and nights I realize everything I’ve written is all wrong.
Nevertheless, in spite of all that, writing is also a fun process. Compared to the difficulties of living, with writing it’s a lot easier to find meaning. Maybe it was in my teens when this fact finally hit me, and I was surprised enough to be dumbfounded for a week. If I could lighten up just a little, the world would move according to my whims, the value of everything would change, the flow of time would be altered…that’s how I felt.
The problem with that, as I realized, would come much later. I drew a line in the middle of a piece of notebook paper, filling up the left side with things I’d gained, and in the right side listing things I’d lost. The things I’d lost, trampled to pieces, things I’d given up on long before, things I’d sacrificed, things I’d betrayed…in the end I just wasn’t able to cross these out and cut my losses.
The things we try our hardest not to lose, we really just put create deep abysses in the spaces between them. No matter how long your ruler is, it’s an immeasurable depth. The most I can do in writing it down is merely to make a list. Not even with short stories or literature, not even through the arts. Just a notebook with a line drawn down the middle of its first page. There might be some kind of a small lesson in this.
If you’re looking for fine art or literature, you might want to read some stuff written by the Greeks. Because to create true fine art, slaves are a necessity. That’s how the ancient Greeks felt, with slaves working the fields, cooking their meals, rowing their ships, all the while their citizens, under the Mediterranean Sun, indulged in poetry writing and grappled with mathematics. That was their idea of fine art.
Those people digging around in the refrigerator at 3am, those are the only people I can write for. And that, is me.