Locationality

Last week, I was sitting in our department lounge with a classmate and a professor. The classmate mentioned she was heading to her "second home" in a sort of vacationy spot. She writes better there, she says.

I have never felt that way, and said so. I have never felt beholden to any location or space for the sake of writing. Not even the desk I purchased for writing has of any kind of special sensory relationship for me. I could write there, but I can also write on a board on the couch or put a series of notes into my cellphone while waiting in line. No place has special meaning for me in that way.

This kind of gets back to these posts (Setting I and II) where I was inspired by photos on the International Writing Programs webpage where they showed the spaces some writers worked in. I felt completely detached from that photo piece.

I'm not sure the cause, really. "It's like the opposite of nostalgia," I said: I long to long for a place, it seems. I want to feel attached to a spot, but perhaps it's a good thing to feel nomadic and unattached. Perhaps it's lending something to my writing that I don't see. Or maybe it doesn't. I have no idea.

I say in Setting II that

setting isn't an issue of choice. I don't believe it is possible to create the proper environment for writing or any other artistic activity. This is what I suppose I mean by the fetishization of locale.

Don't get me wrong: I don't fault my colleague for her attachment to a space. I wish I had that, in a way. Perhaps it's an avoidance of the hyperstability that marked my life prior to moving to college. My parents still live in the same house I was born in and I should say, I hardly feel attached to my hometown anymore, besides the Atlanta Braves and people.

Location can be important though, and I acknowledge that. It's just not important to me.