The late Daniel Dennett is arguably the scientist’s philosopher. I reread him often as intellectual prophylaxis: a brain-wash of depth, creativity, and clarity. Today, as I was chiseling at my views on free will, I wondered whether Dennett’s clarity comes at the expense of style. Do the universal rules of communicating inevitably strip away individualism? 

Some time ago I realized I had developed an individual style in music writing—a sonic language that felt intimately mine. A curious language without an addressee, a projection of internal resonances without imagining a listener.

I rarely revisit my pieces, as I write mostly to forget—not in the trauma-dealing sense, but in the cache-clearing sense. Reading Dennett, I began to wonder if I had also developed a personal writing style and went back to some of my old texts. Two conclusions followed. First: yes, I’ve developed a style or two. Second: they are not the clearest ones. As an exercise I started rearranging paragraphs for flow and clarity. It wasn’t hard (at least I viewed the results as clearer), which meant my vagueness is a choice, not a lack of skill. Tracing the root of that choice, I realized that in my writing—unlike Dennett’s, unlike many others’—I am not really “communicating.” There are no truths I feel compelled to spread. My writing is closer to composing or painting than to transmitting ideas. Projecting internal, verbal resonances without imagining a reader.

And yet, wouldn’t it be a fun challenge to make those feelings less opaque?

A metaphor has been circling in my head. 

The amalgam of thoughts and feelings in the background of my mind reaches a critical mass, and some small disturbance triggers a flow-like state of writing. But this flow doesn’t feel like a stream of consciousness—it feels like an avalanche. The avalanche is made of billions of crystalline snowflakes, but of course it is itself an emergent phenomenon. Is it possible to capture both at once? The crystalline and the avalanching?