Or, What is the Point of Writers' Desks?
by Mara Jebsen
I once had a friend who owned a studio in the city. It was angular and modern and comprised of all of about 350 square feet. Nevertheless, my friend, author of over a dozen books, managed to squeeze no fewer than four desks and a kitchen table in the space. This gave him the pleasing illusion that he had five perspectives from which to compose the next magnum opus. In fact, he had none. Or, I should say, I never saw him write in that studio.
Another friend of mine, a poet in possession of a nice room in Brooklyn, tells me she just had to clear all of her walls and surfaces and jam her desk against a window. The window’s view she then obscured with a black curtain. She did not want to be distracted beauty. She’d been feeling blocked for a while, and knickknacks were posing a problem.
I helped another writer friend move, once. That involved an appraisal of the desk he’d had since childhood, which he felt was important to keep, on account of very special graffiti he’d scratched into it. Upon inspection, the desk revealed very little graffiti, and what was there didn’t say what he had thought it said.
I recognize all of this. Because of the peculiar wiring in my brain, it calls up a perversion of a Dr. Seuss rhyme. Like this:
Re: Magnum Opus
Will I write it in a train?
Will I write it in the rain?
Will I write it on a boat?
Will I write it with a goat?
Café’s are good. Though in Brooklyn, they are wont to be filled with children, some of which are too cute or too sticky or too rude and want to bump your computer. Babies, even quiet ones, are the worst, particularly for a writer with a sense of civic responsibility. For me, they are idea-kryptonite. I find myself worrying about them, with their erratic behaviors, and their general tendencies toward destruction.