When I write
This passage is from Han Kang, from her Nobel lecture titled Light and Thread.
When I write, I use my body. I use all the sensory details of seeing, of listening, of smelling, of tasting, of experiencing tenderness and warmth and cold and pain, of noticing my heart racing and my body needing food and water, of walking and running, of feeling the wind and rain and snow on my skin, of holding hands. I try to infuse those vivid sensations that I feel as a mortal being with blood coursing through her body into my sentences. As if I am sending out an electric current. And when I sense this current being transmitted to the reader, I am astonished and moved.
In these moments I experience again the thread of language that connects us, how my questions are relating with readers through that electric, living thing.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who have connected with me through that thread, as well as to all those who may come to do so.
I am intrigued by Kang’s focus on conveying her sensory experiences through words. In that sense, her description reminded me of Thomas Nagel's account on the subjectivity of experience.
Consciousness is something we each experience for ourselves, but it is hard to explain from the outside. We all know what it feels like to be us, yet we can never fully know what it feels like to be someone else. That is why I think art and literature are some of the best ways we have to share a sense of that inner experience.
