What's the use?

A few thoughts on why The Distant Fire exists, and what I believe it can do.

I recently finished In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. Ostensibly written as a memoir, Machado’s intense reflexivity and deepening understanding of the small moments that make up a life give the book an excoriating quality. It’s not an easy read, but it is an important one. Through the prism of identity and everyday conversations, abuse and its power is laid bare. Each new chapter is approached with caution and a magnetic hope that things get better, that people recover.

In her Prologue Machado writes,

The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection. Memoirists re-create the past, reconstruct dialogue. They summon meaning from events that have long been dormant. They braid the clays of memory and essay and fact and perception together, smash them into a ball, roll them flat. They manipulate time; resuscitate the dead. They put themselves, and others, into necessary context.

This is why The Distant Fire exists. Reflection on our lives as they were then, and as they are now, depend on us placing ourselves in time. The totality of what we’ve experienced, and what we’ve learned, is present in the everyday us. We too, braid our clay, pulling at insistent strands of things we can’t forget and do our best to keep sane throughout. There is great compassion in being free to state, ‘This is who I am, at the moment’. We often keep our very best selves saved up, we quieten the turbulent storm inside and blunt the edges of our interest to better fit in. But the world is a river, not a game of Tetris. We are the crucial element, taking up what space life allows.

You play host to a thousand stories, sharpened into opinions and moulded into a self-authenticating armour, and so into each day we go. The Distant Fire will help each of us to grow stronger and allow us to be heard. That’s the destination ahead.

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