Turn, Turn, Turn

Embracing a new point of view.

I’m perched on a couch in a hotel lobby. The lighting is dim, the temperature a few degrees shy of refrigerator. The music sounds like the score of a spy movie. It smells like everything, at once — coffee, cleaning spray, the Le Labo scent pumped through the ventilation system, the egg-and-cheese being eaten a foot away. A laugh rises above the chatter, loud and deep and throaty. I haven’t written a word.

I had hoped that a change of scenery might shake something loose. But in practice, altering my surroundings has done little to shift my point of view.

Wherever I go, there I am. And I am sick of I.

“I” is like the selfie of language. Everywhere, all the time, often too close to its subject.

I’m tired of typing it. Tired of saying it. Tired of thinking it. Tired of hearing it.

Tired of being trapped within its limitations.

*

Point of view matters. We learn this in grade school, a lesson reaffirmed with every book or movie or voiceover track we encounter. Who is telling the story, to whom?

First person lets us get all up in the narrator’s head. Second person can sound like someone is trying hard to be literary (but I secretly find it the most fun). Third person offers some distance, a view of the wider scene.

As far as reading (and writing) is concerned, I’ve always been a sucker for first person, because I relish imagining the world through someone else’s eyes. It’s intimate. Inviting. Like a conversation with a friend, or a peek into a secret inner world.

When it comes to living, though, first person is the default. Snug inside ourselves, we are fixed behind the “I,” nestled within the internal monologue. But is this always the case?