More from Milch. On Paul as a writer:
That sense of being on a roll allows us to infer that the excellence of the message is based on the principles of association of its components.
We think: "oh it's the content of what he's saying." And because of all our experiences of religion, we think, "yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very good, very good thinking."
But that ain't what's going on.
It's the juxtaposition of things and the way that one begets the next until finally we have a sense of the comprehensiveness of what is being said by its rhythms and juxtapositions.
I will tell you later in this conversation or another one that content tests and verifies the implicit assumptions of form. And Paul's religious vision affirms at the level of content the perfection of the communication which he accomplishes because he has given his soul to God.
And this was a guy that did a murder.
In other words, in order to write, you must have faith in what you're doing. He reads a passage from Paul (
1 Corinthians 13) and continues:
If you give your heart to the encounter with those words, you will know how to write. Because Paul had given himself the logic and it led him to murder, but the principle of association ...
Remember yesterday, I was saying, the idea that, any idea that is based on subject/object relationships (I and it, the thinker and the thought) must ultimately generate logic as its organizing principle. And must be wrong.
And logic murders faith.
That's why I don't use an outline. Because an outline is an expression of fear, and I must trust that the spirit will move with me.
I know what it is to murder and to want to be in the temple and I've been blessed to have heard the voice ask me why I persecute it. Every writer does. The trick is to train yourself to listen.
Heavy stuff. Poetic nonsense. Profound. (It's also important to note that he's speaking without notes -- true to form. Putting these ideas together as if they're coming off the top of his head).
