How Do I Look?

Survey everything with "beginner's eyes," as experience may numb and blind.
--Nikki Heat.

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A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
---Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.


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Sometimes I start writing just by sitting down and starting.
     I poke and prod at my idea from one angle,
         then mentally stand up,
             move around,
and poke and prod and ask the same questions,
    then any different questions that the same questions just provoked.

Sometimes, after looking at things from several angles, the overlapping of my views is rather high...which may mean I'm encountering a good idea and need to run with it.

But, that may mean that my thinking is very narrow and I'm just attacking the problem with the same set of tools and expectations from a two-foot different starting point in what will turn out to be a marathon!

But, if my overlap is really minimal...then, there are probably several more good ideas or answers lurking out there, so I go back and mount another assault, starting again with a clean page and pretending I'm somebody else, say, some European great-aunt to whom all my dithering and doodling is profoundly a) interesting b) stupid c) completely off-target d) el bajar y subir de las ondas del mar que le hacen mareada.

Some questions only have one right answer--when tumbled to, all other answers pale into varying degrees of half-truths and out-right errors. Here lies the issue--what if the question doesn't have just one right answer? What if one singer sings a song fast and loud and the second vocalist is soft, slow, and compelling--is one "wrong" and the other "right"? Perhaps it's like a math problem with multiple variables (what did those kind of problems ever do to you to make you hate then so?)--there are sets of answers that are all "correct."

And so, stumbling forward, I look and listen. I look again. Later, I muse, I ponder, I write, edit, and re-edit. Then, all of us, work in hand (and as works in progress), we come together, merging our ideas, discovering harmony at sufficient points of overlap that the music of life emerges.

Don't be childish? But what is the alternative?

It took me four years to learn to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.
--Pablo Picasso.

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How true of many good things in life! We adults forget how to play like a child, nap like a baby, run/dance/sing with abandon, or...wait a minute. If it took Picasso that long to LEARN, didn't he have to work hard at learning for a very long time? Or, work at un-learning his bad habits, his hang-ups, his not-merely-unproductive but anti-productive self-criticism?

Gee, I think of writing as a craft that needs to be studied, learned, and honed like a fine knife that naturally loses some edge with normal use; I guess there's another side, a learned freedom to do "Gonzo writing," as the (nut-case?) writer Hunter Thompson did...no limits, less worry about the facts than the feelings--ahh, that brings things full circle to Picasso. Pablo Picasso didn't paint what he "saw," literally (I hope!) but he painted what he was trying to see, or, perhaps even more accurately, what he wanted you and me to see...and feel...and understand.

The painters whom I've long regarded as rather, ahem, dippy, to put it politely...are trying to make their audience see things from a different perspective: thus Picasso's cubism is a way of looking at life through more than one lens. But was it all "gonzo" for Picasso? One of his contemporaries said, "Picasso studies an object the way a surgeon dissects a corpse." (Apollinaire.) So, intense studiousness, but also intensely and intentionally breaking out of the customary ways of...painting, seeing, and doing.

Some writers (whom I deplore) are trying to do the same thing as the modernist painters...so, I'll keep reading widely and endeavor to keep my eyes, ears, and mind a bit more open to new ways of looking at things. I may even try to write a little more crazily--eek! And, start more sentences with "and" and end more a preposition with!

I'm selling...is anyone buying?

Selling it.

"A politician should have three hats:

--one for throwing in the ring;

--one for talking through;

--one for pulling rabbits out of, if elected." (Pulitzer Poet, Carl Sandburg.)

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"A writer should have three hats:

--one for creativity

--one for craftsmanship

--one for salesmanship." (David Smith, writer.)


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   Creativity: I cannot speak for most writers...but the creativity thing is usually not my problem. Focusing, fleshing out, persevering in the pursuit of the creative vision...ach, there's the rub!

   Craftmanship: hmm, this involves not only quality of craft but quantity...gotta have enough output to be visible, sellable, and intriguing. Whether it's writing or cooking, attention to detail and expertise, applied consistently and persistently--that is craftsmanship.

   Salesmanship: interesting thought...I discovered that a lot of what I did as a family doc was truly salesmanship! Not the oily used-car-salesman stereotype, but the friendly salesman who has an outstanding product and wants you to fully understand how wonderful it is--you'll want to buy once you're aware of the life-changing value of the product! If I didn't adequately sell my expertise in diagnostics and therapeutics, it wouldn't make any diff--the patient wasn't buying. My job was to change lives, true, but getting my "clients" to really buy into my ideas, my plans, to embrace them as their own--now THAT was my job as salesman. (And, as a teacher of young docs...I had to sell to them, too. Too much of passes for "education" is  equivalent to laying a stack of brochures out, reading them aloud, and thinking that's the end--I've delivered my product. But w/o getting my students to actually "buy" into my product...the brochures are just gonna sit there in the lecture room.)

   Met any true salespeople lately? Tell me about it.

Determined to be Free.

Life is like a game of cards.
The hand you are dealt is determinism;
   the way you play it is free will.

--Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru 

 

 

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   "Oh, there were too many things to do."

   "Poor me, I don't have any attention span, my mind wanders away all the time."

   "Doctor tells me I'm losin' my mind...cain't say as I miss it, much."

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   Well, I hope you've only used excuses one and two! But, why any excuses at all? Work with me on this--what do you have lingering that simply needs to be done?
   Still sitting here reading? Go do it!


   THAT, my friends, is also the task of the writer--I can sit here reading...or, piddling away time on you-name-it, versus,
             go and do it!
            (or, in this writer's case...put on some classical music that I know helps me to focus, close all other applications/windows, and start to write like a crazy man.)

   Now I'm inspired...buh-bye. I'll let you know how today's writing turns out.

   [Turned out great, pounded out about 1000 words, and at least half of it is gonna be keeper material! Now, onward and upward!]

   Okay, self-determination:
              I am free to write, to talk, to choose...
                    and free to blob, blah, and booze.
              Free to worship, sing, or pray
                    or free to waste another day.

They're all choices, wide-open. Just like the words that I put in the mouth of a character, or their actions or...wait just a minute. A character starts to have a life its own, and I cannot just put words and actions in willy-nilly (remembering the origins of this phrase, "will I, nil I," or "will ye, nil ye." Essentially, whether you like it or not, coerced; or, haphazard, w/o rhyme or reason.)...I must respect my characters and have them speak/act in accord with their personality. That's a big part of what makes a story authentic...do the characters think and do, with consistency? As my hero, Stephen King would say about his characters and plots, "They are their own people, following their own story line. I dunno what they're going to say and do next--I can hardly wait to find out!"

The Opiate of the Masses.

     Okay, those of you who don't recognize the allusion in today's title...look it up. [Okay, I'm a softie: it's Karl Marx, and the full quote is discussed at some length on Wikipedia here.]

     Were Marx with us today, he'd recognize that religion is no longer much of a mass opiate, right? What's your vote for the cause of the great dumbing-down of the Western world? [Really. That's what the comment section is for! Still think religion is? Support your argument in complete ppghs that are properly punctuated using appropriate language. (I wonder if any modern schoolkid has ever heard that line?)]

     While I think the "smart-phone" may be an up-and-coming candidate for drugging the masses into a stupor, unaware of their own thoughts as well as the world around them...I'm still voting for the television. The "idiot box." My personal fav, with thanx to Stephen King, who not-so-affectionately calls it, "The Glass Teat."

     Oh, don't come back with, "Well, the History Channel..." does this, or, "PBS..." that; you know exactly what I'm talking about--sports and marketing, soap operas and advertising, sitcoms and selling, dramas and movies and comedians and blah-blah-blah and all those shows THAT KEEP YOU FROM GETTING OFF YOUR DUFF AND DOING SOMETHING Y-O-U-R-S-E-L-F!
   
     Pardon me for yelling, but the number of times people complain about being too busy to exercise, too busy to talk at any depth with their spouse or kids, to busy to read good books or to pray or to paint, write poems, make that fancy garden that you've been talking about for you-know-how-long...yet we are not too busy to watch idiots competing/back-biting/complaining/being "judged," to watch news and sports, shoot-em-up or kiss-em-up movies and "Desperate Suburbanites" and "Vengeful Beauty" and "We in the Entertainment Industry Award Ourselves Show," and to what end?

     I dare you, in fact I double-dog dare you to turn off some of the infernal electronics in your life. Stand up, and go make something. Got a passion? Pursue it! Craft it, carve it, cook it. Write it, draw it, paint it, sketch it, compose it through the lens of your camera. Sing, dance, walk, talk, bike, hike, hug, go, do, and be...be the one who decides what you will think about next, rather than letting some TV producer lull you into such a state of receptivity that you'll not change the channel...and you might even be favorably impressed by one or more of the advertisements!

     Dare ya!

     Sincerely,
     Egg N. Yuowon

PS: the inspiration for today's blog goes to Janine Jansen, violinist extraordinaire...here performing Ralph Vaugh Williams' A Lark Ascending. Passionate rendering of a poignant piece...and, here, a more playful piece by Beethoven. (Music to listen to while you DO SOMETHING CREATIVE!)