When I was a kid I used to be accused of spoiling everyone’s fun. Had I been a little more glib, I would have squawked. Had I pondered it a little longer, I would have shrugged my shoulders, realized the truth. Everyone was trying to spoil my fun.
I heard an interview with an author via a pod cast as I was driving home this evening. I purchased an mp3 player in the hopes that it would make the silly and certainly unnecessary drive time traffic less annoying. See, just more people trying to spoil my fun! I am convinced that the only reason there is traffic in this world is for the sole purpose of disturbing my equilibrium. The audio massage leaves me with a fine subdued sense of well being.
The writer was asked if he was going to pursue other means than the novel to write. In particular he was asked if he would consider a blog. He replied that since he didn’t even know how to use his iPod that a blog was out of the question. He also stated that he was going to get rid of the wi fi in his apartment and become connected via some wires. And that he spent too much time on the internet reading fluff and that he was going to get back to books. The interviewer agreed with him heartily.
Now, I had something more than traffic to annoy me.
I love books. I have quite a collection as anyone who has been to visit me can attest. I love reading, more than you, I’ll bet. At least as much as the author being interviewed. The attitude that I was hearing is one that people often feel they have to convey to me. This new kind of technology is demeaning and base.
I do my work on a computer. I consider it as an amplification of my thought, my being. I work more effectively and think more clearly when I am at the keyboard of a computer. A connection is made that is vital to me. More and more I consider blogging an evolving form of my art.
In no way do I want to convert you to becoming a computer user in order to become a better communicator, to amplify your intelligence, to check to see if facts are straight. All of those things and more are part of my work and my being. It doesn’t have to apply to you. I can stand it.
In no way do I want to convince you to read or write a blog, to download a pod cast or to configure an RSS reader.
The author, the interviewer and far too many people want to convince me that their particular means to enlightenment is the one that I should employ, the “way” that I should follow. Sorry!
Me? I kill the Buddha every chance I get.
A famous science fiction writer on a cable channel during an essay segment that he created brought out a crafted box containing his collection of pencils and told the viewing audience that here was the way he wrote. The synapse fired from brain through his arm in clean strokes of pencil on paper. No computer for this fellow. Not even a typewriter. Nope, just the smooth line of fine dark on white.
I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth of his writing. I’m pretty sure he was also telling all of us what slackers we were for not using such a divine method to write.
Use your pencils, write your novels, read only “great” literature, only read non-fiction works, don’t watch science fiction movies, drink wine out of a jelly jar, compose only jazz, put the toilet roll so that the paper reels out across the top, create a poem by scratching with an awl on a piece of sandstone. It’s not that I don’t care….well…maybe it is that I don’t care…it’s that it’s just not all that important to me.
And the way that I do things just aren’t that important to you. I’ll be glad to talk about my methods ad nauseum. I’ll listen with interest to your ideas. I could even adopt them as my own. But I’ll never write a how-to manual. And I sure as hell won’t read yours.
It doesn’t make me righter or brighter, does it?
– No no no! How many times do I have to tell you? Wash the glasses first, then the dishes!
In the words of Sir Winnie the Churchill, “Ending a sentence in a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
What’s the point?
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