My friend asked me to write a few words about love. Now I’m stuck.
What are you supposed to write about love that hasn’t already been written? People have been writing stuff down for thousands of years, and I bet the first thing that Grog wrote down with a charred piece of wood on the back of a flat stone was something really romantic for the cave-lady who stole his heart. With that kind of history, how do you write something that hasn’t already been written?
SHAZAM. That’s the crux of it.
Just like that, we’re on to something. Not only have people been writing stuff for generations and generations, but really smart people have been writing things for pretty much the whole time writing has been a thing to do. Tons and tons of writing, and tons of it is really, really good.
So, again, with all that writing already done, what have I got to writing that’s new or interesting or worth writing? The answer I hear is “probably nothing”, and I assume that answer is correct. We are all just hacks, anyway. Even the brilliant writers today are just regurgitating stuff that’s already been gurgitated. The guys I admire…Daniel Pink, Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Harry Turtledove…it’s a long list…they’re just mixing and remixing ideas and words that have come before. They are like literary Taco Bell: same 7 or 8 ingredients mixed and mashed in different combinations and given pseudo-Mexican names. Nothing new under the sun.
Then it occurred to me that perhaps this has occurred to those same guys before. Maybe Mr. Pink has had that thought. Maybe Mr. Godin has written about it. Mr. King, Mr. Card, Mr. Kawasaki, and Mr. Turtledove…maybe they’ve all already had the thought and already dismissed it.
SHAZAM. That’s the point. They thought about it and dismissed it.
Are they frauds, hacks, posers, and peddlers of somebody else’s wares? Not if they do what I know that they do, and that is put a little bit of themselves into the regurgitation. By doing so, it becomes less regurgitation and more…well…their gurgitation. After all, aren’t we all supposed to be learning from each other? Aren’t we all supposed to be listening and taking in new ideas? Aren’t we supposed to be formulating our system of beliefs, our own personal philosophies? If we aren’t, then we’re just automatons, not autonomous. I don’t like that view of the world. I like the view where the mind and the soul and everything in between that I have been given continuously take the world in and spit it back out with a little piece of myself put into the mix. As Seth once said, art isn’t the thing that’s produced but the act of overcoming resistance. Art, he said, is in the soul of the artist.
I am here to create art, just like you are. There may be precious little new under the sun, but I’ve still got something to say about it.
So, William, what is love? I’ll tell you what I think…
Illuminate Possibilities 