"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have been spending a lot of time on the internet. I like what my friend said about it (and I'm going to paraphrase a bit here): "The internet has the tremendous power to make you either exponentially smarter, or exponentially stupider." I fully believe that. You can spend as much time as you like, free of charge, reading literature, philosophy, learning new things, developing skills or having discussions, just as easily as you can meandering around, playing useless games, looking at pictures of girls in bikinis (or less), or watching reality TV on youtube. I spend my time doing a mix of both, though I'd like to think the vast majority of it is spent fruitfully.
While watching video entitled "Epic Racist Moment on Game Show" on YouTube (I'll let you be the judge as to whether that was time well spent or not), I stumbled across this website. It appears to be all but defunct now, but I was reading an article about how the author knew what she wanted to do with her life at age 8. It seemed extraordinary to me until I realized the same thing happened to me at age 10 or 11. I remember it with crystalline clarity: I was sitting on the bottom step with my elbows propped up on my legs, and my parents were in the dining room, seated. I was facing them and I told them "I'm going to be a famous writer some day." They looked at me, and I knew it was palpable: I'd never been so sure of anything in my life.
That is probably the clearest memory I have of my childhood, maybe even including my adolescence. Now, looking back, I don't have any idealistic dreams of attaining fame, but I still do about becoming that writer. It's still stunning to me that it's been well over a decade since I put this much energy and effort forth towards honing my craft, and yet it seemed to flow just like I had taken a week long break from it. I couldn't feel more at ease and in tune with my nature doing this than if I was a lion hunting a gazelle. If I could do nothing but this I would and, in fact, that is my aim.
It's also intriguing to me how, just like the author of the essay that inspired this blog post, I didn't really have creativity imbued in me during my childhood. My parents were educators. They were avid readers, which was definitely a help, but neither of them were what I would call creative spirits, nor were any of my friends, really. Great authors were my only teachers: Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft (yes, I was on a horror story kick for quite some time). Later on, when I entered college and grew a voracious appetite for anything literary, Herman Hesse, TS Eliot, Robert Frost, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway... and countless others.
It all came back to me, not ploddingly like I assumed it would, but immediately, like a timid little shadow that was waiting in the corners of wherever I stood, waiting to be acknowledged. It feels just as rejuvenating as it did when I was a kid, trying to conjure up a new monster for a half-cooked story that was, in my mind at the time, sheer genius. It is still intrinsically titillating.
This is fun. This is pure joy. It is maybe the only thing I can do without any inkling of approval from anyone, without any tangible reward, without any acknowledgement, and still enjoy for its own sake. It is the one thing I will do the rest of my life even if I never receive a dime for it. Even if I have to pay for it. It is the one thing I could adhere to even when all else may seem pointless. It is the one medium in which I can pour myself into, fully exposed to the world, guts and all, without the least bit of shame.
The world needs creative entities like me, the same way it needs actors portraying characters that we, as an audience, can live vicariously through, the same way it needs athletes who commit amazing physical feats for us to admire, the same way it needs politicians who put themselves on the line and in the eye of public scrutiny to change the world in ways we may approve or disapprove of. We are the fodder that sustains life. We are the blood that seeps through the wounds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have been spending a lot of time on the internet. I like what my friend said about it (and I'm going to paraphrase a bit here): "The internet has the tremendous power to make you either exponentially smarter, or exponentially stupider." I fully believe that. You can spend as much time as you like, free of charge, reading literature, philosophy, learning new things, developing skills or having discussions, just as easily as you can meandering around, playing useless games, looking at pictures of girls in bikinis (or less), or watching reality TV on youtube. I spend my time doing a mix of both, though I'd like to think the vast majority of it is spent fruitfully.
While watching video entitled "Epic Racist Moment on Game Show" on YouTube (I'll let you be the judge as to whether that was time well spent or not), I stumbled across this website. It appears to be all but defunct now, but I was reading an article about how the author knew what she wanted to do with her life at age 8. It seemed extraordinary to me until I realized the same thing happened to me at age 10 or 11. I remember it with crystalline clarity: I was sitting on the bottom step with my elbows propped up on my legs, and my parents were in the dining room, seated. I was facing them and I told them "I'm going to be a famous writer some day." They looked at me, and I knew it was palpable: I'd never been so sure of anything in my life.
That is probably the clearest memory I have of my childhood, maybe even including my adolescence. Now, looking back, I don't have any idealistic dreams of attaining fame, but I still do about becoming that writer. It's still stunning to me that it's been well over a decade since I put this much energy and effort forth towards honing my craft, and yet it seemed to flow just like I had taken a week long break from it. I couldn't feel more at ease and in tune with my nature doing this than if I was a lion hunting a gazelle. If I could do nothing but this I would and, in fact, that is my aim.
It's also intriguing to me how, just like the author of the essay that inspired this blog post, I didn't really have creativity imbued in me during my childhood. My parents were educators. They were avid readers, which was definitely a help, but neither of them were what I would call creative spirits, nor were any of my friends, really. Great authors were my only teachers: Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft (yes, I was on a horror story kick for quite some time). Later on, when I entered college and grew a voracious appetite for anything literary, Herman Hesse, TS Eliot, Robert Frost, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway... and countless others.
It all came back to me, not ploddingly like I assumed it would, but immediately, like a timid little shadow that was waiting in the corners of wherever I stood, waiting to be acknowledged. It feels just as rejuvenating as it did when I was a kid, trying to conjure up a new monster for a half-cooked story that was, in my mind at the time, sheer genius. It is still intrinsically titillating.
This is fun. This is pure joy. It is maybe the only thing I can do without any inkling of approval from anyone, without any tangible reward, without any acknowledgement, and still enjoy for its own sake. It is the one thing I will do the rest of my life even if I never receive a dime for it. Even if I have to pay for it. It is the one thing I could adhere to even when all else may seem pointless. It is the one medium in which I can pour myself into, fully exposed to the world, guts and all, without the least bit of shame.
The world needs creative entities like me, the same way it needs actors portraying characters that we, as an audience, can live vicariously through, the same way it needs athletes who commit amazing physical feats for us to admire, the same way it needs politicians who put themselves on the line and in the eye of public scrutiny to change the world in ways we may approve or disapprove of. We are the fodder that sustains life. We are the blood that seeps through the wounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment