"There is not a single good or great idea that cannot be defeated by a lie, rationalization, or excuse." - Dave Sim
Dear Internauts,
Remember playing?
Not even necessarily playing with anything, but simply the act of creating like the unleashing of a great well of wondrous imagination through the spillway of unbounded emotional energy...when momentum and motivation were in overabundance and guiltless fun floated on a golden cloud of possibilities.
Reminiscing is generally a frustrating exercise, and often it seems to do more harm than good both for my own life and that of the political climate as well. Still, I'm caught again in this trap of wishing I could but taste the imaginative potential of my childhood. Sure, the multi-layered tempests of plot-lines I put my action figures and stuffed animals through were likely as childishly simple as they were convoluted, but wasn't it easy?
Without the self-doubt or the immediacy of criticism, without the constant eye for an audience or the fingers poised in frantic anxiety to edit every whim...maybe I could unwind my neurotic delusions of perfectionism and reach a kind of rainbow ball pit for ideas.
No, ideas aren't the problem. Ideas I have. It's the how, not the what. And it's more than a pretty package. Beneath the spangled wrapping, something of substance waits coiled and counting down. Or it should anyway. That's the hope, right?
But speaking of hope—Star Wars is my favorite story franchise of all time. And maybe for any criticism that can easily be weighed against the dialogue or the simplicity of the OT or the many more which have been, can, and will be waged against the PT, it's ultimately the ideas which make much of the difference. We love it because...because...maybe I'm in too deep to analyze that with any clarity.
What I mean is that it's not all about the shiniest or the most symmetrical or finding exactly the perfect word for every [insert perfect word here].
Sometimes an old car in a grocery store parking lot can be a better room than a big bed and roof in some place fancy, like the taste of food when you're hungry versus when it's just meal time. Sometimes there's only you and the guitar or the pencil or the brush or the controller or the radio dial or the hockey stick or the hobby glue or the puzzle piece or the crossword or the spice rack or the dart board or the tool box or the knitting needles or the keyboard or whatever it is FOR YOU that takes you away from this necessity to mean something to everybody else and back to simply being a person yourself.
When you finally have time, or maybe you never will. Maybe you gotta make time. Maybe you gotta find a reserve of energy where none seems to exist because the necessities got the best of you. Maybe it hurts and it sucks and what's the point and I just wanna sleep or crash or hang out or consume, but then it's one more day where the line goes undrawn or the word goes unwritten.
There's not much point in saying yet again that I may never be a great artist or writer or musician or whatever. Maybe I won't. But to be good at anything, you gotta actually do the thing. Whatever is standing in my way today from drawing or writing or playing is probably gonna continue to be there tomorrow. The possibility of this new creation, though, will only ever be a possibility until I make it a reality.
So instead of promising myself I'll get to it when I have the time, why not do a little now? Why not right two hundred words? Why not sketch a panel? Why not spend half an hour on that lick I was workin on? Why not create something?
I consume SOOOO MUCH media. I pac-man as many stories as I can. I'm addicted to the next post or the next page or the next episode. And then I can spend my days like so many other folks just sorta participating in the mechanisms of society. Last week it was folding and tearing and stamping and filing hundreds and hundreds of pages. Carry this. Mop that. Move this. Type that. Copy this. Trash that.
I don't have the time, energy, or imagination of my eight year old self anymore. What I do have is life experience and the ever-growing threat of mortality. I may not have very much of either as compared to older folks, sure, but what do I have? If I could take a weird shaped rock and make it a space ship back then, maybe I can take the huge library of influences in my head and pick a little dent in universe. Mash a few neurons together like rubbing socks on the carpet and spark something new.
And if it's life-changing or award-winning or someone's new favorite thing or even a little bit meaningful beyond the shattered blip of a single moment's existence? I don't care.
Oh, I do care, of course, but I'm also willing to believe that honesty is always relevant and the accessibility provided by a networked world of info-addicts like me positively teems with niche audiences ready for something, anything new.
Y'know why I keep making?
It's not because I think I'm any good. (Why, if I finally made what I really intended or wished to I'd probably die on the spot from sheer existential BSOD.)
It's a compulsion, duh. It's also the feeling of walking through shelves of books and knowing with all the literature in the world, what are the chances anyone would even look twice at something I could make. BUT THEN, I think well, with all the literature in the world, how come no one's made this one thing in this one way exactly how I picture it in my head.
I wish that book were real. I wish that show were real. I wish that song were real. I long for the nebulous maybe to incarnate. Somebody's gotta make it, and nobody else is. And it doesn't diminish my love for other's creations either. It only enhances it.
And if it's complete rubbish, then WOW it's actually a thing that can be rubbish. That's more than most ideas ever get. That's more than any play time plot. That's something. And we can learn from something. And we can grow from something.
And you can't win a race you don't run. And you can't run a race you don't start. And you can't start a race you don't attend. And you can't attend a race that doesn't exist.
Sure, that same path can lead you to lose, but think of all the things you accomplished on the way.
We can be more than just producers and consumers, strapped to a merry-go-round in History's equivalent of fly-over states. We can take a weird turn.
We can make up our own plot twists. We can be whoever we want to be.
Because, once again, honesty is always relevant.
And new isn't always better, but same gets old fast.
Thanks for reading,
Odist
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