I’ve decided to reduce the time I listen to most strictly political podcasts for a time. It’s a kind of voluntary (probably temporary) fast for the sake of good health. For a while there will be less “Pod Save America,” “NPR Politics,” “Quorum Call,” or even “Lovett Or Leave It,” not because they aren’t entertaining or informative or deliver the dopamine rush that allows one’s brain to rejoice in the knowledge that there are others in the ‘Resistance’ out there. I’ll probably stick with “FiveThirtyEight” for now. I appreciate the skeptical approach coming from a standpoint of statistical analysis rather than partisan cheerleading. It helps to ground me.
I’m certainly not rejecting my interest in politics. I’m aware of the headlines and these days they pretty much tell most of the story. I’m doing this semi-fast in order to curb an obsessive attention that leads inexorably to a narrowing view of the world. I guess this is the definition of an addiction: the obsessive narrowing of view.
What I’m concerned with after all are the changes we’re all navigating as the speed of technological innovation continues on the up ramp. Changes in technology drive changes in culture and so the revolution inexorably rolls along. Politics get pulled along at the end of a thin cable, making lots of noise generating thick smokescreens and never truly leading, only reacting and usually falling further behind. The government of today struggles to legislate the changes of yesterday. Getting fixated on politicians and their dramas is like getting lost on a back trail leading to nowhere, a passionate defense Of realities that are already fading away.
America will never be the place it was again, great or no. It will either become a seamless part and no greater than the rest of the world, or it will be overcome and reformed in the hurricanes of global change.
And then there’s the thumb.
My difficulty with writing has always been the opposite of my difficulty with life in general, or maybe it’s a mirror reflection of it. Once inspiration strikes it flows until encountering an automatic tendency to scale up my vision to include everything to which that particular idea might be connected. The natural flow of particulars gets lost in the wandering tangents and complex bayous of a Big Picture. Having started with a clear and solid inspiration I’m too easily distracted by the scenery, losing sight of an ultimate destination.
The situation became worse when I switched from handwriting in notebooks to keyboarding on computers. At first this led to rambling overwritten pieces that took way too long to say too little. Then came a phase of over editing and ‘word processing,’ moving phrases and paragraphs around like puzzle pieces until I got bored with the puzzle.
When I began posting on Facebook I confess that I rarely read anything’ that anyone else posted. Crossing the long dark abyss of 2017, when feelings of acute anger and disappointment allowed for little that wasn’t a primal scream, I found social media to be the perfect vehicle for exercising passion and angst without excess wordage and a minimal of discipline. The fact of having a small and growing audience was a bonus.
I also found that writing on an iPhone size tablet requires attention on the level of word and letter rather than paragraphs or pages. It inhabits more directly the stream of thought as it flows from letter to letter, word to word, idea to idea. It’s harder to get lost or so far ahead of myself that the words never catch up. The thumb can only move so fast.
Starting with slogans and captions to articles or short summary phrases, I gradually found myself extending comments into longer paragraphs and then into short essays. At some point I realized that I’d become as comfortable with the thumb as I’d ever been with pen and paper.
There’s also the question of ‘style.’ Most of what I have to contribute has already been said many times over. How can I say it differently, or if not, what’s the point? When you’re as self critical as I am and so easily influenced by the voices heard all around, this can be a major hang up. When I look at my writing and see all the elements I’ve pirated from others it can stop me in my tracks.
The thing is that no matter how I’ve been influenced I’m writing in this moment out of my own experience, no one else’s. The trick is to keep focused on the moment, moving forward, hearing the words as they come. The trick is to have a little faith and to take chances. There’s not much else that makes the effort pay off.
There’s actually a place in the head where the words come from, like a river that constantly flows in consciousness. Writers put an antenna into that river and transcribe the voices they hear. If you listen real good the words and phrases never stop and they’re almost always clear as ice. Writers love to swim in that river, it being the place where they feel most alive.
Nowadays there’s a little bit of arthritis at the base of the thumb, a reminder that I’ve seen substantially more than a half century of back and forth, and it’s taken me this long to find the right instrument to talk about it.
Writing is a little bit like talking to yourself, and the act itself fosters a condition of loneliness. When I find that I’m almost always the oldest guy in the room, I realize that the fact of loneliness and of talking to myself is likely to be on the increase.
When I was about 24 or 25 a friend of mine who was a writer and had already published a book told me that I’d better get on with it…time doesn’t wait. “You haven’t got so much time…if you want to get your ‘literary’ Jones on you’d best be at it.” So here I am still caught in a writer’s dream of unattainable perfection, barely fulfilled, and almost seventy.
Nothing left to do but to bare my thumb and speak.
II’ve decided to reduce the time I listen to most strictly political podcasts for a time. It’s a kind of voluntary (probably temporary) fast for the sake of good health. For a while there will be less “Pod Save America,” “NPR Politics,” “Quorum Call,” or even “Lovett Or Leave It,” not because they aren’t entertaining or informative or deliver the dopamine rush that allows one’s brain to rejoice in the knowledge that there are others in the ‘Resistance’ out there. I’ll probably stick with “FiveThirtyEight” for now. I appreciate the skeptical approach coming from a standpoint of statistical analysis rather than partisan cheerleading. It helps to ground me.
I’m certainly not rejecting my interest in politics. I’m aware of the headlines and these days they pretty much tell most of the story. I’m doing this semi-fast in order to curb an obsessive attention that leads inexorably to a narrowing view of the world. I guess this is the definition of an addiction: the obsessive narrowing of view.
What I’m concerned with after all are the changes we’re all navigating as the speed of technological innovation continues on the up ramp. Changes in technology drive changes in culture and so the revolution inexorably rolls along. Politics get pulled along at the end of a thin cable, making lots of noise generating thick smokescreens and never truly leading, only reacting and usually falling further behind. The government of today struggles to legislate the changes of yesterday. Getting fixated on politicians and their dramas is like getting lost on a back trail leading to nowhere, a passionate defense Of realities that are already fading away.
America will never be the place it was again, great or no. It will either become a seamless part and no greater than the rest of the world, or it will be overcome and reformed in the hurricanes of global change.
And then there’s the thumb.
My difficulty with writing has always been the opposite of my difficulty with life in general, or maybe it’s a mirror reflection of it. Once inspiration strikes it flows until encountering an automatic tendency to scale up my vision to include everything to which that particular idea might be connected. The natural flow of particulars gets lost in the wandering tangents and complex bayous of a Big Picture. Having started with a clear and solid inspiration I’m too easily distracted by the scenery, losing sight of an ultimate destination.
The situation became worse when I switched from handwriting in notebooks to keyboarding on computers. At first this led to rambling overwritten pieces that took way too long to say too little. Then came a phase of over editing and ‘word processing,’ moving phrases and paragraphs around like puzzle pieces until I got bored with the puzzle.
When I began posting on Facebook I confess that I rarely read anything’ that anyone else posted. Crossing the long dark abyss of 2017, when feelings of acute anger and disappointment allowed for little that wasn’t a primal scream, I found social media to be the perfect vehicle for exercising passion and angst without excess wordage and a minimal of discipline. The fact of having a small and growing audience was a bonus.
I also found that writing on an iPhone size tablet requires attention on the level of word and letter rather than paragraphs or pages. It inhabits more directly the stream of thought as it flows from letter to letter, word to word, idea to idea. It’s harder to get lost or so far ahead of myself that the words never catch up. The thumb can only move so fast.
Starting with slogans and captions to articles or short summary phrases, I gradually found myself extending comments into longer paragraphs and then into short essays. At some point I realized that I’d become as comfortable with the thumb as I’d ever been with pen and paper.
There’s also the question of ‘style.’ Most of what I have to contribute has already been said many times over. How can I say it differently, or if not, what’s the point? When you’re as self critical as I am and so easily influenced by the voices heard all around, this can be a major hang up. When I look at my writing and see all the elements I’ve pirated from others it can stop me in my tracks.
The thing is that no matter how I’ve been influenced I’m writing in this moment out of my own experience, no one else’s. The trick is to keep focused on the moment, moving forward, hearing the words as they come. The trick is to have a little faith and to take chances. There’s not much else that makes the effort pay off.
There’s actually a place in the head where the words come from, like a river that constantly flows in consciousness. Writers put an antenna into that river and transcribe the voices they hear. If you listen real good the words and phrases never stop and they’re almost always clear as ice. Writers love to swim in that river, it being the place where they feel most alive.
Nowadays there’s a little bit of arthritis at the base of the thumb, a reminder that I’ve seen substantially more than a half century of back and forth, and it’s taken me this long to find the right instrument to talk about it.
Writing is a little bit like talking to yourself, and the act itself fosters a condition of loneliness. When I find that I’m almost always the oldest guy in the room, I realize that the fact of loneliness and of talking to myself is likely to be on the increase.
When I was about 24 or 25 a friend of mine who was a writer and had already published a book told me that I’d better get on with it…time doesn’t wait. “You haven’t got so much time…if you want to get your ‘literary’ Jones on you’d best be at it.” So here I am still caught in a writer’s dream of unattainable perfection, barely fulfilled, and almost seventy.
Nothing left to do but to bare my thumb and speak.
Arclist 