Fighting the desire to fight the desire to write

So on December 18, 2012, I was reading the NYT as I am wont to do, at the time intrigued by an article in The Stone blog on “The Weapons Continuum” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/the-weapons-continuum/. [it would appear I can’t pull a hyperlink with the iPad app, or at least I haven’t figured out how to do so]

It contained the following quote, which led my mind a racing with insight via stream of consciousness by means of flipping through the dictionary

“Moral ‘oughts’ … Are not determined by what is easy but by what is right”. Ok, fine, but now for what was in the ellipsis:

“in a deontological sense” [wow! deontological is in the iPad autofill!]

I knew not that word, so looking it up produced

deontology - the science of duty or moral obligation; ethics [OED]

The prefix dei- means “as it is right”; and of course I wonder if this is related to deity, whIch itself comes from the Greek deus or “god”

There is also the word deid, which is the obscure Scottish word for “dead”. [phoneticism, surely].

Then I flip further through the dictionary, seeing de- words race by: decarboxylate, defecate, debenture [this latter apparently a voucher issued by royal or the government enabling the recipient to claim the sum due for goods or services rendered - viz. an acknowledgement of indebtedness]

And then I flip back to a page I appear to need to mark in place, using my iPhone as a ready page weight

Now how’s that for a modern juxtaposition and cyber-existential concept rendered concrete : this black and shiny brick holds more information (and access to almost unimaginably more) than this thick, heavy, dense tome it lies upon. {OED} a work I revere but short of solitary confinement could never imagine myself reading the whole thing

And so the concept of information trips over from something generated and compiled by human activity to an entity in and of itself.

Somewhat like extrapolating my simple act of buying a coffee as part of a macroscopic economic entity, is like that of a molecule in a drop of water falling from the sky into an ocean - itself on a planet in the conceivable universe.

I am both insignificantly small and equipped with a mind that can capture such conception.

Now - do I find myself cognating these juxtapositions of such because I was reading an essay on the continuum from fists to nuclear bombs (a continuum of inflicted destruction?) [and writing it so fervently thanks to a {nespresso home made} double americano?] That is, my mind was already trying to wrap itself about perceiving the concretely unperceivable and thus leaps to the sheer size of catalogued information and chemistry in cosmology are analogous comparisons of scale? [that coffee cup analogy, which seems ill chosen now - I need to edit this stuff before I write]

Perhaps, methinks, these streams of consciousness are connected.

Oh that I had read Douglas Hofstadter’s practiced talents, to render such insight and reflection into beautiful prose.

Insight, however, is am almost arrogant word - who am I to grandly decide my musings here are the realization of truth, or at least the way IT is? By my belief/truth-determination system, science (rather a falsehood detection system), repeat investigation that reproducibly generates the same insight would make it worthy of being dubbed “insight”, but can it be that before such activity plays out? Is this the arrogance of the philosopher that whence broadcast to subjective listeners trips from personal musing to religious doctrine?

And how does one use the term beautiful, to declare that something is that? I describe/label Hofstadter’s writing as beautiful because it poetically (value judgement of artistic brevity) and well, insightfully, tours its way to explaining such difficult concepts. It is epiphanic in its nonfiction. And so I call it beautiful. Other things that are beautiful, to me, render an internal swelling of joy (sometimes most external!) upon seeing them. I recall seeing an essay once on the physicist’s definition of beautiful - where simple-looking equations [oh how Hofstadter’s would have a field day with the symbological/graphological meaning of “simple-looking equation”] captures a concept so grand. E=mc² being a most obvious example: those who appreciate its meaning (viz. those who are bowled over into orgasmic reverence when presented with Maxwell’s equations) revel in its capture, and even those who do not know what it means can still capture, or at least glean, the genius of arriving upon its articulation. E=mc² is the supermodel of physics equations - an exemplar of the beauty of human realization. Funny here, now, I see the echo of the NYT’s original article’s content: imaging meaning in capturing the concept of a continuum of weapons (a) and the very equation that led to conception of that particular continuum - nuclear weapons. The human mind is a wonderful thing - such a pattern-seeker and guided by said patterns. Speaking of patterns guiding [you know you’re writing stream of consciousness when you start a paragraph with “speaking of…”] in that phenomenon where one sees what they’ve been learning is “suddenly” everywhere, these thoughts give me new insight to Dan and Chip Heath’s “Made to Stick” book: now, specifically, only bringing an idea into the concrete makes it appreciable by multitudes. Plucking out from my stream of nonfiction consciousness, E=mc², is a “sticky” equation - remembered in and out of context by so many, all representative of things almost uncapturable: human understanding of the universe and the awe-some potential energy of the atom, and the potential extent of human engineering (I shall not get into the “for good or evil” herein). Also: seeing patterns of thought in myself - the repetition of conceiving a spectrum of orders of magnitude, both conceptual and “physical”. Noting the latter is itself dependent on making a concrete analogy of something conceptual (molecules and universes are “physical objects” but so outside of our daily size scale perception that they seem to defy their category of object into concept). Seeing this pattern of thought, thinking of teaching by analogy to convey understanding. Thinking of telling metaphorical stories to capture attention. Thinking that the art of marketing, when pivoted to the vantage point of the science of messaging - to leverage the psychological interface of cognition - is a most powerful and tantalizing thing. And it fascinates me So - to read more, and discover beauty in messages. And want to be more engaged in myself crafting such passages. Oh writing is such pleasure. Now I need to do it more often.

Crystal Castles “Celestica”
Dreary and yet not - grey gives colour.

Since last writing, an old story idea that I hadn’t conjured in years popped back into my head. I think I know the stimulus that elicited it, but that is no matter. How I delighted to think it had been latent, perhaps waiting for “the write moment” [well, that’s a Freudian slip if ever I transcribed one!] to be created (as if I have some body of work to have taken precedence - oh the egomania of the wannabeauthor). I delight at the thought of the pen tracing out lines long buried, scenes draped heretofore in darkness for lo so many days, observations and realisations “spontaneously” rendered from much subconscious preparation. I want to write this piece, see how it comes out. Show it to someone else for gratification of accomplishment and hopeful receipt of it being wonderful.

And then the second-guessing begins:

Who is this character? Why would anyone care about him? How will his arc proceed? In that clever scene in the third act, how will I convey the longing and the ambition both together without seeming trite? I need to combat against that transition from the opening getting lost in the imagery - perhaps I should make it a prologue so I can set up in a different voice, a different perspective, a different tone. Will it be third person observer? Surely I can’t do it as omniscient - it would ruin the characterisation. What should I name him? Something unique that eponymously captures his character? Or rather a normal name - although captured from the common names of his time (he has to be a common man with an uncommon perspective after all for it to be clever!). Should it be picaresque or captures from a presumable timeline - journal entries? No, then I’d have to write it in the first person and I don’t think he knows himself in that way. (How the hell do I know that?) But then, it’s the situations I put him in - the reader will figure it out. But I’m unpractised, so I should make it more obvious. As Woody Allen said in Manhattan "don’t get me wrong, I’m trying to sell some books here" (or was it Annie Hall?).

Why does anyone like any given character anyway? The guy in that Draft article speaks of the author as the ultimate method actor - needing to live the character at all times, except, I guess, when creating him actively on the page (some strange commentary on how clerics perceive a deity - invoking an existence that fills the gaps between votives?). There’s this Lee Child entry now to Draft on how to create suspense and mystery, and he speaks of creating the knowledge gap to entice the reader - same thing the authors of Made to Stick talk about. I could do that - I could entice attention and attract many a reader to then have the author brand to unveil the introspective character that avid readers yearn for. Shakespeare couldn’t release Hamlet before Titus and Romeo (action then lover), after all.

WOW - talk about getting ahead of yourself.

I am frustrating myself in so many ways - wanting to write and then not, out of fear I’ll fuck it up. All the writing manuals speak to this - exhorting one to first “write badly” or “freely” and just let it all spill out as it will. Perhaps the process will arise as assembling the original from the fragments. Perhaps it will come from slagging through the weeds, needing to assume a gait before before being able to deftly navigate.

Perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps, rather, actually, it doesn’t matter. For when it’s all potential, it is not happening.

I am heartened by Junot Diaz’s comment at a recent bookfair: “Write for one or two people, and the world will follow. Write for the world, and no one will read it.” He spoke with mocking frustration of how many new and “struggling” authors wrest with the publishing process, or how to combat writer’s block before it has truly arisen, or worrying that the ending won’t make enough sense. He said most of his time is spent ratcheting up the braveness to write what he does write. So many authors speak of exploring the story through their characters, uncovering it with them, perhaps, I guess with a slightly different perspective - ready to transform from co-traveller to guide to puppeteer. Others go through many drafts ti achieve.

I seem to need an outline, a safety net perhaps, or a plan to get going. Fine, do so. Deviate as it comes, but don’t think of it as deviation. 

(But it’s scary - what if I get lost? What if I don’t like where I’m going? {Isn’t that the whole point?! Would you rather cower?!}

Writing, for me, is like jogging - very little of either I’ve been doing of late [despite talking a big talk]. I acquire various accoutrements for preparation - clothing, paper, pens, hydration equipment. I go out, feel well of it, nay, feel elated - how I like this so!!!! Then I’ll get a cold, or get busied with work, and the procrastination locks in, and feeds on it and what previously went into the happily acknowledged ambition of iteration - run a little faster, write a little more - deviously metamorphises into the pernicious grand plan. I’ll start training for a marathon! I’ll write a screenplay! My time will shock those who have been doing this for a while! Not Olympian by any stretch, mind (as that requires maniacal dedication and fuck knows I hardly have time for that nor want such a lifestyle! Let alone patience there of!) It’ll get picked up and get some critical acclaim. I’ll be a darling with the world as my oyster for the next release - will I then spring that tome I’ve been waiting for the write moment? [intentional that time - aren’t I too clever by half?] Or continue where I started? 

While meantime, outside of my head in the future, I’m getting lackadaisical, soft, and certainly not writing physical words. 

And frustrated.

And annoyed. 

And hypocritical.

So - just do it. Just pick something and do it. And drag your ass out of bed to do it - both the running in the morning and the writing in the morning before work stress has a chance to manifest - even if it’s at first slow and tedious or with the equipment downstairs. And that story that bubbled up from who knows where. Don’t self-pontificate on whether it’s time or whatever, just do it. And then do more. Glory comes in iteration continued, for no grand act is that if it comes just by luck - that is grand coincidence. 

List to, heed Junot’s suggestions and write for a friend or to who will “get it” knowing you and encourage improvements as they are needed. 

And for your mantra, Shakespeare's Coriolanus

ACTION IS ELOQUENCE.

The other day I pondered, aloud, whether one can covet objects or is it just people? My SOED remarks “desire eagerly” for usage 1, “long for (what belongs to another)” for usage 2, and “desire with concupiscence; desire sexually” for usage 3 - “concupidity” [which I need to add to my favourite words sub-blog] tied to the concept of Cupid, which one would hope assuredly means a person. (Although I would imagine a paraphilia specialist would extend the potential to objects, but let’s not bottleneck the definition [as it were!]).

But I shall comfort myself that via usage 1, without getting lurid, that one can, at least loosely, covet things. I write this presently, because I find myself coveting some thing(s) I personally own, namely, some recent bottles of wine, anticipating the food pairing potentials and the like (and lest a reader think [all 0.1 of you], the most expensive one, a Williammette Valley pinot noir, is something like $24, and the majority are in the $10-15 range, so this is hardly some personal elevating, remarking on such wealth that brings stupid expensive vintages into my domain, where the bragging rights (rites?) hinge more on the ability to purchase such items then have the supertaster ability to appreciate them. Wealth can enhance the senses, but only in a “kidding yourself” sense. Access to glitterati surely rages on the hedonistic adaptation that flesh is heir to, means to travel to exotic locales may not produce in-the-moment experiences any more compelling than watching steam roil off a newly bought coffee in a paper cup on a temperate autumnal day down the street from one’s domicile, and at a point, some figure of a stereo system would begin to exceed auditory sense resolution, though perhaps the achievable calmness of a room anti-adorned for acoustic purity might enable entering into a state where the enjoyableness factor increases, and so there, money can buy at least optimisation for the senses. (And so one’s own bias of sensory pleasure, as in all things, leads to the rationalisation of a scenario that entices spending to achieve and enhance, and the dedication to such a pursuit can numb enjoyment 

…

you know, I wrote this the other morning and thought that transcribing it would complete some sense of done-ness, but this is really trite and bad and I don’t want to go on boring any of you with this. 

Carry on. Sally forth. 

So here I am, writing literal purple prose with a “disposable fountain pen” which in its giddy 3 words seems so overtly modernly wasteful - and yet, like a piece of overly sweet confectionery from a mainstream low-middle-income supermarket, for fuck’s sake, it’s pleasing. That it comes in a very cheap looking plastic barrel graced with pinstripes - if this thing had a Yankee’s insignia I’d hardly blink - with a gaudy too-80s for its own good-wearing plastic on its sleeve cap and horrid pocket holding bit that’s a narrow triangle ending with an ostentatious sphere that for some reason has 2 symmetrical divots carved out on either side. Elegant, it looks not. 

But then, perhaps that’s the point. 

For a fountain pen - with purple ink no less - is elegant in its own ironicness. That’s it: this pen is ironic.

Gaudy barrel trying to look like the conservative version of something an 80s girl teenager would have - you know, some awful pink thing that screams “I was raised on My Pretty Pony, but now I’m going to write weepy angst Mollyringwaldian prose until I rectify the first kiss with the first episode of beer vomit and begin the self-immolating-introspection that I won’t sort out until I’m well into my 30s and start to realise that everyone does it/did it, so I’m hardly special and really I should get on with things - but can’t but fuck it. (and guys write [or don’t write] the same monologue, but are more introvertedly troubled by the fact that they too are elated by the first kiss and thus confront that scary thing - one’s own personal sexual identity that is immediately clearly not what everyone one else experiences because they’re so cocksure, and here I am a little touchy-feely … but then I can touch and feel and perhaps I should try the beer and slap each others’ backs and lose myself in the fraternal gathering of pretending not to be self-conscious.)

The sort of barrel, that if in gold, and a bit fatter, would be right at home in Donald Trump’s lapel pocket. If not for the rekindled sensibility of pocket squares - a hint of stylish colour that saves many a man from an ill-fitting suit - Trump would probably wear his aurric stylus in his front pocket. The man is like a mean-spirited nasty nerd. Very good at making money - obviously. Real estate - the bastion of money makers because eventually someone else wants that property. May take years, but it’ll come around. And thus create the slow burn never hitting the ecstatic heights of wealth, but never being poor either.

But why does he need to dress everything up in that gaudiest of metals - gold?

Do I not like gold because of how it gets flashed about i.e. if it were used more chastely, I’d like it more? No, I think in the end I just don’t like yellow all that much. I wear a yellow tie because it’s a nice accent colour and it makes me blues look moreso.

Wait - is this stupid little ball at the end of the pen can "fin” - there must be a name for that part of the pen cap - is it something obvious that, I just can’t conjure up just now, or is it a truly esoteric term that is eye-rollingly silly and thus to be linguistically, intellectually coveted? - anyway, is this little ball trying to echo the same at the nib of the fountain pen bit? So it’s defying what it contains, but stylish into its 80s version of itself?

The nib is a gorgeous flair of metal working (albeit of course machined - but then great! Give more of us fountain pen nibs. So sleek in its manufacturedness) has fastenings, that hug the barrel and flare out (flair?) to sharp corners that are then folded down, and the sides appear to be flat shadings against the triangle that swoops to its nib neatly scored cut down the central axis, with there again a little circle. A syzygy of lines and circles, swoops, and machined-ness. Industrial chique, and yet encased in this 80s barrel. Retro in both good and bad ways and that is what makes it a find. Cheaply presented elegance of writing. 

For a fountain pen is so pretty to look at as it exacts letters from brain through hand to page. It can’t fake just any angle of attack, and so it is literally a refined version of one’s personal hand of font. Letters swoop together just so. Ink comes easily, so the letters need to be crafted quickly. Periods need not be coloured into the paper, for a quick jab and they’re there.

So in this cheap - literally disposable! - package (why would I want a disposable pen - because it doesn’t need maintenance or set up? It’s ready to roll? And “ready to use” sounds too wordy? Disposable in our sustainable-pursuing guilt-ridden present sounds so awful) I have access to the tool that gave a sort of writing where the hand conveys the mind with close-quarter intimacy. True, I trick myself into thinking that the words will somehow be more artful, but I can easily write crap with the best of them. But the physicality of the whole experience gives confidence in the doing.

It feels a little like running in passe accoutrements - the point isn’t the fashion, but the doing. If it gives you access to the action, no mater how it may outwardly look, the access to the function that lets you do without worrying how you look - you free up observational power for tapping into the thing you are doing and thus do it better. Not (necessarily) best, for that takes dedication and practice, but it gives you more direct contact to the thing.

And wants me to do it more because I want to outdo the gimmick of the object. Despite the industrial design as a whole, make good of the elegant bits. Write with the writing tool, as run with the functional yet not as svelte as they could be shoes.

Accomplish by doing. Writing through the early stream of consciousness and distractions and overwrought metaphors.

And then maybe I can get good at this and better justify that fountain pen I have with its own drawing cartridge from an ink bottle/well.

Or get so good I find a pen, encased in a platinated sleek barrel that best works for me but I couldn’t find it until I got successful at writing and could then justify it and it truly captures my thoughts - or seems to truly because then I’m better at it having written through the bad writing to exact the good. Or I could just continue to use this cheap-looking thing of awesomeness.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I need to do more of this.

Bad as it may be.

Google image searching for “pat on the back” got this gem, but I can’t seem to display the image.  

so - is the “rule” of using an attractive female here rendered to encourage uptake of a patent? or is there some kind of suggestion that women don’t get sufficient thanks? I think I’m thinking about this too much. Glad somebody patented this after all, but I’d hate to be the patent officer looking at the hug version of this - I could imagine it looking like a paint-by-numbers-Pollock. 

Thanks, Guggenheim Museum. Fare thee well, you and all others in NYC.

This cover image is scary. Or at least disturbing. I’m not sure I want to meet this guy, Kim Dotcom. I remember hearing about his bust back in January, knowing I’d heard of Megaupload, thinking it sounded odd to be such am assault. What was up with that? Is Wired going to laud the guy as a latter-day Napsterer, or will it unveil the response was warranted albeit gratuitous perhaps in execution. Will I think often of Hackers as I read it? [ok maybe not, but I need to watch that flick again]

And then I find myself reading the article before I do my typical work through the mag in linear order from cover to cover (well, of course I flip through quickly - don’t want to look at everything, leave somethings to surprise, then I linger on Found magazines that end with one last image before you start to salivate for the next issue [or not - perhaps you’ve procrastinated and are now backlogged, but you still get the sense you’re about to leave] - such please me. It’s like the teaser at the end of a TV show before the smash to credits. Or something at the end of film credits [which I always see - you’ve probably guessed by now I’m a credits-reader]). 

So I would call that an effective cover - well played (um, paging forward to the masthead - wow this is deep in - um, well, perhaps EIC Chris Anderson [who I see is stepping down!], but probably some combo of Senior Photo Editor Carrie Levy, Production Director Ron Licata and others - I learned from periodical editing that no two publications can have the duties surmised from the titles alone. Even if they’re sister shops). 

Oh, and the headline colours? Title in gold - puckish, I guess in reference to the guilded sense Dotcom has of himself (biasing my “initial impression” now having read the article). Canary yellow certainly stands out. The WANTED streaked about, like a NIN cover perhaps? (We are, after all, but 10 years removed from Year Zero, but the font effect looks more like With Teeth - perhaps a reference to Dotcom’s Bond villain persona? - it would appear that my mind’s eye has Rob Sheridan to thank). The miniscule fluorescent orange (it just wouldn’t be a Wired cover without some loud colours) of the subheadlines (pull lines? what are those things called?). Anyway, they did their job - my eyes went right to the Elon Musk reference; Google is there too; something about cars. Ohhhh, that’s how they make money off the online content tease - the Features can be accessed, but not all the Start, Test, and Play content (at least not off the article main page; I’m sure there’s somewhere to find it, but I’m looking at the hard copy. This is a new adventure for me here). 

I’ll read the first two with zeal, the last one I’ll flip through cuz never having owned a car nor looking to buy one, I just don’t really care about car write-ups. I may as well read about what socks work well for climbing Olympus Mons (which I hope Wired will cover in my lifetime).

PS Wow, this took a long time, and only the cover. I need to either shorten myself or rethink the strategy of flipping through everything in toto (linking to show I had to look it up … I love wordnik). 

BUT HEY!! I WRITEDED!!

So I started this thing over a week ago, and clearly my title is apropos, as I’ve found other excuses to not contribute. Now that I’ve played the iPhone to battery deadness with Angry Birds, eaten the rest of the triscuits, and showered to make myself feel at least a little productive, why not turn on the computer and do this thing.

When I started on tumblr, I wanted to capture my thoughts as they rage through my head. Reading one of the mags I subscribe to (Wired, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, and as a test that I probably won’t continue because it seems a watered-down version of Wired and random business mag, Fast Company [why is it Wired and Fast Company have the exact same layout style? Not the same publisher - some massive freelancing copy editors/graphic designers? it puzzles me - and it’s probably figure-outable on the interweb, but I came here today to write of other things]), I delight in how my mind fills with more information. I see my eye bouncing about on the page and often decide to make myself aware of where it’s going, seeing how I’m influenced by the visuals and the text etc. So as a make work project, why not catalogue where my eyes go as I flip through these things? Then I get to read and contribute here, and fight the good fight against the fighting the desire to write. And then, hopefully, the fight will lose its fight and I can write (and stop compiling silly lines like this one).

So, here starts an experiment - directed stream of consciousness freefall writing …