Derisive originality

Despite my hatred of word murderers I still have a tendency to play with meanings, often to my own detriment. Derisive originality is one such toy.

Originality, as the creation of a new or primary thing, cannot be called bad. It is, by necessity of our situation if nothing else, inherently good.

That said, 'originality' is a damaging ideal and one that I find more reason to hate then to love. I sometimes enjoy using 'originality' in a derisive manner, to refer to something that is sub-standard or unworthy of my consideration. I did not realise see anything amiss in this tendency until I used it outside of the writerly context and found myself an object of ridicule. Or, to be more precise, I was accused of being a communist. My opinions of communism are varied but that is not the issue at stake. The point highlighted the negative aspects of both communism and my apparent view. Conformity. Conformity, of course, is a very bad and nasty thing, especially when created at gunpoint.

Oddly enough this was precisely my point. Originality, innovation, this is conformity. It is not conformity in its denotative value, but in application. It also seems strange that we would become original at gunpoint, considering this is not a communist state and no one is holding the gun. But such is the case. We, we as writers and we as students and we as human beings, are told repeatedly that we must be new and different and shiny. And if we are not? Then we are not good enough, and we are not living up to the standards of society, and we are in general degenerate.

When I call someone 'original' in a snide and derisive manner I am saying that instead of doing what they wanted to do they allowed this invisible gun to control their actions. Such people do not follow their natural inclinations and abilities. Instead they listen to that incessant whispering which tells them over and over what is acceptable.

I shall speak as a writer because that is what I know. It is not acceptable to write about elves. It is not acceptable to discuss idealism. It is not acceptable to have heroes, and it is even less acceptable to have villains. Such things are clichés. Over done. Dead (because you shot them?). You must go somewhere else, you cannot stay here. Do not write of fairyland; make up your own world instead. Do not write about elves; make up an alien race instead.

True, writing of elves is not new. True, it is difficult to do it well. That does not matter. What matters is that I want to write about elves and I do not care if I am shot in the dead because I do not believe that they gun even exists. I mean, an invisible talking gun? Come now, be rational.

If you are truly desire to create that world, to create those people in every loving detail, to make them your own, heart and soul, then that is originality. That is how I feel about elves, though I do not create them. If it is, however, not the desire to explore a strange land breathing under purple but merely the compulsion to be original then you are dishonest. If you are not dishonest, if originality is the only thing that you love and live for, then you are truly a sorry creature. Those who pursue art for arts sake I respect: those are called artists. Those who pursue originality for its own sake well deserve my contempt because they deny themselves.

How words die

I took a course last year on the history of western thought. My professors told me many things that stuck in my mind. One was that evil is dead, according to both Nietzsche and Derrida, and the other is that we live in an age of profound skepticism.

At the time I was surprised. I wondered what the average person would say if they were told that we are profoundly skeptical. I’m still quite sure they haven’t noticed.

As a writer I am rather disturbed by the death of words. It is like finding the grave of a friend you never knew was dead.

Take morality. The Greeks, particularly the sophists, began to doubt the existence of morality. Those who lost the reality of it sought to convince others of it. It died for some that that death was spread to others until all were infected by it, then it was cut away to allow for new growth.

The trouble is that morality can die for some without dying for others. Why should reality be destroyed completely just because in one man it is dead? Why should reason be killed completely just because it is dead for me. Is it even dead for me? Yes. If I can question it it is dead. I said that dissecting an idea kills it, but it seems that the ideas are already dead when they are dissected.

Unless...unless we are like Aristotle, digging up the bulbs to look at them because they die every spring. Maybe reason will return when it is warmer and we are closer to the sun. Not for me, but for others. We are rational and we are a-rational. I must accept that I am part of the latter.

Doldrums

There is, of course, no excuse for inactivity. My only defense can be that I did not only give up blogging for some other activity, but in fact gave up all creative activities. I was supposed to edit my novel, I was supposed to finish a story, I was supposed to paint. I did none of these. I did write, but not by choice. So I make my inexcusable excuse and say that I have been concentrating on my studies.

I did, however, write a study-relevant poem:

Oh, Justice, creature good and noble!
You who love the littlest creature
who protects the old, the young, the weak,
the dreamers, the workers, the else.

Oh, Justice, I invoke thee
(in the vocative!)
creature good and noble,
come smell your way to us
return to us, for we love you
you are our teacher, our protector
you are good and you are kind.

Oh, Justice, blindfish, mole,
protect the children of the words,
the children of democracy,
the old, the young, the dreamers and farmers,
we, together, call thee forth.

Art and my doomedness

I have long been aware (I have only pursued writing for seven years, may I say long ow?) that fantasy is not a serious thing, that romanticism is a silly and trivial pursuit and that no honest and hardworking individual will partake in such things. I find this a troublesome and belittling idea but sadly any attempt to break free of it materialises in a verbal attack on some other form.

My original solution to this problem was to declare that what I did was not art. I did not know what it was, but concluded that it existed (like myself) solely to make people who encountered it happy. The trouble is that existing solely to amuse others is a rather draining activity, and being the caring creator that I am I did not particularly wish it upon what I created. After a thought I did not wish it on myself either. But that is not the problem, the problem is far simplier, it is that in rebelling against the idea of the artist. I tend to characterize artists in a rather unfair light, as a reactionaries and who desires more to make some important and relevant point then to tell a story. The trouble is in claiming not to be an artist I AM reactionary.

The second trouble I have with the idea of fantasy as silly and irreverant it that the recommended opposite is in itself an idea. The honest and hardworking artist may exist, but they are partaking in that ideal. Is it so strange to write in a manner which allows us to give those ideas flesh and form in every way we can?

Balancing reality

I used to roleplay. (The forum-based variety, which is the equivalent to communal story-telling. No unpleasant connotations intended.) When I roleplayed I was always worried about Mary-Sues, about being believable and being proper and making 'real' characters. To tell the truth those characters were rather dull. I roleplayed fantasy, and it just did not work.

Then I did NaNoWriMo. I am tired of psychology. I refuse ever to worry about whether my character is a Mary-Sue again. I let my characters be what they need to be, whether that is depressed, naive, or idealistically heroic.

Some time ago, probably reading those essays I found by Ursula Le Guin, I encountered the idea that fantasy is NOT reality. Odd idea, eh? I thought so too.

There was also something about seeing a characters as pieces of each other, using Lord of the Rings as an example. There was an interpretation as Frodo, Sam, and Golum making one complete character. Only one interpretation of course, but it is an interesting one to consider. This is a critical interpretation, but it can be used by writers as well. I remember reading about how George Lucas cast is characters as a group rather then individuals, and we all know how that turned out.

Elves! Elves are a better example. Elves are perfect. If an authors tells me otherwise I will throw their books across the room. But the perfect sorts of Elves are balanced by darker or more mischievous counterparts - trolls, goblins, and the like.

Making characters realistic and believable is important, but in doing so the characters should not be compromised. Some characters just need to be heroes, and sometimes you need a bit of purity and perfection.

Beauty and the mundane

There are many beautiful things in The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon (965). The first is the spring at dawn, the second is the summer night:

“In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.

In summer the nights. Not only when the moon shines, but on dark nights too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is!"

Nine hundred and eighty four years later there was no double meaning. In Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (1949), the trees are beautiful but only in themselves:

"I was driving along, you understand? And I was fine. I was een observing the scenery. You can imagine, me looking at the scenery, on the road every week of my life. But it's so beautiful up there, Linda, the trees are so thick, and the sun is warm. I opened the windshield and just let the warm air bathe over me.”

Sei Shonagon speaks of beauty, but she also sees it. Partly it is in translation, everything is ethereal when it comes from a language so different from our own, but there is something else. What she writes captures something. I suppose what Arthur Miller writes also captures something, but it is something deeply relevant and meaningful, not something beautiful.

I have read some incredibly beautiful things on the internet, in loves that seem mundane. These are the particular moments of being, the things that raise above the mundane and become something else. Beauty does exist in the material, mundane world. But when it appears that world ceases to be as such

There is beauty in the mundane. (Mundane adj. In weakened sense: ordinary, commonplace. Hence: prosaic, dull, humdrum; lacking interest or excitement.) But there is nothing mundane about beauty.

In fact, there is nothing mundane about mundane:

mundane egg n. (in Indian and other cosmogonies) a primordial egg from which the world was hatched.

Anima Mundi n. The soul of the world; a power or spirit supposed to be diffused throughout the material universe, organizing and giving form to the whole and to all its parts, and regularizing the motions and alterations of the parts. [I say it's gravity]

I think I understand why this word holds people so.

Common sense and science

I like to read the bill-boards in front of schools, churches, and so one. It was evening and I was on the bus, reading Utopia. I ran into an interesting idea, though I do not remember what it was, and stopped reading to look at the sign on the church, "faith is believing what common-sense tells you not to believe." I laughed.

In philosophy we discussed qualia, those qualitative experiences within ones mind which cannot be applied to or described by science. We also learned about the self. Both the self and the qualia which serve it are unscientific things. They are common-sense things. Taken a little further such believes lead us to dualism. Dualism is the belief that our selves and our personal experiences relate to something else, another portion of existence apart from the material world. Another step and we have religion.

On the other side is the belief that ourselves are simply constant conjunction and that everything we feel will be 'properly' explaind in future science.

For me, therefore, the sign told me to ignore the deep-rooted commonsense belief in self and accept the harsh but realistic views of science. Silly sign.