Writing the blog is a changing process for me.  I still want to write but I have nothing new to say on such a regular basis as I once did.  I do have stuff……..but…….not so much….

And why do Ravens: episode 37?

When that ‘hitting the wall’ happened in the past, I just went to my second passion (after living OFF the grid) and dabbled, roiled, messed about in and ranted about politics.  That was good for me and a select few readers but was, for the most part, like DDT was to birds, what nicotinoids are to bees, what Warfarin is to rats.  They all left the ship.  Politics means: readership exodus.

(The way to get ‘em back is to mention sex, drugs, rock and roll……)

But I am not all that keen on that easily accessed but more hormonally incented group (though I do enjoy their company from time to time).  I prefer to write for the thinkers, those who ‘wonder’ about things, those that question the topics of the day, those that have a streak of cerebral independence.  I like free thinkers.

There is PAP thinking, ANTI-PAP thinking and Free-thinking.  I prefer free.  Pap is for those who ‘follow the recipe but don’t follow the news’, believe what they are told to believe, do what they are told to do, aspire to what they are sold and bleat like sheep as they march in step to cliché, jargon and petty social tyrannies.  I hate pap.  I once hated pap so much, I went anti-pap and resisted everything, argued against anything, disagreed with everyone and even considered a tattoo….. but that was just as lame as pap.  Both thought structures are manufactured by the status quo.  Both thought structures rely on the other to exist.  Both are very, very un-free.

To think outside the box of pap and anti-pap is pretty tough.  Probably impossible.  Most thoughts start (at the very basic level) with words.  They are building blocks.  In the beginning there was the word (says the bible).  Words were constructed by the ‘institutions’, old thinking, society, parents, culture, peers.   Words are historic.  Semantics shapes our thoughts.  To get outside words is so tough that most free thinkers are still totally constrained by the words they use (thus laying the foundation for the blight that is political correctness).  Artists know this – that is why they express through different mediums.

But what of the writer?  Don’t they start ‘expressing’ but are constrained right at the start?

How does one express angst except by saying ‘angst’?  ‘AAaaaarrrrgggghhhhhh’ kinda works but I define ‘A-h’ more as frustration than angst.  Love?  By any other name….?  Most of the basic words we work with are now bruised and out of date, hackneyed and repeated to death.  We are almost hypnotized now by words.  Words press buttons that represent whole emotions.  Say the ‘N’ word as proof.  Say ‘bomb’ in an airport.  Using words is almost a cage in itself.

It is even worse when you have style.  A writer’s style can mask the message.  Like a rapper doing hip hop, the audience sees the style, the rhythm, the optics before hearing the message.  Elmore Leonard, Lee Child, even Hemingway…after a while you are seeing and hearing the author rather than the story, rather than the message.

Actors get ‘condensed’ even quicker.  Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Cher, even Helen Mirren…they are all now THEMSELVES before they are the ‘characters’ they portray.

(Laurence Olivier was the last great thespian…….)

And so it is with bloggers.  I am writing this blog and yet saying a new message…but, but, but…who reading this doesn’t ‘hear’ Dave?  Same ol’, same ol’?  And, if you are read as same old Dave, no matter what you write, why continue?  Those who like same ol’ Dave will read ‘im but not the message.  Those who don’t read him won’t know this one is different…..

“Dave, what are you saying?”

 I am saying, ‘I have some new material’.  But it will be heavily ‘Davidized’.  I can’t help it.  It will be new but sound much the same.  I am me, after all.

“But why write that in this blog?”

 Because it is RELEVANT NOW!  I am in Vancouver (practically paying to breathe the air, it is so expensive) and will spend an evening at the movies.  I am going to see Fahrenheit 11/9, Michael Moore’s new film.  And, of course, I mentioned this to a few friends.  “Really?  You’re going to see a Michael Moore film?  That old reprobate?  Same ol’, same ol’?  Seriously?”

 Yes.  New material, tho.  Same ol’ style but, so what?  If the story is new and true, why not?”

“Oh, man!  Like, he is so ‘yesterday’, ya know?  I liked him when he was funny but like, who cares what Michael Moore has to say?”

 Turns out my friends are right.  F11/9 is ‘bombing’ at the box office.  No one is ‘into’ Michael Moore.  Too passé.

My readership is down, too.  I feel Mike’s pain.  I’m gonna send him a card.

Is truth always this hard?