Why I Write...The voice of a Lost Generation making sense in a New Age

Why do you write?

 

People have asked this question of me before. And in writing classes and exercises, writers are often asked to dig deep inside and ask the tough question: Why do you write? What do you, personally, have to say to the world that hasn’t been advertised, written, dissected, tweeted, posted or published before?

 It means we, as writers, have to do an internal “gut check” to get to the truth. There are lots of nuanced answers, but in my case, I have endeavored to become someone who answers the question: So What? What does that mean?

 

It means, without pretension or illusion, that you believe there is a place for someone like yourself-someone who has lived through the fifties & sixties, post-Watergate, post Vietnam era. Post parents & Grandparents of the Great World Wars, nuclear bomb scares & Cold War era thinking.

 There’s a place for your writing. Your voice is a voice that speaks for millions. It’s the voice of someone who has lived through the tales of the Depression and the Civil War era. It’s the voice of one who has seen the Greatest Generation slowly fade from the scene. It’s the voice of one of the Old School Hippies with New Wave Children.

 And soon the next generation will be set to take the reins, God Help us All…we’ve raised kids that are isolated-more so than at any time in our history-by technology & by our own beloved Capitalism. We are what we’ve sown. It’s scary at times. We live in a Cowardly New World inhabited by some brave people, but the mindset is Old School Cold War mentality.

 The generation I embody is stuck somewhere between the 19^th & 21^st Centuries, this No Man’s Land where we saw the birth of the Information Age, the birth of the Computer Age and the Internet. I have no illusions about the fact that the Lost Generation of Baby Boomers is fading as quickly as the generations before us. We have to ready ourselves for a Revolution of sorts. My writing is for myself and for others who understand my world view. It’s a way to explore, a way for me to acknowledge my own failings and a need to expand my horizon. Therefore, I gladly acknowledge my own limitations as an author, as an essayist, and as a blogger. Because there exists another entire plain of existence where another generation lives in splendid and total virtual isolation in Cyberspace. I can’t really relate to this Strange and Beautifully Dark New World.

 I do realize that we need new blood and a new way of thinking about the arts. We, the collective “we” of planet Earth, need to be jolted out of the past and into the future. The present is always being lived out in rearview mirror mindset -McCluhan taught us that. My prediction (not a gloomy but a hopeful one!) is that 50-100 years after the Computer Age has begun-about 2020 thru 2070-there will emerge a genius along the lines of Shakespeare.

 A Renaissance has already begun. From approximately 2010 and lasting into the 22^nd Century, the New Era of Mass Communications will have arrived. A “Golden Age” of Mass Media will emerge. It will blend the mediums of Art & Science plus Computer Science & Literature to create a new wave of Artistic Masterpieces that will bring inspiration to all young artists.

 Somehow it will take a kick in the pants by a kind of New Wave Missouri Mule to jolt us into the future. In so many ways, the future has already arrived.  Sadly, my voice is one from the past. But it doesn’t’ take a genius to recognize what real creativity can bring to our lives. It opens our eyes to a New World and a new way of looking at reality.

 I believe that a child-perhaps already born-will become the leader of a movement utilizing not only the print medium but all types of creative platforms-including computer science-thus creating a synthesis of unimagined heights and perception of mind that has not yet been explored. The medium has not emerged, the creativity is as yet untapped.

 To further this belief, I cite three things. First is the invention of the Gutenberg Printing Press in Europe around 1439.  This revolution in printing brought the written word to the masses and shot the English language, the language of the common man, into prominence.

 Next came the birth of a genius, someone who transformed the common language using a medium that he took to as yet unimagined heights. That person was William Shakespeare, and his contributions would not have been possible until so many different elements synthesized to create an atmosphere which utilized his talents.

 Third was the Birth of the Renaissance Age. It was the Age of Enlightenment, and it brought about so many discoveries in Art and Science and Language that we are still feeling the consequences in our lives. We have recently entered the Information Age, the Computer Age where we are travelling at Star Wars warp speed into the future.  It takes a revolutionary event, a Big Bang consisting of the Computer Age morphing into the age of the Internet, to trigger this domino effect which leads us to ever-cascading tiers of discovery and enlightenment. We are now on the brink of just such an era.

 My only hope is that my writing may be a bridge to this Brave New world where only the connected can go. But if we are doomed to live always turned backwards and staring sadly at the past, like pillars of salt, as Vonnegut so rightly noted, then we must be able to acknowledge the truth.

There is hope for our world in a society where New Age minds are illuminated. They are illuminated with ideas & technology & Science and Media. They are not interested in the old ways of doing things and seeing things. They want to create a new identity for themselves.

 All this talk of Branding and Platform may become useless. But always, we will have Paris.  Seriously, our collective memories include the written word, the spoken language and the shared world of dreams and ideas. These things will bind us together in this Brave and yet somewhat Cowardly New Age world.

 
No one will be unscathed by the March of Progress. But at times, nostalgia may become meaningless when there is no common thread of memory to bind us and mire us in the past. That is the awful truth. We must go forward and acknowledge our failures to communicate as a society.
 

When this Brave New World comes to pass, I would love to stand on the edge of the mountain and look into the Promised Land of the Future. It will be beyond our scope and imagining, but it will illuminate every corner of the New World with light and inspiration.

What happened to Thanksgiving? Giving Thanks in 6 Easy Steps

 

After witnessing scenes of Black Friday shoppers literally trampling others to get the best deal, it looks like there’s a slow movement away from the notion that Thanksgiving is only a holiday shortcut to the really important Christmas gift season. There doesn’t seem to be a logical explanation as to how Thanksgiving became such a prelude to greed and gifts-driven holiday as opposed to the food and thanks-driven one that we started out with when the Pilgrims first celebrated Thanksgiving.

 One reason may be that we are not a rural society, where farmer’s almanacs and the harvest schedule even comes into play. Another is that we have grown into a secular society that doesn’t easily incorporate holidays with innately religious overtones. Thus, we have blended societies wants and needs in a 21^st Century world with a holiday that is basically stuck in the 17^th Century. That is where we’re at these days with Thanksgiving.

 In this world we live in, full of hustle and high-tech, here are a few suggestions to bring the original intent of the Thanksgiving holiday into focus. As we kick off the holiday season, it seems appropriate to reflect and give thanks for all that we have in our daily lives. Here are six steps to bringing us back to the Thanksgiving holiday that was intended:

 

1.·       Tuesday, December 1^st is Giving Tuesday. At #GivingTuesday, charities, families, businesses, community centers and schools will work together to spread the word about Giving Tuesday. The idea is to donate, to celebrate generosity and the spirit of giving, and to give to a charity of your choice either your time or your money or both.

2.·         FairTrade: On Cyber Monday, and during the Christmas giving season, look online for the items that are marked Fair Trade. Almost all large churches and many small businesses honor and promote Fair Trade items.

3.·         Give thanks for all you have in your own life. Your own friends and family, and the bounty we share is in direct contrast with others in our communities and neighborhoods and schools that don’t have food security, a safe place to live, a roof over their heads, or a job.

4 ·         As Americans, we should give thanks each day for America’s Bounty. Our harvest, our workers, our military which is many times larger than any other standing army on the planet, and our ingenuity and hopeful “Can-do” attitude that has always been a part of the American Dream.

5 ·         Finally, we are a Spiritually wealthy country, with many diverse religious backgrounds that should be able to live in harmony and worship freely, as that is a core value in our Constitution.

·6          Our bounty includes the Age of Information that we live in, that enables us to live in a Global Village, surrounded by knowledge, which should be a positive thing.

 

 

In the end, if we can give thanks for simple things like our health and the pleasures of being with family and friends, that may counter all the Black Friday trends that our nation has seen and will hopefully fade away in time. To help those less fortunate, to remember to give thanks for who we are; to learn to let go, and just to Give Thanks one day out of the year, that remains the best part of the Thanksgiving Holiday.

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The Blurbles

 

 

As a whole, we are a society that reminds me of the scene from A Coalminer’s Daughter. At one point, Spacek/Loretta Lynn has a quiet nervous breakdown on stage in front of thousands of her fans. But she is depicted as such a big-hearted human being, so honest and vulnerable, that the conversation seemed to be a natural and beautiful thing.

She says to the hushed crowd, “Patsy used to say to me: ‘Little girl, you got to run your own life…But now my life’s running me...” She needed to stop and get off.  That is the sum of it. How often do we think that our lives are veering off course?

The other day on Social Media, one of the darlings of Instagram, Essena O’Neill, pulled the plug on her hamster wheel and jumped off.  O’Neill admitted that the hundreds of photos and supposedly spontaneous pictures were only achieved after hours of posing and dieting and suffering to reach perfection. She wanted no more of it, and decided to pull the plug.

These honest moments are things we can identify with. They are the things that stick with us. As a movie lover, I remember a scene from “Beyond Borders” with one of my favorite actors, Clive Owen, where he went into a packed ballroom of wealthy donors sitting through a Non-Profit event-one of those “Rubber-chicken circuit” dinners that politicians and the like often frequent.

 

Lab Rats of Madison Avenue

Owen breaks up the evening by walking up to the microphone and calling out the hypocrisy while dropping F-bombs left and right. I’ve often wondered if anyone has ever had the courage to do something like that in reality.  I think we all feel the need at times to just strip away the curtain and call out the hypocrisy and banality that we deal with every day. We sometimes feel like Lab Rats for Madison Avenue, especially as those of us chained to a desk see the world floating by through ads and e-mails.

It’s now a given that we, as writers, have about 2 to 3 seconds to capture your attention before you swipe right and move on to the next new thing. That’s why we feel like Lab Rats, the victims of a Madison Avenue Experiment gone dangerously wrong… McCluhan said it best, ‘The Word is the Blurb’.

The Word is the Blurb = The Blurb Blog

 That’s one of the reasons I decided to create “The Blurb Blog”. The Blurb Blog seeks to address not a single iota of these deep-rooted societal problems. However, in simply calling attention to the problem, we can begin to focus on those things which matter to us.

If only for a few minutes during the day, we may be able to take a breather from our duties and simply remember to just “be”. To be human, to be fallible, to be funny, to be sentimental and all those other things that make us who we are-those are the reasons to read “The Blurb Blog”.

The BullSh**t Artists

We know who you are

We know who they are. They know who they are. We all know what it’s about. The American Public in general has caught on to the type of fast-talking, Harold-Hill mentality found in modern day prose. There is a glibness to the text that we read at times. A wink and a nod is given to those of us who peruse the top ten blurb lists that threaten to suffocate us on a daily basis. We are surrounded by the too-clever subject lines that will pull us in. We must be drawn, and the newest tag line for publishing is: “It has to ‘Pop’!”

 

I don’t want to pop, sparkle, fizz or undulate when I write. I want it to sink in like a stone, and be worn like a talisman around the neck. I want my words to shine, and I want the verse to be taken and held next to the heart. I don’t necessarily want everyone to “get” me. I don’t “get” everyone. I don’t watch the most popular TV shows, but I do watch TV. I’m not like those holier-than-thou artistes who turn their noses up at pop culture and mass media. On the contrary, my belief is that our savior from all this madness surrounding modern media will be someone who has worked as a reporter and/or a blogger. That person will, of course, be a genius along the lines of a William Shakespeare, a Mark Twain, or an Ernest Hemingway. This person, he or she, will be able to look at the bullshit artists that are constantly spinning a web of false promises and fake ideals and will be able to turn the equation on its head.

 

We will be able to tell, at that point, that the Emperor not only has not been wearing clothes for the past twenty-odd years, but he’s also either on life-support or doesn’t even exist. If our culture depends upon the instant gratification of the message trending at the moment, then we are doomed. I don’t believe that. I believe the bullshit that is found in almost every piece of copy we see floating past our e-mail boxes, headlined in our papers and magazines, and trumpeted on the best-seller lists, is illusory and will someday be a distant memory. That is what happens to words that are written, but in the end, don’t say a thing.

 

The important stuff is found in small print, at times. Some of the items that are overlooked are some of the most fascinating things to read. These are usually buried in the back, or found on page 9 of the daily paper. But there’s still important news to be preserved. The news reports that told us all was not well in Iraq. The news about the war on terror, the war on poverty, and the war on words. We are fighting on the front lines every day to preserve a culture that may not be worth preserving. If someone comes along, someone with a new way of conveying information to the masses in this Mass Media Information Age, then we will be able to see the bullshit artists for what they are. And they will be no more.

 

 

 

 

The Writers Hub: Living in God's Time

Well, this summer was going to be my zero hour. My plan was to launch all kinds of projects and to get moving on the stalled plans and must-do things on my list. I needed to get my writing energized and focus my concentration to finish my book.

Naturally, I've accomplished almost nothing and the summer will soon be over. Some months drag along, but this summer has flown by too quickly. Why is it that time stalls when you are feeling like hell and it flies by when you need more of it?

The car broke down, the A/C went out, my 89 year old mother got sick and it has rained for 10 days straight. Nothing goes as planned, according to Hoyle, or SNAFU or Murphy’s Law…whatever you want to call it that can go wrong, will go wrong. It can and it will go wrong in the best Seinfeldian tradition.

 

One thing that I've got on the never-ending to-do list is starting a Newsletter. It connects me with friends and readers, and helps me to focus as I'm finishing my GF Writers Cookbook. The book is partly a journal of my life after I started eating gluten-free almost 20 years ago. It's been a revelation to re-think my diet and to focus on what I'm eating and it's made me more mindful as to what's in the food that's going into my body.

 

In retrospect, it made me eat more healthfully and definitely changed my life for the better. Although looking back, I didn't believe it at the time! I was so focused on what I had to give up, there was no thought as to what I would be gaining in the process.

 

It’s like that for so many things in life. You rail at life's injustices and errors and when you look back, you realize in retrospect that all things happen for a reason and it gives you pause. We were talking the other day about our little dog, Abby, and how much we love her. She fit in our household from day one, and we couldn't imagine life without her.

 

Abby was an owner-surrender that showed up on online classifieds. But it was a random chance that I would even have seen the ad, because we had gone a month earlier to look at another dog I found online. But the heavens opened up with a deluge as I drove to see the animal, and the owner never showed up so the whole transaction fell through. I pondered the notion that perhaps God was trying to tell me, “Wait, you will get the right dog and when the time is right-You will know” Which proved to be so true.

 

We get frustrated when things don't go our way, and we are rightly suspicious when things go too well or seem too good to be true. Because through life's daily setbacks and adversities, we stumble upon diamonds in the rough or undiscovered treasure that we would never have found if things went according to plan. Perhaps it's a good thing that life doesn't always turn out the way we want it or expect it to. It's a humbling reminder that we are living in God’s time, not our own.

 

Connect with me on twitter @mljtpa or e-mail me at mljtpa@6degreeswriter.com.

The Atticus I knew

 

As a writer who has always revered the story of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, I suppose I should have been upset by the revelations that the Atticus Finch of the first draft of the story had racist views. But I could only think-that sounds about right. Because my Atticus, my grandfather, also had feet of clay when it came to prejudices about race.

 

As a whole character, fleshed out with warts and all, I can see Atticus in this role, But as a writer, the first thing I’d like to point out is this-it’s only a first draft.  In the first draft, anything can happen. Characters are still taking shape. When Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote the stories of Cross Creek, it was at the urging of her legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins. Writers have a vision and great editors help to bring the vision to life. That’s why Harper Lee’s editor suggested she re-tell the story portraying Scout as a little girl.

 

 It’s a first draft, so let the beloved portrayal stand. As for me, I have two Atticus's in my head and in real life.  Big Daddy was my Great-Grandfather. He was the Gregory Peck Atticus from the movie, the forward thinking progressive liberal who saw things that no-one else saw in his day. I never knew him, but the stories about Big Daddy are legend in my family. He predicted the inter-marriage of blacks and whites, and knew that the designation of humans as separate or superior by way of the color of their skin was not only morally wrong, but scientifically false. He worried that President Roosevelt had too much power and wanted to vote him out of office after he had served two terms, but my Grandmother was horrified by the notion. Big Daddy was a progressive visionary, who lived ahead of his time.

 

The other Atticus in my life was my Grandfather, whom we called Pa. Pa was a man who would stop at the roadside and pick up hitchhikers. If he liked that person, he’d offer them a job or a chance to get ahead. He visited the sick and elderly in nursing homes on weekends, and when his mother in law needed a home, he went and got her and brought her South to live in his home. He was a great man with a good heart. He was the Atticus of the first draft.

 

He truly believed that the black man was inferior and would have to “work with his hands” for several generations before becoming equal or par to the superior white race. He was, by every definition, a racist. I loved him dearly, as I loved my father, and both had a tendency to express views that were not the same as mine about the black race.

 

Yet my father, who was a lawyer, had many Negro defendants, and a great long view of justice as it pertained to the equality affording human rights to all. He believed in equal rights under the law for fair housing and anti-discrimination laws to protect all people. Seeing issues as a lawyer would look at them, his mind was trained to believe in justice for all. Yet he held many racist views of African-Americans. He was a bit more progressive than my grandfather, but still, he would have been a model for the first draft.

 

The final draft of the book gave us the Atticus we know and love. That was and still is the man we want to remember. He is the one we believe in. And, as someone pointed out the other day, there were many Atticus Finch’s in our civil rights struggle who worked for equal justice and civil rights. They were in the crowd when Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, they were Freedom Riders on the bus alongside their black brothers and sisters, and they worked in courts of law and in communities across the nation to help bring about the end to discriminatory practices in housing and in education.

 

They are our unnamed heroes. But my hero was Big Daddy, a man who lived before his time and was a model for the character portrayed by Gregory Peck in the film. It gives me hope to think there really was an Atticus Finch who lived as a role model for the man we knew. And  then there was a first draft. As a writer, we also know this to be true.

 

You must keep the first draft in your mind as part of the story. But the first draft is set aside and put in the drawer for a reason. It’s not the finished product. The finished version is the one we call our own. It is the work of many minds and is a collaborative effort. I know them both and will always recall there is a first draft to the story we know and love. But the vision of Atticus, and the dream he instilled in so many will never die. That is the Atticus that will stay with me till the day I die.

The Power of Bonanza

The theme song of Bonanza always has the power to cheer me up. A friend insisted that Lorne Greene had recorded the theme song of Bonanza and I was always curious. Thanks to the magic of ITunes plus YouTube, I’ve been able to obtain a copy that never fails to cheer me up when I’m down.

 It’s so much fun to hear Lorne Greene singing the title song. Johnny Cash has a much more serious & plausible song than Lorne Greene's. But what fun is that? Lorne Greene sings with gusto and this plucky sense of fiefdom surrounding the “saga” of the three Cartwright men. It should be a tragic story. Or at least a tragi-comic story of a man who is widowed three times and left to raise three young men on his own.

But that’s not the American way. In this song, all we hear is how lucky it is to strike it rich with Bonanza! How much fun it is to ride and eat and shoot on the Ponderosa ranch. And if you pick a fight with any one of them, you have to fight with me (meaning-Lorne Greene,)!

 No one would ever guess the man wasn’t the luckiest guy in the world. He has buried three wives, so they may have told a different tale. But death is not part of the saga of Bonanza. He struck it rich and is reaping the rewards.

 

And so it is that when we feel down, the worst part of the story is the one that should be omitted from time to time. When we meet strangers, or friends we haven’t seen for a while, and if people ask how we are, we usually don’t tell a tale of woe. Instead we say, “ It’s great!”  Everything is fine and we’ve struck Bonanza! How lucky we are to be able to weave an imaginary tale of a strife-free existence where we live in a land of plenty. That is the American saga. So far, it seems to be working.

 

The next time you feel down about some very real and concrete part of your daily existence, then think of some little thing that has the power to cheer you up. It could be a silly song or a poem or a comic or a story. It’s some tangible proof that life exists in a separate plane when you are able to laugh at yourself and with others. It’s perhaps the best part of who we are as Americans. And for me, it’s the lasting power of Bonanza

Catchy Title Posts and a pair of brown shoes

Here are the catchy title posts I’ve been compelled to create after reading some fool-proof tips:

  “You’ll want to read this!”

Hey You! Read what I! wrote!

Buy this book and your life is complete

10 Reasons to no longer suffer pain

5 reasons you will rule the Universe one day

2 things to avoid to overcome death

A few good reasons you will live forever

How to avoid pain and gain influential friends-6 Easy steps

Cooking tips and Eternal Life-All in one chapter!

Avoid embarrassing mistakes! Read this now!

Shut up and read!

Instant success! First buy this book!

Want to become part of the 1%? So do I Dammit, buy the damn book!

Sex sells! Learn how to sell sex! Send money!

The Rent is too Damn High!!! Buy the Book!

 

 

***

 

As usual, the ambivalence I feel between the hated commercial aspect of every corner of our lives, including the idea of filthy, dirty lucre being offered for the precious baby-angel words from this wordsmith’s font of wisdom causes endless angst and palpitations of the heart.

The very idea someone would change my thoughts! If my thought-dreams, could be seen, they’d probably put my head, in a guillotine…Ok, I know  I didn’t write that, but what do you expect from a hack?

 The problem is…I’m convinced I’m not really good enough to write anything meaningful. I’m not smart enough, or intellectual, or even witty enough.  I’m just a blob on the jello mold of society. I think comedian George Gobels summed it up best as he was sitting on the Carson show next to Bob Hope and Dean Martin, and said, “Did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you’re a pair of brown shoes?” I am that pair of brown shoes.

 There’s that…and other reasons why I find it hard to submit my writing for review. Not because I think of myself as a genius, but that only genius will do.  Part of me believes what Foghorn Leghorn told his protégé: These are all gems I’m tossin’ out, boy!

 We have to ask ourselves some tough questions when crack teams of experienced writers nail it down for us amateurs. First question: Why the hell would anyone want to read what I’ve written? The answer is tough reality for a delusional such as myself. No one wants to read my work. Next question: Are you an expert? Hell No!

Next: Can you reduce your writing to the size of a cocktail napkin and pretend that you are in an elevator with someone who looks bored with life and is possibly addicted to crack cocaine? If you can, then you may have a promising future as a writer!

 Jeez, at this point just forget about it. I don’t want it, so just leave me alone to curl up in a fetal position and die locked away by myself in a cold, sterile room like the one featured in Kubrick's  2001: A Space Odyssey.