Random Thoughts: Form and Function

I think for any artist, it is a mistake to think that improving form will automatically improve function.

Consider the career trajectory of a rock musician. The upstart rocker is young, raw, and still developing technical skills on his or her instrument. Sometimes a band will release an album that “takes the world by storm” before its members can read a line of music. What most fans will consider their best album is often an album created from what the band members profess as “little knowledge of what they’re doing.”

An aged rock musician may say, “My skills have improved drastically since my first album.” Though the technical skills may improve, the quality of the music diminishes. The earlier albums had a rawness that lacked sound form, but walloped with effective function. Resonant art requires feeling. A fast solo does nothing without emotion embedding it.

I’m sure the band members of Metallica can play circles around their past selves. They can hit every old solo blindfolded. That does not mean that modern Metallica music is better, however. If anything, the music has objectively staled (almost no one would argue that Death Magnetic is a superior album to Ride the Lightning). Where rock music counterpart Megadeth has an advantage is their continued sense of urgency. Every song is still imbued with feeling. The fifty-year-old has the same attitude as his 18-year-old self. There is still pain, triumph, and loss behind the song structure. The quest continues, and therefore, so does the art.

The issue is similar for a writer. A writer’s prose may improve over the years, but that says nothing of the story he or she may wish to tell. A writer may edit a sentence a hundred times, but each successive edit does not necessarily improve the sentence. The master of syntax is by no means the master storyteller. That first drafted sentence, the impulsive one, may be grammatically worse, but it also may pack more punch. Even if embarrassingly poor in structure, it probably impacts the reader more than the hundredth edit. By the hundredth edit, can it even be said that the writer still maintains the intention of the original sentence? After all, the first sentence was probably written on feeling. The hundredth sentence is often written to impress an audience. Something was lost along the way.

My point is that effective art requires work, but it is a mistake to believe that function requires perfect form. This should be good news to any aspiring artist because it gives him or her permission to be imperfect, so long as they have something to say and a fiery means of saying it. It should also illuminate why a guitar virtuoso is often not the writer of a hit single.

Where’s the Awe

I wake up intermittently through the night because every turn of the body ignites pain in my collarbone. At least by waking I’m able to prevent further damage to myself. Still, sleep is a chore.

I’m at least finding some mobility returning. I’m putting on button-up shirts more easily, flossing, and nearly tying shoelaces. They are all things that I couldn’t do last week.

I’m finishing a book that I decided to revisit: The Damnation Game by Clive Barker. It’s a favorite from college. I was curious whether the book would enrapture me like it did years ago.

Parts of the book were equally as page-turning, such as the wild and macabre introduction. However, I also struggled to find an off-switch for my inner critic.

This section has too much dialogue, and all of the dialogue is exposition, I’d think.

This section’s character motivation is questionable.

Needless to say, some of the magic was lost. Often in place of story immersion was skepticism. A mind searching for flaws replaced a mind that dared to wonder.

I recognized this inner critic and managed to barricade it for the book’s final section. For a few hours, I was again attuned to my inner dreamer.

What is it about age that causes us to increasingly kill the magic around us?

At times, the industrialization of the mind seems as inevitable as the industrialization of the environment.

It’s as though the process of adulting wrought enough grim realities to shock the inner dreamer into submission. Survival and magic are mutually exclusive. Life is work, politics, and a steady and horrifying debilitation of one’s own body. Where is there time for awe?

Sometimes finding that sense of awe can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s there though, if you allow it to be. Just open a book from your youth and make the choice to see it.

Weekly Plunder: Week 17 - Looking Glass

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Reality is whatever we construct it to be. In that sense, we are creators to a much further extent than we know. Our villains are evil because we hone in on their faults and our heroes are pristine because we fawn over their virtues.

On a long walk through downtown today I thought about how I could choose to see the magnificence of the man-made city structures and the electric bulbs affixed to them that render them ethereal at night. Or, I could choose to see the sickness hanging over the streets, the homeless who freeze to death on cold January nights and the rats that scuttle through sewers beneath the sidewalks, where they can breed disease and occasionally sneak above to the world of man and forage for food.

Much of our interpretation of reality is subjective.

On another front, my physical therapist says I am ready to start some light running and jumping on Wednesday. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this is the final stretch of rehab, though I’m not announcing myself healed just yet. Still, I feel that I am on the cusp of “going full-throttle.”

What I’m watching: The Silent Sea, Season 1 on Netflix. Another exemplary Korean show in a long list of excellent Korean shows. Korean screenwriting has really honed the craft of story structure. Layers are peeled from the story’s world at a perfect pace to keep the audience guessing and intrigued. Screenwriting is an interesting combination of mathematics and imagination.

What I’m reading: The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. Because comfort kills.

What I’m listening to: “Hotel California” by the Eagles. In my opinion this is their masterpiece. It’s essentially a song about someone who has gone to hell and doesn’t realize it until he can’t escape. That scenario can be applied to an infinite number of personal situations.

What I’m thinking: There is an implicit contract between writer and reader. I, the writer, imagine my words will have a certain emotional effect on you, the reader. However, I don’t know how much you will read… if you’ll read a certain passage once, multiple times, or just skim a few words. I only assume we will connect somewhere, however briefly, in the two dimensional realm you’re staring at now.

Out here, outside social media, we are in the Wild West. We have no skin in the game, no one to compete for followers with, no agenda to push (outside our personal opinions). We do not push for attention or popularity, or even sales. We don’t even know each other, you and I. And therefore, with nothing to lose and no reason to continue, we are fully free to be ourselves.

The Weekly Plunder: Week 4 - Message in a Bottle

A blog is not a diary. It’s more like a message in a bottle that you send out to sea. You don’t know who will read it or if anyone ever will. Someone may find it in a day, in a year, or never. And what they think of your thoughts… is anyone’s guess. But they read your thoughts and perhaps they connect on a little of it and think, “Whoa. There’s another person someone out there in the world who’s kinda twisted, like me.”

What I’m doing: I’m selling a lot of my belongings. On reflection I’ve realized that many of them were purchased out of vanity. It’s easy to intellectualize and justify traits such as vanity and narcissism. “I bought the product because it’s sustainable,” we may tell ourselves upon purchasing overpriced pants. But the most sustainable place is a thrift shop. One day I’d like to rid myself of my vanity.

What I’m watching: Dawn of the Dead. It’s a zombie film that’s not actually about zombies. It’s about human nature. Both humans and zombies unconsciously flock to the shopping mall.

What I’m listening to: “One Night in Tokyo” by Beast in Black. It’s just stupid fun.

What I’m reading: Patagonia magazine. My favorite story is about a woman who loses the love of her life from a snow avalanche. She had planned to have kids with him. After his death she manages to freeze his seed and have it transported to a medical facility. After getting permission from her dead lover’s parents she proceeds with in vitro fertilization on herself. The first two attempts fail, but the third attempt is a success. She has her lover’s child 15 months after his death. Now that is a ghost story.

What I’m thinking: Write yourself a message in a bottle and send it out to sea. Maybe a shark will devour it or an otter will use it to club its prey. Or maybe it’ll land on a desert island and someone will read it and think, “Whoa. What a story there is in the life of this person!”