What?

Words are such an interesting art form to me. There are paints, of course, and sculpture, and music, and a thousand other things besides, but words… words are my art. (Or is it mere craft? Can never decide. Doesn’t matter. Six or half a dozen, right?)  I know words pretty well. I’m not the best with them, but certainly not the worst. I suppose, in a sense, that makes me a writer.

Yes. Okay. I’m a writer then. A writer writes, first and foremost, and I do that; I write. And well, as a writer, I’ve sort of come to think of it as my job to look as deeply into things and from as many different angles as possible, especially myself. Especially myself. There’s a pretense to it, in my mind; a pretense of omniscience. After all, a painter has his paints and his canvas, the sculptor his stone and chisel; a writer has only himself. Sure, he has the words themselves and all their parts, but those are only the medium. He is the canvas himself. If he lies or contrives or distracts, his audience will know almost immediately. Worse, he will know.

You see, the whole thing collapses into nonsense or folly, and a narrative that might have taken hours or weeks or even years in composition is instantly derailed. As a consequence, I think writers learn themselves and life in a way that is probably quite intolerable to be around. We are the perpetual observers, the non-doers, the re-thinkers, the nay-sayers, the won’t-take-parters. To be a writer, you have to write… but to write, you first have to observe. And then remember, and remember, and remember, in as many ways and shades as you possibly can.

And yet, we’re a species obsessed with the notion that we came from stardust. We seem to forget that if I’m stardust, then so are you, and the guy next to you, and the guy next to him. And if we’re all stardust, what makes my twinkle any brighter than yours?

Think about it: you grow up hearing, “you’re going to do something special, and we’re going to be so proud of you.” And every day, your head hits the pillow, and you haven’t managed much of anything. So you think, are they proud of me? Are they proud that I managed a B, or do they think I’m not living up to my potential? I could have married someone else, I could have gone to a better college. But my kids will do well, and they’ll be extraordinary. Because I couldn’t be. 

self-indulgent art of @amazingphil and @danielhowell

We are all, as the kids would say, shook.

bonus: he deleted the hair