you know, for kids
Sometimes I wonder if I've run out of interesting things to say. Hell, sometimes I wonder if there was ever an original thought in my head.
It's February in California. It's raining. Where I live that means it feels like spring.
Inquisitive robins greet me on the way to the coffee shop. The flowering vines on my neighbor's trellis are blooming. Tender shoots are popping up in the planters, and the grass on the East Bay hills is green and getting greener...
::
I became a photographer because I was good at writing. Yeah, that sounds funny, but it's true.
Professors used to ask me if they could keep my essays. Once I was even asked to read one aloud to class. If you're shy, as I am, that can make you a bit sheepish about the process...especially since I wrote most of my essays longhand drinking coffee in the back booth at a now defunct 24hour restaurant on Broadway called the College Inn. I rarely gave the actual wording of the essays more than an outline's effort in advance of the night before they were due. That showed, of course.
But what also showed was this. I was always obsessed with the topic at hand. And I always wrote as if a demon was chasing me.
Writing is like leaping. At the beginning of the process you are on one side of a chasm. At the end of the process you are on the other. In between, you are in the air. High on caffeine. Pushed by a deadline. Stretching your legs like long jumpers do...to gain more distance...to hit your mark.
Writing an essay is simple. First you write a sentence. Then you write a paragraph. Then you reread the sentence. Then you reread the paragraph. As long as everything connects and makes sense, you're golden.
You see, the hardest part of writing an essay aren't the words themselves, it's the ideas behind them. No ideas. No focus. No essay.
The words follow the thoughts. The thoughts follow the subject matter.
Proust. the Koran. the Symposium. A Schubert liede. Politics. Life. Whatever it takes to make you focus. To make you obsess. To boil down the essence of your thoughts and observations. To preserve them. To archive their value. To share.
An essay isn't what you think it is. That's something I learned early on.
An essay is a little rip in the space time continuum. It's a pause. It's a meeting place.
You think one way. I think another. We meet here, on a page. Through sentences and words strung together to reflect thoughts.
I write sentences for me and I write sentences for you. Both considerations are necessary. The words have to reflect what I think. They also have to communicate. You are as much a part of the process as I am. I've always known that was true. It's inherent in the form.
An essay. A themed sequence of paragraphs committed to telling some small, succinct tale. A point of view. A gambit. An expression. A collaboration between reader and writer and the other way around.
That's the beauty of the blogs. The fact that they create these crossroads. The way they open up so many of these encapsulated, almost-sure-to-have-been-lost thought processes.
How can you write so many pieces? Folks ask me.
It's really not that hard.
In fact, once you get used to the habit of writing you realize that you are just doing something that we all do all the time. You are communicating.
Take a walk. Take a stroll. Think about something you read in the newspaper. Think about someone you once knew. Reflect on the faces you meet. Let your life tell you what to do.
And then boil those thoughts down in to words. Share those words in a way that communicates, that invites your readers to experience what you just went through.
I love that experience. I love that process. Writing is like dancing. It's like leaping. It's like jazz.
What's funny is that I make photographs of what I can't put in to words.
Leaping. Dancing. Faces. Landscapes. Something specific and ineluctable that I can't quite put my finger on.
That makes a photograph: a mystery frozen at 1/250th of a second. A puzzle preserved. A riddle on ice.
Photographs, like writing, happen. They are made, yes. They are conceived, yes.
But, then, they occur.
They happen all at once. They are born.
The work, the hard part, isn't ever what you think it will be.
In fact, as I get older I realize that the hardest part of the process...and there's plenty that's hard...is this: writing, photography, art all involve turning to face the demon that's been chasing you. Involve holding up a mirror.
Honesty looking outward is easy.
Looking in that mirror isn't.
The demon is always looking back at you.
{Cross-posted and discussed at dailykos.com.}
writing kid oakland
It's February in California. It's raining. Where I live that means it feels like spring.
Inquisitive robins greet me on the way to the coffee shop. The flowering vines on my neighbor's trellis are blooming. Tender shoots are popping up in the planters, and the grass on the East Bay hills is green and getting greener...
::
I became a photographer because I was good at writing. Yeah, that sounds funny, but it's true.
Professors used to ask me if they could keep my essays. Once I was even asked to read one aloud to class. If you're shy, as I am, that can make you a bit sheepish about the process...especially since I wrote most of my essays longhand drinking coffee in the back booth at a now defunct 24hour restaurant on Broadway called the College Inn. I rarely gave the actual wording of the essays more than an outline's effort in advance of the night before they were due. That showed, of course.
But what also showed was this. I was always obsessed with the topic at hand. And I always wrote as if a demon was chasing me.
Writing is like leaping. At the beginning of the process you are on one side of a chasm. At the end of the process you are on the other. In between, you are in the air. High on caffeine. Pushed by a deadline. Stretching your legs like long jumpers do...to gain more distance...to hit your mark.
Writing an essay is simple. First you write a sentence. Then you write a paragraph. Then you reread the sentence. Then you reread the paragraph. As long as everything connects and makes sense, you're golden.
You see, the hardest part of writing an essay aren't the words themselves, it's the ideas behind them. No ideas. No focus. No essay.
The words follow the thoughts. The thoughts follow the subject matter.
Proust. the Koran. the Symposium. A Schubert liede. Politics. Life. Whatever it takes to make you focus. To make you obsess. To boil down the essence of your thoughts and observations. To preserve them. To archive their value. To share.
An essay isn't what you think it is. That's something I learned early on.
An essay is a little rip in the space time continuum. It's a pause. It's a meeting place.
You think one way. I think another. We meet here, on a page. Through sentences and words strung together to reflect thoughts.
I write sentences for me and I write sentences for you. Both considerations are necessary. The words have to reflect what I think. They also have to communicate. You are as much a part of the process as I am. I've always known that was true. It's inherent in the form.
An essay. A themed sequence of paragraphs committed to telling some small, succinct tale. A point of view. A gambit. An expression. A collaboration between reader and writer and the other way around.
That's the beauty of the blogs. The fact that they create these crossroads. The way they open up so many of these encapsulated, almost-sure-to-have-been-lost thought processes.
How can you write so many pieces? Folks ask me.
It's really not that hard.
In fact, once you get used to the habit of writing you realize that you are just doing something that we all do all the time. You are communicating.
Take a walk. Take a stroll. Think about something you read in the newspaper. Think about someone you once knew. Reflect on the faces you meet. Let your life tell you what to do.
And then boil those thoughts down in to words. Share those words in a way that communicates, that invites your readers to experience what you just went through.
I love that experience. I love that process. Writing is like dancing. It's like leaping. It's like jazz.
What's funny is that I make photographs of what I can't put in to words.
Leaping. Dancing. Faces. Landscapes. Something specific and ineluctable that I can't quite put my finger on.
That makes a photograph: a mystery frozen at 1/250th of a second. A puzzle preserved. A riddle on ice.
Photographs, like writing, happen. They are made, yes. They are conceived, yes.
But, then, they occur.
They happen all at once. They are born.
The work, the hard part, isn't ever what you think it will be.
In fact, as I get older I realize that the hardest part of the process...and there's plenty that's hard...is this: writing, photography, art all involve turning to face the demon that's been chasing you. Involve holding up a mirror.
Honesty looking outward is easy.
Looking in that mirror isn't.
The demon is always looking back at you.
{Cross-posted and discussed at dailykos.com.}
writing kid oakland
Comments
But, then, they occur.
They happen all at once. They are born.
Wow. That's, like, really deep, dude.
Is Tom's still there? It must be... the Seinfeld magic can't have died yet.
Remember Mama Joy's?
It can also be like a boxing match. I like the dance image better and blogs are the best place to dance ~
Keep on writing ~ you do it so well.
This particular congregation was generating so much noise we were compelled to study the anomaly.
As we approached the boiling source of haphazard frequencies, our superb training took over. We were well-trained to
investigate any unusual source and level of human commotion and report immediately back to our ZX-879 headquarters.
Turning on our invisibility shield helped us get really close to the subject of examination without being detected.
As we reached the egg shaped concrete container filled with 100,000 or so human subjects, the noise level rose to
such unimaginable heights that we had to shut down our frequency analyzers for fear of damaging their sensitive
circuitry.
When we cleared the top of the concrete structure we were blinded with thousands of light-emitting radiation
sources.
Then we saw them -- 22 voluntary humans darting back and forth in alternating sequences of random and
seemingly-goal-oriented sprints. We have checked our central computer to decipher the modal characteristic of such
kinetic outbursts and we were advised to locate the focal source of coordinated agitation.