I’ll admit it - I am no good at starting a piece of writing. Often, the first lines I write of any blog/article/piece of writing are quite cliché. They’re often questions - or statements, like this one. The difference with this intro, though, is this: it is a cliché statement, out and out; I’m not denying that “I’ll-admit-it” is pretty damn cliché, and that it gives you an obvious opening to say anything: I.e. “I’ll admit it - I own a clown suit, and I use it to collect garbage. Why? Let me explain…” or “I’ll admit it - I backed Mitt Romney, because I want my President to look like the President from any mid-nineties disaster movie. It’s a comforting thought - hear me out” - no, the reason that the usage of a cliché opening here is okay is this: it explains itself - it is about itself. That makes it excusable - at least in my book… and all of this might be in a book one day, so I have the right.
(Or maybe that right was just cancelled out by the really bad pun I used to justify it - either way.)
But, writing is exactly everything that writing literally is, plus more. Writing is grinding something out of nothing - looking at a blank piece of paper and wondering what the fuck to write about. There’s always so much to write - things that bounce around inside my head, that beg to be enumerated, blasted, shaped, and expounded upon. These are the dreams of my ideas - that’s what they dream about at night. Ideas sleep by lying dormant, so they sleep, and dream of being useful - totally useful, used to express something or another.
But ideas - and their personal dreams - are often squandered by the communicator, the two-hundred-and-sixty-pound, near-sighted bag of blood and sinew and skin that typifies myself - and they sit in my mind, sleeping and living, until I can force myself to shape and expound on them, with the movements of a writing instrument. Sometimes my ideas are suppressed - for years and years - they never see the light of day, they yearn for that light - and I, as the communicator, keep them suppressed. Poor ideas, at the mercy of their keeper - but that’s life, regrettably - that the communicator is hampered by moods, laziness, and the fucking cursed thing known as “writer’s block” - again, that’s life.
What’s interesting, though, is when ideas get crafty and try to make themselves known - at the displeasure of myself, the communicator, who is in no shape to expound upon them. They want to get worked on and written up - and they attack my train of thought, and try to derail it. They’re like rebel ideas - they’re trying their damndest to get out.
I imagine that ideas, with all the downtime they have, get together and plan revolts. They occasionally succeed in the fullest possible manner - that is, get seized upon, throttled, finessed, and, in the end, typed and edited and read by someone. Most of the time, though, they get out, but written down and incorporated in the most horrible, awkward way. When this happens, and they see themselves flayed out on a piece of paper, looking all un-worked and entirely unfavorable, I wonder if they ponder the situation and thing to themselves, “Goddamnit - I should have just stayed in there a little bit longer.”
Here, for your reading pleasure (and to prove that I’m not a lunatic with nothing to really write about), is a fully unedited, true-to-the-letter, factually-accurate, blow-by-blow account of an Idea Revolt. When you read this passage, put yourself in my position - sitting in a café, on a lazy Sunday, with a loud football game enveloping the room, and a blank sheet of paper in front of you. The Ideas formed and pushed, linked together in the most random fashion, no doubt drunk on the nervousness and excitement that came with the unspeakably dangerous revolt, which they had planned for weeks - which was happening, really happening - and then they fell out onto the paper, embarrassed and gasping for breath:
“There’s ground-shaking football being played today. I believe today is the two games that decides who plays the Super Bowl. The first game is just starting - Jordin Sparks, American Idol herself, is taking her turn of glitzing up the National Anthem. I didn’t know that she had won American Idol; I just know her from her annoying singles on the radio. Surrounding me are about ten moneyed 20-types, who are choking on cigars and watching the game. Six of them just left - maybe the environs weren’t up to their liking. I have no idea.
It is the Sunday before the Tuesday. This Tuesday is not only notable for Barack Obama’s inauguration; it is also the day that, for the first time, I will go to court - well, traffic court. Very historical - our first black president, and a guy in Tampa goes to court for the first time. That should make the Tribune, at least.
I’m currently supporting the Cardinals. That makes me a party of one on this side of the café.
Kurt Warner!
As a note - I don’t like the new line of Budweiser “Drinkability” commercials… the new ones, with their “hey, look at this, I can create drawings out of thin air” is kind of boring - but then again, the old ones weren’t too imaginative either. The only reason I liked the old ones - other than their semi-surrealism - was the fucking cute red-haired girl in one of them.
“Fills you up?” - that was her.
All tall and thin - with an expressive face and, yes, brownish-red hair - that was a cute, cute girl. She was the only thing that made those certain Bucs games watchable - those games where we’re down two touchdowns at the beginning of the fourth - and there’s a chance, a sliver of a chance - that we could regain and, at least, make the game go into overtime. That would never happen, of course. We’d get one more touchdown, and that would lose us the game - just enough of a loss to make certain people royally pissed (my brother) and other people annoyed (myself).
Red hair kills me - on girls, at least. It goes well with blue eyes - which aren’t so special, according to a song that I wrote about fifty feet from this very spot more than two years ago.
Don’t get me wrong - I like blue eyes. They look nice. They’re occasionally entrancing. But a lot of people have them, especially a lot of girls. Blue eyes aren’t the single thing that makes a girl special - that’s what I meant by that song. And not all blue eyes are special - they might be, and probably are, but they’re not always what they’re cracked up to be.
In the meantime, while I’ve mused about the Budweiser girl, and Bucs, and blue eyes - the Eagles have scored a field goal and, just now, stripped the ball from my buddies, the Cardinals. I believe the middle-aged guy at the other table is trying to bait me - “It’s cheap, but we’ll take it!” he’s repeated three times, looking at me directly. The Eagles suck - their fans are shit, lobbing batteries and stuff. Fuck them. I don’t see Cardinals fans starting riots.
Now, they’re getting first down after first down - unbearable. I’m not gonna stand for this shit.
Maybe Raheem Morris will groom the Bucs back to their Super Bowl glory, and we’ll beat the Eagles’ ass next year. That would be beautiful.
Touchdown Cardinals!
I’m not getting much done here. Football has me distracted. But this is real life - the Sunday before the Tuesday - and if I had control of things, the Cardinals would go to the Super Bowl, and I’ll have a nice time in court. Barack Obama is already going to be President - that’s the best part of all.
And if you take anything from this pile of hodge-podge that would even make Judy Hill blush - let it be that.”
Bob Dylan, when asked how he wrote a double-album’s worth of songs for Blonde on Blonde, replied that he was working at such a fast pace, that he had forgotten writing most of them - they just kind of poured out. When Dylan’s ideas revolted, stuff like “Just Like a Woman” and “Temporary Like Achilles” would, all of a sudden, exist - good, worthwhile, interestingly-worded songs.
This is because his ideas, when they revolted, were finely woven and well-put-together - that’s what I think, anyway. But my ideas aren’t like that - they’re like a group of peasants, working purely from instinct, trying to do anything to make their life better - even if it includes embarrassing their creator and communicator. Stupid ideas.
And, of course, the only ideas that revolt are the weird, stupid ones. Anything of importance is smart enough to stay in their place - inside my head - until they’re called upon and shaped and written - coddled, loved, and sculpted into a beautiful, worthwhile existence.
This is why I’m glad that I have the opportunity for multiple drafts. Also, when paper is introduced to fire, it has a tendency to turn into a pile of inscrutable cinders. This is a plus, even though I haven’t literally set fire to anything I’ve written since the eighth grade - no matter how bad or embarrassing it was. Fire is such a melodramatic thing, when you can just rip the stuff up with your bare hands - no risk of housefires, or devastating burns.
But, like any real person, those destroyed ideas can linger indefinitely in my head, in memory, for as long as they wish to… attached to another little idea, which might meet up with one of those huge, smart, important ideas, and procreate - into a large family of ideas, and when that happens - well, it gets seized upon and written about eventually - shaped, blasted, and expounded upon. Loved and coddled.
To that end, this is the Tuesday of the Tuesday… not the Sunday before the Tuesday, or the Friday after the Tuesday - today is that singular, tumultuous Tuesday. And, in detail, a lot of stuff turned out good since Sunday: Barack Obama was sworn in this morning, and it was quite moving; the Cardinals beat the Eagles and are now going all the way to the Super Bowl - which is being held in this lovely city; traffic court was a groove, because the judge dismissed my ticket in fifteen words, and I walked out without owing anyone anything; and Monday was my last day of packing things safely and charging people for it, because I was laid off - and I find it hard to care about it, because I feel entirely free. Life is, again, a blank slate - and not just for me, but also for many, many people. It’s a great thing.
Life changes, like ideas do, at a fast and unpredictable speed. At the risk of sounding cliché, you’ve got to grab onto the reins and hold on with all your might. Something to consider.
And, with that, I’ve touched on everything I needed to - writing clichés, Idea Revolt, my life, and all the things that I wanted to write about. Ideas were used - and not in vain. That makes this piece at least semi-complete.
Ideas - like revolutionaries - never die in vain. They just look weird for a while.
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