The beauty and power of words part 0: Any man with a Microphone can tell you what he loves the most

There is a common conception that a website has to be about something. In the case of films, TV and novels, basically anything that tells a story, it always seems to be that the first thing we want to know is “what’s it about?” It seems a fair question. But how many times have you been asked just that and then struggled to explain exactly what something is.

Some people think they know what something is from just being told the title. I like Batman the movie. No questions asked. Everyone thinks they know what you mean. No need to ask what it’s all about. However, there is plenty of room to get it wrong.

“I love Batman!”

“Me too!”

“What’s your favourite bit?”

“That has to be the part where you see that Harvey Two Face Dent has had half his face melted off by acid.”

“Oh. I don’t remember that. My memories are of when Batman’s running around going Biff and Kapow and stuff and the bit where he has to dispose of a giant bomb but he can’t find anywhere to throw it and at one point he’s going to chuck it off a pier into the water but he sees some cute ducks and can’t throw it there because he might kill the ducks.”

“I like Batman” does not mean the same to everyone. To some, Batman may be a children’s cartoon or a camp 60s pastiche of a comic book and to others, the ones who really know, they know it’s a twisted dark world full of dangerously psychotic people.

Then again, sometimes we know exactly what something is based solely on the title. You can judge a book by its cover. Exhibit A: One word. Sharknado. I suppose Sharknado could be a name of a small art house film in which Sharks and Tornados have a deeper meaning to our protagonist. Perhaps it’s a sweet allegorical tale about a young man’s lost innocence. Or, most likely it’s a Z-Grade disaster movie in which Sharks are sent hurtling through the LA skies to cause all sorts of mayhem. Maybe I’ll watch it one day but I’m pretty sure I know that film without ever seeing it.

I can’t say I know what Jack White had in mind when he sang, “Well any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most.” But I know what I’ve made it mean to me for the purpose of writing this. My take is that anyone in the blogosphere can write about the things they like the most.

“What’s your blog about?”

“My Blog? It’s about how much I love Dolly Parton!”

“I love Dolly Parton too. Can I follow your blog?”

That fits a world where the aim is to gather around you people who like the same things. Perhaps it’s a subconscious attempt to create a safe haven of like minded people, united in their love of Dolly Parton. We live in uncertain times. You’re not going out on a limb to suggest this is the most polarised society has ever seemed. Oddly where we see divided societies we can also see a million different voices blogging, Youtubing, existing in so many ways on social media and social media channels usually being particularly about only one thing in a very marketable way.

“Walked out this morning

Don't believe what I saw

Hundred billion bottles

Washed up on the shore

Seems I'm not alone at being alone

Hundred billion castaways

Looking for a home.”

Is that a model of life anyone can recognise? A blog, like any other creative endeavour, could easily feel like a message in a bottle set adrift into a sea of a hundred billion bottles. Despite this, and maybe even because of this, we set them off, with no idea of where they’ll go. In a creative hierarchy the publishers are launching ships and we’re launching messages in bottles. And it’s free to do and no one is going to tell you, “It’s very well written but not for us thank you.”

I was once told that love is loving someone even when you know it won’t work out. Sounds masochistic to me. But I can relate as I love writing without even thinking about where it goes.

This work exists here: short stories, chapters of two unpublished novels, journalism, reviews, and anything else I can throw in.  It’s here or it’s filling up space on my hard drive. But it exists for the very reason all good art does. Because you are compelled to create it, even if you don’t know what to do with it.

I was listening to a song from the 90s on Spotify recently. It was a little known and long forgotten song. As I listened to it there was an authority in what was being sung and the way it was sung. There was something genuine about it that struck me as inescapably true. And it goes beyond simply being relatable. I can’t say that I know that there was any truth in the song at all.  It may have been written by someone whose only intention was to sell copies of CDs. Certain truths can sometimes be made of a whole lot of fiction but the truth lies in more than just the words of a song. It’s an attitude, a delivery, a way of making you feel. We’re in Bill Hicks territory now. What had he said way back when? Play from your Heart! Actually, for anyone who hasn’t seen the late great comedian Bill Hicks, he screamed it. “Play from your fucking heart!” And when you do people will really listen and feel and take notice. JFK could have said, “Hey, let’s fly to the Moon. Won’t that be cool?” But he didn’t.

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Those words will get you to the Moon!

Back to twenty first century Earth: Who’s in charge now? Who do we believe? Does anyone have any authority now? We have created a situation where increasingly we give equal credence to all opinions and as a result no authority to anyone. An anonymous Trip Advisor review can somehow sway opinion. How is that possible?  Online reviewers who spout an opinion and then disappear have no stake in what they write. People may review a review and then someone else reviews that. It becomes a squabble, just a messy pile of opinion. Reading comments at the end of any news article is like hearing a thousand chattering voices leaving the theatre at the end of the play. I often feel like I’m stood outside a pub at closing time watching fights break out. It’s its own form of twisted voyeurism. And that’s why I have no place for feedback. 

Is there too much choice? Are we all on our own beaches with all those messages in a bottle washed to shore and we don’t know which ones to read? Do I have any more authority than any other writer? Should I be content with adding to the masses of messages we already have?

I have held a belief for some years now that when you give people something to read that you are making a promise. It’s a contract. I give this to you knowing it’s not shit. Arguably there is a level of arrogance that can be assumed there when you hold that opinion. Or there is a complete miscalculation of your own talent. You might be shit. Having studied writing to PhD level and spent years doing it gives me an inkling that I’m not awful. And yet still, I cannot know I am good or great.  What I can say is that any authority that might shine through is because my goal is never to just convey a message but rather to make the writing as good or better than the subject matter. The writing always comes first.

Apparently, the Sci-Fi writer John Keffer, who I know nothing about, can be attributed with the idea of requesting that his tomb stone should read, “He didn’t know but he had an inkling.” For some of us an inkling is as good as knowing. Any years of study and small written achievements are not proof of anything but it’s a good starting point. What I’ve never been able to do is write entirely on my own terms and know that what I produce has a place. That’s what this is. And my theory is that if it’s good then people will read it, even if they have no interest in the subject.

Does anything need to be well written? Do stories? Novels? TV Shows? Have we all become like Mr Thomas Gradgrind from Dickens's novel Hard Times? Are we only concerned with cold hard facts? I once asked an MA Creative Writing student to quote me something from their favourite book. They told me that they “don’t do quotes.” I’m still shocked at that one. I’m not saying that to be good you need to be quotable but there is a power in words that you just don’t get in emojis. I’m being facetious. I am confident that the woman who doesn’t “do quotes” never went on to write a novel in only emojis. But the point stands. Words take second place to a fixation on asking, “What’s it about?” There’s a need for writing to be palatable, to be easily consumed. As a result everything now seems low concept to me, designed to fit on a screen of an android phone. The big oversight with regards to that model is that it might be easier to read but too often I get halfway through an article and stop reading because it isn’t designed to be readable, only to convey facts or opinion.  Quite often I find I’ve got all I need or want from just half the article and there is nothing compelling me to keep reading. 

The flipside of that is when I hear others complaining that something is too long. “Too many words man!” But if they’re good words you want to keep reading. If it’s good you keep going, even if it is in two sittings or more.  Back when I was still studying I read an article by Jonathan Franzen called “Perchance to Dream: In the Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels.” Reading it made me feel like a younger me, hungry for words that matched how I was feeling. Writing should do that to you. You should want it to never end, not be in a race to get through it.

Any betrayal of a manifesto in the twenty first century should be met with death. Discuss:

Let’s go to the dictionary definition for this. Manifesto: “A public declaration of policy and aims.” Bloody Hell. Even the Urban Dictionary comes up with this: “A written document prepared by a single person, intended to garner attention towards a specific topic or issue.” I genuinely thought I was going to get something more interesting than that from the Urban Dictionary. “Manifesto? That’s the lies the political people tell to get power. Innit.”

With this in mind I don’t know how people have come to believe that any manifesto is set in stone. It's regarded as heresy and blasphemy with a side order of a lack of integrity to change your mind. Facebook started out with an idea of being a mouthpiece for freedom of expression. I suppose, for better or worse it does stand for that. Starbucks states that one of its core values is to challenge the status quo. Well, my Dad hated it and he was old school. So, maybe. We mostly try to start with good intentions. We can’t help what people paint us as. Perhaps down the road this whole site turns into a review of porno films, and someone says to me, “Hey, that was never in your manifesto. You promised us nothing but good writing.” To which I sincerely hope I remember to respond with, “Is it a blog with well written porn reviews?”

This medium frees you up. Maybe the only rules are the ones you set yourself. This is not a manifesto. It’s just how I’d like things to be.  As a writer of fiction I always think you should write like no one else is looking. Who is it for? A blog about your football team or your love of your favourite actor is obviously for others who like the same.

In the Writing section there’s one opus of an essay, following on from Jonathan Franzen questioning the reasons to write novels in an age of images. I’m willing to up the ante with: Why even read at all? I fully appreciated that this follow up comes some decades after Franzen’s article was first published in 1996. I am often slow to catch on.

To do anything these days without visual images is going against the grain. A Facebook post that is only text? Crazy! Even as I write these words, I think I’m going to have to find photos to add something that isn’t the written word. The fact that I don’t even care about word count makes me feel like a lunatic. The only thing I have up my sleeve is this notion that good writing is enough of a reason to keep reading.

I’m channelling Bill Hicks here when I say. Why do I write? There are so many reasons I write but one of them is so that I don’t end out a sociopath like that guy! I pretty much confirmed he was a sociopath when he followed up that discussion with one in which he declared that he didn’t cry at films because, “It’s make believe and it’s not like it’s stuff happening to him.” Nice guy but for the bit about having no empathy for any other human beings. 

Reading and writing does require thought. How much anyone wants to be thinking is a common bone of contention. Unless someone can give me the scientifically proven equation for just the right amount of thinking I’m not putting a limit on how much is good for you. And journalism is surely nothing but analysis, stuff to think about. What are we if we retain nothing? Even if you’ve enjoyed Sharknado surely there is a part of your brain that’s curious about why you enjoyed it.

What is life if you don’t think about it?! Maybe some visual images require less work for the brain. Although comic books ask of you to take in images and words and give your brain double the work. Maybe the preferred choice of delivery is a Matrix style download. You plug in. There’s a huge rush of information and then suddenly: I know Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina!

Reading is not at all like the Matrix. There is no download into the brain. Good writing will have you thinking long after you’ve read the words on the page. There are so many ways to convey what you want to communicate. I have nothing against visual images. I love comics and film and TV and Theatre. The best version of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is the one I found online where the story was re-created in pictures where key scenes were recreated using Lego. I wish I’d done that.  I just don’t know how to create visual images as well as I know how to use words.

When all of this fails due to a Worldwide consensus that words are obsolete then I will have to resort to telling you: I like American football, comics, Russian literature, the original PlayStation 2 version of the game Devil May Cry and the band New Order. Give me a microphone! I’ll tell you what I like the most.