The reasons I write are as numerous as the topics I have covered here. I write because I have seen and heard so many other people give their opinions in so many places, and so many of them seem so poorly thought out, that I very much feel compelled to answer these people and these statements. If you’ve ever read my takes on the people who throw around the word socialist like it is a panacea for all that ails their world, you’ve seen this impulse in action.
If you’ve read any of my older posts about music writing, and musical exercises, you are seeing the side of me that has a g
reat deal of specific knowledge about music. Tons of other people write about music as well, but not the variations that I play. The chord progressions with the melody played within it the way I play it, almost classical guitar but not quite, the dedication to the exercises, and the music theory. I think I’m pretty good for a guy who learned most of what he knows about music on his own, with no guidance from anywhere. I did have one teacher in high school, a great guy, Mr. Comachero, who started me on the musical path. I used to cut other classes just to go to his class and get extra practice in, such was my love for the instrument.
I have written pieces that were descriptive of the personal space around me from time to time. That is me trying my best to actually hone what little writing skill that I actually have. I don’t really have much skill in that area, but slowly, painfully, as if it were being bodily drawn out of me, the talent for the written word is coming to the fore. It is a time consuming process, and if my heart is not really involved, the writing seems to lose something. Which is in least at part why I try my best on most nights to get as emotionally involved with whatever subject I am writing about, to give my writing more depth of feeling and more…visceral immediacy.
Which gets to the bulk of my political writing, writing to grow and learn about the world. If you read my writings, you will notice a general trend towards political agitation. And of growth as I have looked hard in the mirror and asked myself questions, probed my own heart, to find not just how I feel, but why I feel the way I feel, and why other people feel the way they feel, and try to make some sense out of what is a senseless world. I started out as something of a moderate/left of center libertarian minarchist, an odd thing to be at any time, but that has changed and significantly.
I have through introspection and mental self-examination found that I align much more closely in viewpoint and agenda with the liberals. But it is a hard liberalism, born more of the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius than of hippie radicals from Berzerkley of the previous generation. I believe that government can be a force for good, that it is not to be feared in the hands of any American that puts the people ahead of the business and military interest of America.
I write to advance my ideas and my ideals in the world. Even though very few actually see this blog, I hope that in some very small way, it affects those few people, makes them think about their actions and the consequences of them in this world.
I write because I am inspired to write by the great writers that inspired me to read. Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Heinlein, Michael Moorcock, Isaac Asimov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Paine, Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche and of course my favorite writer of all time, Douglas Adams. I write to compare myself to them, I want at some point for people to look at me the way I looked at them.
I write to vent. I write to show my heart to everyone. I write to challenge the world. I write because it is fun to tell people what I think, and this is my favorite venue to do just that. I write because I have a million opinions about a million subjects. I write because I have a heart, and a million emotional reactions to a million subjects. I write to shove back at a world that shoves its views at me, and tells me that it is right and I am wrong. I write because life is a fight, and I fight to win, and writing is a weapon against the ills of the world. I write because I am part of a species that puts communication at an absolute premium, and I want to get better at communicating exactly what exists in my heart and my mind. I write because people are idiots who get their facts wrong all over the place, and someone has to set them right. I write to stop bullies from pushing people around, and to bully the bullies. The world is the immovable mass, I am the unstoppable force, and I write to show that. I write…
I write because I can.
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That’s it from here. Later!
Today’s Nuggets, via wikiquote: You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it. Neil Gaiman
Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author’s soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted. Robert Benchley
That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters. Anthony Burgess
