I’m so close to the bottom of the well (get it get it) on my daily posting it’s fuckin’ wild. I get the feelin’ the way PZ and Mano work is by reading their news and social media, and commenting on anything that seems worthy of comment. I don’t follow news or social media on purpose. FtB is the condensed version run thru the filter of people who share my principles. Good enough. Could I just do posts reacting to what they’re posting? Blogly shadow puppetry? Nay. I don’t even feel like making a two sentence comment under most of their articles, no offense intended.
As much writing a chapter a day of novels was a frenzied dash, at least it gave me something to work with. On the other hand, I seriously doubt I have the sauce to write fiction every day. I imagine what I would write and immediately it all seems so high effort. Even cheeky nonsense involves craft, way more than you might expect.
What would Groucho Marx do? If I recall he was a well known epistler. That’s like blogging but involves ponies and shotguns, I’ve heard.
Recently I’ve been watching The Dead Milkmen‘s vloggish thing on yewchoob, called Big Questions with the Dead Milkmen, and getting a mental picture of their lives. Those guys had a hit almost everyone over forty has heard, in “Punk Rock Girl,” but they never stopped needing day jobs for at least part of the year. The lead singer is at an age where some emeffs are retired and he still has an office job of some kind. Royalties for the artists ≠ living high on the hogg 4 lyfe. What hope do the rest of us non-fame-adjacent slobs have, of escape from tha Grind? We all know PZ should be retired by now for health reasons, but can’t due to financial concerns. Work sucks. Everything fucking sucks.
Chill, me. Chill.
That’s a bit off topic, but maybe it is a better topic for discussion. Being a “creator.” I’ve long wanted to put it all together as an artist, to assemble the palace of my perfected works, to accomplish whatever bare minimum level of public self-expression that would feel like “enough” when it’s bucket kicking time. But to what extent is the public element necessary? Should I be building an aluminum foil throne room in a storage unit or composing ten-thousand page novels about sentient tornadoes that will be found in shoeboxes after I’m floating out the crematorium pipe?
The world is glutted with motherfuckers. There are a million bajillion artists clamoring for attention, a great howl reaching up into the unfathomable cold. To be one more vainglorious mausoleum builder, this feels just pitiful. Uncool, and you know I want to be cool.
But still, it gets me, thinking about how I have to toil most of my life at things I don’t want to do, while my imagination burns with things I’d prefer to be working on. And the certainty that if society wasn’t a giant pyramid scheme to keep business nazis in boats, if I literally had to plow fields, I would have vastly more free time to pursue my craft? That’s a ten thousand degree knife thru my braincase.
Chill me. Chill.
Anyway, if the daily posting train comes sputtering to a stop very soon, do not be surprised, nor concerned. I’m as well as anyone can be, given the current circumstances of the world. Thanks for reading this foolery as long as you have, and even if I return to erratic and much less frequent posting, I will most likely be here until FtB itself is pushing up daisies.
See you around!
–
Persistence furthers.
— The I Ching
I’ll most likely be here as well, keeping an eye out for your future posts.
😉
-Richard-
FTB lurker
aww, thanks fellers