The Grasshopper #64: Dichotomy
Inspiration?
“Just as a flower does not pick and choose whom it gives its fragrance to, a compassionate heart radiates love and kindness to all."
~ Gautama Buddha
In these days of global climate change, nothing is normal anymore and that, I guess, is the new normal. During the height of the pandemic there was a lot of chatter about ‘returning to normal’. Except, normal changed.
I suppose that if you are in your twenties or younger, this ‘normal’ is just that. Politicians, especially those identifying as conservative, want to return to a normal that never actually existed, some kind of 1950s white world out of a Wes Anderson film. You know, the suburban dream of two cars, a ranch house, and the wife waiting at the door with a martini when hubby gets home from work.
Bosh to that.Â
It’s the Fourth of July weekend here in the States, when we ostensibly celebrate declaring independence from Britain, an event that fired off the American experiment in creating a different kind of country. But I don’t think many of us even think about the Declaration of Independence these days.
We’re complacent, which might be another way of describing normal.
But this Fourth weekend we are not blessed with the hot sunny weather we expect, not here any way. We’ve been blanketed by rain and the skies are smoky from Canadian wildfires up north of here. It’s weird, which may be another way to describe the new normal.
So, normal is a dichotomy, which Google, via Oxford Language, defines as:
~ a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.
"a rigid dichotomy between science and mysticism"
I woke up this morning thinking about inspiration, triggered by a reader comment on my last issue (thanks Jacob). He called me out about some rather uninspired musing about writing, as in ‘inspiration comes from perspiration’. In other words, doing the work.
So, of course, I find myself having a morning full of ideas, not a bad thing except that they are interrupting each other before I get a chance to expound on them. And I had not even had my first coffee.Â
In my ‘serious’ writing, I am preoccupied with weather these days, which, for me, is a pretty normal thing. It’s the lead national news story right now. Heat beyond my imagining, tornados, a derecho, which is a kind of huge wave of wind that demolishes anything in its path, the usual. Except that it is not usual.
Ten years ago no one I know, except meteorologists knew what a derecho is, a tsunami of wind. But no one could conceive of skies dimmed by fires thousands of miles from here (last year) or air that smelled like smoke from fires much closer (this week), to the point where we have had days when going outside was not recommended for health reasons.
Nothing normal about that.Â
You’ll have to bear with me, but I’m not feeling super motivational this morning. I write about the creative life here, or try to, but with a lot of ideas pushing their way into my head right now I can only do what I’m doing right now, thinking out loud on paper, actually on an iPad.
The creative life, if you embrace it, is not about inspiration. Inspiration is a gift when you get it but it is fleeting. After a while you start to understand it is a feeling you file away as a resource you can eventually take advantage of when you need it. That may or may not be true but it works for me.
I feel best when I have a few ideas banked that I can get to later. Sometimes, when one is very pressing, I open a Google Doc and write down a title and subtitle. The subtitle reminds me of where I was going with the idea. The title is a trigger to remind me, and hopefully the reader, that something interesting is coming.
There is a lot of advice about how to write interesting, provocative titles for your online writing and, honestly, most of it is baloney. Writing a good title is not a process, it is a mystery, but the ability to be open to mystery is where experience comes in.
You get to recognize it when it presents itself.Â
I get whacked by great titles. The two that come to mind are Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (originally The Lost Generation) and Joan Didion’s The Year of Living Dangerously, about her grief over losing her husband and going a little crazy.
But those are books and they require great and not always obvious titles. An article about climate change probably requires something much more mundane to grab a reader. And, btw, not something like Ten Ways Climate Change is, etc., etc. I could live with never seeing another listicle again.
Most of my writing is provocative informative opinion stuff these days. It has a short shelf life and I’m ok with that. It will become my take on yesterday’s news and we know how long that sticks in your head. Which takes me back to the notion of normal.
It doesn’t exist in real life. Not unless you are ferociously resisting change, aka retreating from life.Â
I need to stop here because one idea is piling on top of another and I need to slow down and let them sort themselves out. Thanks for bearing with me.
Not done yet.
Brainstorms
I briefly worked at an old school ad agency years ago, not as a writer but as something called Director of Digital. My job was to change the culture of the agency, except the agency did not want to change its culture. That job didn’t last long before I gave up and moved on.
They still used an exercise called brainstorming where you get a bunch of people in a room and throw out ideas, without critique from the others. The idea is to generate ideas for something like a new ad campaign.
It was creativity by committee.
That is really not how I generate ideas and most experts eventually found that it tended to generate generic concepts as the participants avoided going too far with an idea. My method is to present my subconscious with a set of circumstances and then let it stew over it while I do other things.
If you’re patient that part of you will come up with solutions. A sort of internal brainstorming thing. It always worked with my copywriting if I let it. I don’t think of this as inspiration, but maybe that is how it works. To be inspired you must have enthusiasm and you can’t manufacture that.
I always thought those agency brainstorming sessions were about attempting to generate enthusiasm for watered down ideas. Maybe they work for others but one of the reasons I write the way I do these days is independence, the ability to choose what I want to write about.Â
That’s pretty valuable when you’ve spent a lot of time doing work on assignment or based on a proposal. I never minded doing that when freelancing or working for others but I’m happy to free of it these days. It’s liberating but you have to be ready for some of your stuff to not resonate with readers, especially when you think it is going to.
A lot of that is up to algorithms when you write for online platforms. You can’t take it personally.
Today is Independence Day in the US, a holiday celebrating the Declaration of Independence, a remarkable document that basically created a new kind of country. From a writing perspective it is remarkable in its succinct poetry declaring that all men are created equal.
If you haven’t read it, take a minute and find it. And then print out a copy and send it to Ron DeSantis, who seems determined to alienate virtually everyone by declaring others to be inferior when he disagrees with their life or birth choices. The Declaration is the exact opposite of his every action.
After days of dim light and torrential rainfall, the Fourth has dawned as a classic hot, muggy but sunny day perfect for all those activities people do to celebrate. Unfortunately for many across the country the heat is far beyond hot, it is deadly. There won’t be a lot of outdoor picnicking when the temps are well above 100 degrees F.
Climate change takes down another time-honored tradition.
It’s going to be a low key Fourth for me. Sitting in the girl’s yard, eating leftover ribs and salad, a martini, and then a walk to a viewing spot for the city fireworks show, if we last that long.
I got a little long-winded in this issue but that may be because I took the long weekend off from Medium writing. I have an article there on climate issues that is doing very well after six weeks of low traffic, so I’m feeling like I need to let that one run its course before jumping in with another batch.
I guess you might say I gave myself a few days off. But it hasn’t stopped me from writing here.
Did you write today?
Thx, Martin
1555 words
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