The Filter

This is my first time sitting down to write in a while, too long. If I want to call myself a writer, the act itself is the first and most important step. Putting it out into the public sphere is practically unimportant, secondary, in comparison to the weight of the act itself. When I think, which is all the time, I think of things that I could sit and write, but each thought passes through a filter in my brain, an overly critical filter that deems most every thought unworthy of being written down. It’s a filter I believe all writers (or filmmakers, or sculptors, or any other creative person)have in their minds, but the best of us learn to break down that filter, or at least ignore it, or hopefully tame it at great cost.

What I’m putting here on the page is a conscious attack on my filter. So much in life can strengthen the filter, from distractions and stress, to changing life circumstances. Anything that may draw on your energy can feed the filter in the sense that sapped energy pushes each potential writing prompt through the filter even faster. If an interesting occurrence seemed like a fun launching point for a rant on the state of society, then the bills you picked up in the mail cry out, “We are more important than your silly idea for an essay.” When the pain of being laid off of work draws you to explore your feelings in writing, the filter says, “People don’t want to hear you complain because they have their own problems.”

Even though it becomes over-powerful and becomes a negative force, the filter, at its best, is a necessary crucible for the creative spirit. At first every thought seems like a potential springboard for a rumination, but truly not every one is worth the work of putting fingers to keys. So the filter develops to tease out which ideas are the best, which will be the most fruitful, which are worthy of keystrokes, of eyes scanning side to side. The filter is the first step in a great work because each thought that is deemed worthy has the chance to grow and burgeon into a masterpiece. Ultimately, the filter is necessary. But what no creator of media can afford to do is let the filter become too rigid so that it voids every thought and lets you fall into a rut of lazy avoidance.

This essay is me taking a fully cocked swing at my filter, knocking it off balance and forcing it to let my thoughts flow through more freely. Each crunch of my knuckles to the body of the filter is me saying with tough love, “Weigh my thoughts, but do not think you can discard every one of them without me noticing. I need you filter, but you serve me, you do not command me.”