We are a speck of dust and the fate of the universe hinges on us.
-The Spirit Molecule
The idea is to balance linear thinking — which requires intense focus — with creative thinking, which is borne out of idleness.
-Emma Seppälä
My preferred way to think through a topic or an idea is to commit it to paper.
-David Heinemeier
I’m just recycling everything that I learned between 12 and 15.
-Martin Short
…this is a parting, some separation…
-FUGAZI
Welcome to the Terrordome. Sitting here sipping cold coffee listening to Tom Ashbrook report on the rise in depression among teenage girls. Flipping between windows on the MacBook I see a story about Mariah Carey recording a cover of “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”. There’s the other usual fare there, on thee most hated habit of mine, because Trump rules the roost on Facebook and Twitter, and outrage is addicting and of course running darkly through it all is our intrepid vanity-the fly in the ointment that’ll outlive us, surviving on in miles of digital imprint like a pathetic binary fossil. I’ve devoted myself to posting 600 words a week at Going For The Throat, manned that platform and otherwise served there going on 7 years now. I needed to “frame the agony” and the truth is being current gets me high. It’s not quite like radio, because let’s face it nothing is, but it’s a close second-and we all function a little better this way, in our own corners, safe within our isolation.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Ashbrook was right, but it would cull some overdue respect for their generation. I’m of the school that if you’re not depressed you’re not paying attention. There are survivors, of course, and even brighter examples-like Uncle Hank Rollins and the Dalai Lama, but depression is where the road begins, a dark night and heavy row to hoe. You either hang yourself or you hang it on the wall.
Besides trying to get a grip and stay current, I’m happy to subvert form. I go for the throat and let it bleed and only then do I hope for a theme. Essays that are apparent only show me the strings. Writers can be horrible people. I’d rather write from where I’m at, especially if I’m trying to tell you something or give you the what for. I’d rather writers show and never tell. Uncle Hank is brilliant, of course, and Doctor Thompson. They walk their talk, and we follow them around dark corners willingly. We know they’d never spare the blade on themself, which made poet Charlie O’Hay’s description of my work (“like watching a surgeon demonstrate his skills on himself”) high praise. If I am committing surgery than I should keep my tools sharp and clean.
The problem with creative non-fiction is that with a high instinct for journalism and love of the language, I hardly ever leave my apartment. At the dawning of the New Century I knew we’d be running things but we never caught up to the speed of the ether. Odious think pieces and film-flam “he said-she saids”, stories reporting on tweets and the like-while I’ll never live down the inevitable and necessary democratization of media, there’s a whole other buzz happening, reducing the brave new world to a mountain of opinion that keeps me indoors most days-increasing the black odds of my own depression, cutting too close to the bone in my work and watching the world spin darkly from my window, getting old, staying sick and ending up just like my old man.
Of course there are better examples of the New Media than me and my dirty work. The mighty Shaun King comes to mind, and VICE on most days. It’s a flag of many colors. Between the gold standard of the New York Times and alacrity of the new school, there’s got to be something in between, news that can proudly be led by the gut and remain the “least factual and most accurate”, that tells both a real and a true story, bares the realities of mental health and burns like a beacon down the savage road to living your dreams. There ought to be some truth somewhere in the world and someone should tell it. I should need to tell it, too, and before my bad blues swarms I should need to get the F out of here.
See you online, motherfucker.
jimtrainer.net.
