Stone Sea – A Socratic, Aristotelian, or Possibly Asimovian Dialogue for A Day Closely Approaching Winter
#
Cold winds blow leaves and sparrows through crowds of desultory shoppers.
A Writer, shoulders slumped, hands in pocket, head hung low, slouches out of a bookstore and bumps into a fellow writer, who asks, “Why so serious?” He thinks a second, then says, “Oh, you looked for your book and didn’t find it on the shelves, right?”
The writer sighs. “No, that’s not it.”
The other writer considers, glancing at the brightly-colored best-sellers on display in the bookstore window. “Other writers getting the attention you think you deserve?”
“No, doesn’t bother me. More power to them. Any success helps us all.”
“Then what is it, man? You look like you’re on your way to kill yourself in private where no one will find you.”
Another sigh, accompanied by a shrug.
“You were just in a bookstore, one of the few left. You were just surrounded by all those great voices from the near and distant past. You were just in a place where books are celebrated and actually worth something, including real money.”
“True.”
“Run out of ideas?”
“No, got too many ever to write them all.”
“Then what’s got you so down, man?”
The writer starts walking away. “Just figured out why I can’t write anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“Gresham’s Law.”
“What’s that mean, we’ve reached peak bullshit?”
“No. It means the bad has finally pushed the good out. Standards have been notched down to where meeting expectations from prepared audience is the supreme achievement. Playing to prejudices. Pandering.”
“There’s plenty good in there.”
The depressed writer nods. “There is. Once you’ve explored that, though, where can you go? Where can you take your own expedition? Where are new lands, a new frontier?”
“So we make one. That’s how it’s always been for new stuff.”
A nod, then a sigh. “Horse shoes for cars, yeah. New use for old standards.”
“Not sure I get what you’re saying, man.”
“Neither am I and that’s maybe the problem. What’s left to say to people who won’t listen, who don’t speak the language, and who don’t want to hear anything but themselves anyway?”
“So it’s not about clinging to the old music, huh?”
“No. More about swinging on the noose of recognizing futility. I’m sure I’ll keep writing, it’s what I do. All I can do, really. But it’s useless, hopeless, and futile.”
“Sure. Until some kid picks it up and it’s new for that kid and it transforms that kid’s mind and life, and those around for as far as the word can reach.”
“You’re an optimist, aren’t you?”
“Sure am. That’s why I write children’s books.”
They part, agreeing that the must meet for a dinner soon, knowing they likely won’t.
Cold winds baffle the leaves and somersault the sparrows. Some rise on updrafts, others are slammed to the frozen ground.
/ geste
Woven Stone: A Bonus Commentary Culled From Social Media Posts
All you writers and artists out there? Just forget it. Culture is dead anyway. Might as well eat its corpse. Be a re-arranger, that way you don’t have to make anything new. SO much easier. Pastiche and “homage” and derivative regurgitation, re-make, re-cycles, and redundant echos rule. No one wants anything new or creative anyhow. Find a classic and pilfer the best scenes, it’s okay, EVERYONE does it. “All art is theft,” right sparky?
Wow.
Cynicism for a cynical age of endings.
People routinely win prestigious literary awards for rewriting classics. Example: Frazer’s Cold Mountain, which is a rehashing of The Odyssey only (cleverly) re-set in the Civil War. sigh.
Worse, all we see in movies and TV and most of the promoted best-seller books and trilogies, character series and YA popcorn dark romance, is rehashed, toned-down stuff from 1980s slasher and “horror” movies, etc.
Look at the STAR WARS regurgitation of Dune by Frank Herbert, and its endless re-arranging. George Lucas / Disney present FRANK HERBERT’S DUNE, AS WE WOULD HAVE FUCKED IT UP REPEATEDLY.
Breaks advance ticket sales with over a hundred-million dollars’ worth sold on rumor alone.
Still think you should bother writing anything but re-arranged, brightly-painted basic shapes stolen from older, better material?
I think the echo is getting to me.
