essaysbysean.com
After one hundred blog essays, I suppose I should “build my character” by “considering the worst,” even if this stabs my vanity, by asking Is there any meaning to it all?
Sometimes I stand in a dark void, albeit with pretty stars, feeling my writing is futile. Around me the space age has passed into the digital age, while these new fangled “blogs,” although once hyped as being new and revolutionary, are now like newspapers: Existing papers are in decline, no point in starting up any new ones. Nor any new essay-blogs.
In a thick black book, blog! (sic) all the folks interviewed believed that excited citizen-bloggers would now supplement traditional media by empowering “the people.” Untrained folks on the ground would scoop the journalists. A fresh breeze was blowing. But along came Russian troll farms, disinformation and deception most foul. The anti-vaxxers have even posted a video of liars posing in medical uniforms. “Untrained,” it seems, means unethical. We should have known: Maybe our friendly typical village gossip does not exactly tell lies, not like those trolls paid by Putin, but she does not aspire to journalism ethics either. She’s not on Scout’s honour, not a lady.
Gossip, at least, can sometimes be traced. When a story about something “said” by syndicated columnist Ann Landers said “went viral,” as we would say today, it was traced to a babysitter talking to children. This year a computer scientist was interviewed on CBC radio. When he and his peers were inventing the interweb they never dreamed people would use the net to stifle free speech by sending death threats, or by sending a deluge of propaganda from the Kremlin. So no identifiers were built in. Too bad, so sad.
As for sad, George Orwell was saddened, long before he wrote Nineteen Eighty-four, by working in a bookstore. He discovered that most customers did not aspire to reading the classics. Had he lived, he would have further learned that most people prefer television to reading. Yet despite all the human nature things he learned by mingling with diverse people, including living Down and Out in Paris and London, (quotes) Orwell nevertheless thought it was worth his time to write essays. Those essays have stayed with me down the years the way classic poems do.
And me? Is writing essays worth my time? When my web site is merely a speck floating in cyberspace? I know one thing for sure: Amidst all this digital madness and misinformation… I can state truth.
Obviously I will never write as well as Orwell did, never manage to make a classic, but still… As my drama teacher could have said, back when I was eight, “What’s it all about, Seanie?”
Does my essay-art have meaning?… Maybe I’m like a backyard painter, a basement poet, a sundeck songwriter: “Not good enough” commercially, yet “plenty good enough” to putter about feeling quite happy in my own way. Like in ancient Greece, where adults would make art, dance, sing, play the lute, all without feeling any cultural need to be, as modern American would say, “good enough for prime time.”
Orwell said an average person does not regard herself as a failed saint. If regular people today don’t see themselves as failed ladies or gentlemen, then maybe they don’t seek self improvement either. No classics. No striving for an ever lengthening attention span. Many people, judging by their television habits, are like Alice who wondered, “What good is a book without pictures and conversations?” And I suspect many of us secretly wish our attention to be distracted by an e-mail or something digital, every seven minutes, as with television. So what good is an essay?
…I don’t want to stab my own heart by concluding I have been kidding myself, but—Maybe my hours of writing have in fact been a distraction for me: Like seeking out web pictures of Laugh Out Loud pussy cats with funny hats. (LOL)
Then again, I still vaguely remember some student discussions of “leisure versus distraction.” We didn’t hold these talks late at night in the dormitories, but during class. And we went deep. From those student talks, I am sure my writing is leisure, quality leisure.
Some folks are conflicted on the pronunciation: Is it “Leezure” or “lezzure?” Two young men were arguing in class, until one dramatically bent over with his hands on his heart and proclaimed, “If you don’t stop arguing, I’m going to have a sezzure!”
I can say I’m doing honest leisure, but still. If “the people” are “attention span challenged” and “truth challenged,” (cough-social media-cough) then why write? Because Orwell did. He knew “the people” spent more money on football betting than on sending funds to prevent fascism in Spain—which could have prevented WWII! Technology changes, but nobody changes. Yet he never quit trying to reach people.
So I’ve made one hundred posts. Now what? Now I’m entitled to my “hour of the wolf,” (video) lying awake in a cold cabin with a wolf at the door, having my dark time of the soul with nothing in the tea tin—Thank God for vodka! I wonder: Perhaps in my future essays I should throw in a joke every seven minutes. Could such light essays be meaningful? Woody Allan made a movie where he inquired about the meaning of life… Aliens, and I don’t mean from Germany or France, but aliens from some other planet answered him, “Make more funny pictures.”
Today, with my hundredth essay, I wish I could celebrate, but I just can’t… Well, at least the stars are eternal, life goes on.
…
…
Sean Crawford
Camrose,
December 2021
Breaking news: As for stating truth amidst social media lies, the Nobel Peace Prize this year went to two journalists.
A blogger has posted twice about Hour of the Wolf. Here’s one of her posts.
My teacher for a night class in drama was part of the White Rock Players. She looked like Joyce DeWitt on Three’s Company, Her son was my age, and she called him Seanie. She was Mrs. Carlin. My other excellent teacher that year, in Surrey, British Columbia, with a cotton dress like a British mum, was Mrs. Mackay.
