Future stuff

Here's stuff I have to get down on paper (?) Later I'll laugh at myself and wonder why I ever thought they would be good topics...

1) How my productivity and time allocation is calculated (remember my funny formula)

2) Melanie's head up her ass (pretty much sums it up and not going to change anytime soon, plus: not too interesting).

3) Vershauterhooten (type B)

4) Scattershooting: am I an incarnation of Blackie Sherrod: Where did Abbie Hoffman go? He seemed like such a geezer (Blackie) so why do I remind myself of him? Am I a Geezer?

5) The Sound and the Fury and the Folks and the Trip

6) What I want to do with Ryan this year

7) How will you know when you get where you're going?

8) No Good Rain and JG

9) Walter Mitty and Uncle Bill (and me)

10) There's something else--damn it, I knew I'd forget...10 topics for books--some ideas already make me want to puke but I have to write them down just so I can cross them off. Here's something: What did the author say he was writing when he wrote "Tender is the Night" (10x better than The Great Gatsby, but not readable for High Schoolers) or "For Whom the Bell Tolls?"

Some of this is code that only I can read (#1,3,5). #7 relates to nothing and I'm not exactly sure why I put in on the list. Sometimes I can take a left turn from something like that and come up with something good. Is that a witty device, or just annoying? I wonder. Some of these things I could write a whole book about. Perhaps not one that anyone would want to read, but make no mistake, we aren't having a problem with volume of writing around here. Just quality (AHHHHHH this was a redundant statement (!) and it was a great opportunity to selectively elminiate unworthy readers and cause a collective question mark to levitate above the world).

I have this problem with balance right now--although I do tend to be a little clumsy, that's not what I mean. I have this internal debate over whether I should educate myself on the more refined skills of writing before I try to crank out my masterpiece or if I should keep it fresh by not polluting my brain with what someone else determines is "good writing". I tried looking up a book about writing, and the description in the computer says "avoiding cliche's and other advice about beginning to write"--ha ha-I guess I'm already screwed, because something that I think is kinda funny is to use a cliche' and then either make fun of myself for using it or maybe using it to set you up for a trite,expected outcome and then, BAM! the left hook...sometimes followed by an uppercut...(went too far there trying to be funny).

Remembering back to elementary school, the kids that were considered most creative were the ones who could color inside the lines. In High School, they were the ones who were able to differ the most from the mainstream while simultaneously not being too "out there". Then there's this whole gray area of "the cutting edge", which is a moving target. I've seen it--I've actually been in art studios in colleges where people are looking at mundane things and creating art--I don't want to get too specific here and ruin the point)--it's just that those people think they are cutting edge and they are spending so much time and sincerely, wholeheartedly chopping out pieces of their soul for these works of art. One of 4 things are going to happen:

a) 2% of the time what they are going to do is going to be so bad that it disgusts and turns the majority of the world off

b) 48% of the time they produce swill that gets stirred into our collective conscious and becomes the art that you walk by in the subway station or in the bottom of a building.

c) 49% of the time the work is talented but unappreciated because 1, the average person is of average intelligence and has average taste and works the average schedule and has an average amount of money and 2, 49% of the people generating this stuff are above average.

d) 1% is true genius, but can still be unappreciated.

Art=a+d

The true test of what's truly creative (yes I used "true" twice and I'm aware of it but I'd rather write a whole defenive sentence than change one of those things (the second) to "genuinely") is looking back at it and seeing what influenced "the next step" or empirically appreciating something for being cool and/or inspirational.

I've seen creativity defined as a unique set of neuronal connections--that's what I want to do, but it doesn't look like much fun when you spell it out that way. And I'm not sure I can.