Something just sparked in my mind-kind of like an intermittently contacting third-rail shoe. (Look it up.) I've been reading an essay by Paul Graham called 'Copy What You Like'. In it he talks about his experience in high school with short story writing. His description of the average short story basically says that it's a deep-feeling 'slice-of-life' vignette. Also that it's often a boring story. Oh, and it helps quite a bit if the characters are unhappy.
I'll admit it's one hell of a generalization, but what's weird is that this is the description of my favorite kind of blog piece. (Except for unhappy participants. I'm depressed enough already...) When I started college life on my own, I thought my life would look like one of those vignettes.
BOY WAS I WRONG.
I like to read opinion pages. I LOVE to read opinion pages. They suck, but I read them anyway. Every other letter to the editor is a response to some letter printed in the previous issue or so; often this letter itself is another response. Incidentally I like to think that there's one bloodline (inkline?) of letters in the PSU Collegian that has as its grandsire a letter published in the very first issue. The average example of these response letters generally takes the opposing viewpoint. It's such a contrarian thing to do, it seems; even I have been tempted to write a letter or two. (One of the more important ones was about CATA, though. Our buses here suck. Right now though I forget why I wanted to write.)
But I digress; I like to read editorials most of all. I once read one in the New York Times that was EXACTLY like one of those blog posts. It was a little vignette on the life of someone who had moved to California from somewhere on the East Coast. (A dream which my friend Matt shares, and I admit has an appeal; but that's another post.) And despite its presentation of all the pitfalls of living in SoCal, it still made this writer's life appealing. As if all of the flaws were just little quirks and could be ignored for something greater in the experience. I ate it up; swallowed it hook line and sinker; any cliche to that effect you may wish to submit works. I thought that's what great writing was.
But no. It isn't. I read and even saved that article. I don't know where it is now. I care but I know deep down that I shouldn't. It's a silly thing, but that editorial presented a fantasy as fact. So do most of those blog posts. It glamorizes a lack of glamor, if that makes any sense. And non-glamor, or even anti-glamor one could say, appeals to me.
Boy, I'm weird.
A lot of my favorite things in life, for a while, were the most ragged. I looked for vintage, or failing to get the genuine article (one example of which I do have), faux-vintage clothes. I liked Neil Young's borderline autistic guitar solos and the protoplasmic punk he pioneered with his Rust Never Sleeps album. (Dig a little deeper and you'll find his Time Fades Away album-beautiful stuff in that same aesthetic.) I like the look and feel of an older building, be it apartment, farmhouse, even suburban dream home. That way it feels more like my childhood home does. (Which is older than even my parents are, I believe.) I honestly have more appreciation for older things in some fields. They feel tried and true; especially when the rest of society is there to validate me. But that's rare.
Why I feel so ready to reject glamor at the first approach is beyond me; maybe sitting in the sun in the living room as a kid did warp part of my brain. But one of the effects of this rejection is that while other people look at wear patterns and see something that needs replaced, I can see beauty, usefulness, worthiness. Maybe if Thomas the Tank Engine had had some rust on his boiler, I'd still be watching the show, and still willing to declare him a really useful engine. But not just because it means he's old; rather because it means he's worked for the title, and he's done the job he was intended to fill. Things in perfect condition bring to mind museum pieces all too often; while things outdated and beat to hell are innately more satisfying because they stood up to the beating and lived to tell the tale to the next generation.
In short, I'm a dork who likes old crap because it makes me feel better about being young. I guess.
Or maybe it means I'd like to have earned my stripes and have the scars to show for it before people go around telling other people how great I am.
I just realized this got WAAAY off track. I can't even remember my original point. Maybe there was none.
Huh. Freaky.
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