Someone on my Facebook today asked a rather poignant question: "Why the hell are you not writing a political blog or Op-ed column?" His name is Matt. I thought for a moment, and realized that there was no good reason. I mean, I've written blogs before, but they've always been aimed at something or done with some angle or hidden agenda that I *think* I'm clever enough to pull off, but which always peter out after a few posts. It's probably the same thing that has prevented me from writing a publishable novel, or which would've had me diagnosed with ADD if I had been born a decade later (I know, it's not too late, but I don't think I have the brain chemistry for Ritalin). Which brings me to this first post, which is one of those meta-posts about writing (see? I'm already trying to be too clever here, but I think I can save it with a shocking-but-true premise): Writers are like porn stars.
What I mean is that everybody *thinks* that if worse came to worst, and they were cast out into the street, it is only a question of moral fortitude that would prevent them from sidling up to some greasy, cigar-smoking smut producer and saying yes, I *will* do that horrible thing that I promised my mother or my god that I would *never* do. I contend that no, no it isn't. In fact, you probably couldn't. This is not a shortcoming on your part, mind you. If anything, it's a symptom of the industry.
It should be duly noted now that it is not any special or particular knowledge I have of the porn industry that allows me to make this statement - I'm probably as ignorant of the subject as the very readers who might be offended at the mere mention thereof, and I assure you my prurience is neither noteworthy nor unusual, nor anything I intend to discuss here. Rather, it is my present relationship with writing and publishing said writing that directs my perhaps hasty analogy to find its place on this page. The fact is, I tried to sell out.
Not my body, of course. My writing. Because it's the same premise that people tend to attach to the aim of getting things published, this notion that all it takes is to merely detach oneself from h/er soul or interest in what s/he is writing and churn out a magic-werepire* novel about a fragile young boy in the face of evil who overcomes all odds to triumph in the end. I even believed it, for a while. Until I tried it. As it turns out, I just don't have what it takes. I'm not the starlet I thought I could be.
So, when I look at those authors who have managed to capture the zeitgeist of their genre - the Rowlings, the Meyers-es, the James' (E.L., not Henry or King) - it is with the same pairing of confusion and envy with which I hear the names of Ron Jeremy or Linda Lovelace: they've found a way into mainstream culture that defies rational explanation; they've tapped into the entertainment industry and etched their identity onto the fabric of media itself. They're not just famous, they're benchmarks of culture that will be spoken (or, in the latter cases, whispered) of for an untold number of years and decades. For better or worse, they have achieved a kind of immortality.
Hence, athazagoraphobia: the fear of being forgotten. I first saw it as a rationale for graffiti art on a research paper penned by one of the more brilliant students I've had. Since then, I have become consumed by the garish and naked truth it casts upon not only the human experience, but on me. I am a human, and I will eventually cease to be one: perhaps nothing more profound could ever be said (unless you happen to speak dolphin or werepire* - I'm sure they're laughing their asses (or in the former case, cloaca) off about our naive sense of self-importance as a species). It's not just existentialist paranoia - given a long enough timeline, the probability that you will be forgotten is 100% (which is also true about the probability of sort of ripping off Chuck Palahniuk in your blog-post, except for me that timeline was about five minutes, give or take according to your reading speed).
So, yeah - blogs are the posthuman equivalent to graffiti, and I'm pretty much crap at Old English script or bubble-font. But I still do it. Just as I will again inevitably write a query letter, and just as inevitably receive a very complimentary rejection from an agent who just "doesn't think my work is a fit" for h/er. Just as surely as some walking priapism-case will stumble into some filthy back-room in San Fernando and try to make a living "making the beast with two backs" (pro-tip: a Shakespeare reference really classes things up when you're talking about porn). And whether or not it's art, or whether or not it's something that should be cloistered away in the doldrums of beaded curtains at those video-rental stores that will all be out of business in a decade (ooh - some legitimate commentary on the book-publishing industry... pure accident); well, it doesn't really matter.
Because we're all doing it for the same reason - we just can't bear to leave the world without making some kind of impact.
*I intended on pointing out "werepire" as a word that I'd coined. Not only did I turn out to be mistaken in thinking that hadn't been thought of before, but I misspelled it. "The Beast With Two Backs" as a porn title, though... now *that* might be worth some future royalty checks.
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