Latent Possibilities

Friday, October 29, 2004

Michelangelo's Lesson for Bloggers

I keep wanting to edit my past posts. I want to make sure my ideas are explained accurately and eloquently, but then I remember the unfinished sculptures of Michelangelo. He sculpted enough of the stone for you to see some of a body--a thigh, hip, and torso; pair of shoulders, back side, and calf--and that's it. He did enough sculpting to reveal the beginnings of the subject, to show you that the subject is indeed there, and then he stopped. It's as if he went so far and then stopped to turn around and say to you, "There. Do you see it?" hoping the unfinished sculpture would lead your imagination into its own rendering of the complete subject.

I can't help but compare weblogs to Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures, not in the sense that blogs are as beautiful as those sculptures (heavens, no), but in the sense that a blog conveys something, even something important, but it is usually unfinished. It points to an idea often, but it seldom fully articulates that idea.

And I think that's okay. I mean, if it was good enough for Michelangelo, it's certainly good enough for me. It is in fact helpful to be able to get down some ideas without worrying about whether it's exactly right.

There. I'll stop now.

Friday, October 22, 2004

Ordinary Heroes

George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart’s character in It’s a Wonderful Life, is a guy who does not solve world hunger or develop a cure for cancer. He is ordinary in many ways, but one of the film’s messages is that George Bailey is a hero. His simple virtue and honest life are not flashy enough for many people today, but his is exactly the kind of life I want.

I want to wake up early, work hard, and have dinner with my wife and (some day, hopefully) children. I want to help out around the house and volunteer for worthy causes. I want to show love for my family and get along peacefully with my neighbors and coworkers. I want to stand up to people who are oppressing the less fortunate. I want to have a genuinely jovial disposition and help friends when they need a hand.

The problem is that this kind of life is not necessarily an easy one to pursue. For one thing, cultural forces pull us away from it. Advertisements tell us what we are and have is not enough. They tell us we don’t have enough stuff, we’re not good looking enough, we don’t eat right, where we live isn’t nice enough, and our sex lives leave something to be desired. These messages push us to work longer hours to make more money so we can have more stuff, be better looking, live in a nicer place, and so on. Working more hours in turn means less time for the things that really matter—time with family, lending a hand at the mission downtown, or helping underprivileged children learn how to read.

Another reason a simple, honest life is difficult to pursue is because of internal forces—desires that pull us away from what we know we should do to what we know we shouldn’t. I often think about how grateful I will be if all I do is avoid making a wreckage of my life. When Saint Paul said he did things he didn’t want to do and failed to do things he wanted to do, he was giving voice to a perennial struggle of humanity. That’s not to say we don’t have good in us. We do. But we also are capable of skipping happily into our own destruction. Such destruction comes in multiple forms, including getting ourselves fired, imprisoned, or killed, as well as permanent numbness of being, chronic illness, and perpetual anxiety.

I think people who end up in these states never see them coming until it’s too late. Take Martha Stewart. You know, she’s probably done insider trading in the past. She knew it was wrong the first time she did it, but . . . well, she thought about it, rolled the dice, and . . . nothing happened. No sirens went off. No handcuffs appeared. So she did more and more of it until she got caught. Now she’s facing prison time and a tarnished reputation forever. I could list a thousand such examples.

And it’s because of such a possibility of destruction that we MUST be proactive about our inclinations toward disaster. We can’t just ignore them or make peace with them. No matter what it costs, we must keep on fighting.

The reality is that people are capable of incredible good too. I mean, if I could list a thousand examples of disaster a la Martha Stewart, I could list an equal number of success stories. Think Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Lurther King Jr. And then there are the ordinary heroes—those whose names are not well known by all but who nevertheless have a place in the hearts of those around them.

We are capable of so much, but to attain our best we have to be honest about our struggles. If we don’t deal with them, candidly, wisely, and in earnest, we will falter. If we look them in the face and address them, we’ll be free to find our place in the ranks of ordinary heroes.

Thanks for listening.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Lori McKenna

I picked up a CD called Bittertown by Lori McKenna about a month ago, and I can't get enough. I'd call it earthy acoustic folk with an edge. Without thinking about it much, I'd say the main theme of the CD is "fucked-up life in smalltown America." Her songs are about the messiness that smalltown folk seem to have a special knack for getting themselves into, but I doubt it's limited to them. We all know the disasters we have the capacity to create for ourselves. McKenna riffs on them, pushes deep into them, animates them, says the unutterable about them, and somehow in doing so her music redeems a bit of local, messy humanity. Go, girl.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Against Bad Books

Being employed in the book-publishing industry, I am perhaps more likely than others to stumble on such stats as these, reported by R. R. Bowker, the government agency that assigns ISBNs: The U.S. published 175,000 new books in 2003, up 19 percent from the previous year. In 1999, the number was 119,357, which means that in four years, our output of titles increased by about 47%.

That's staggering when you think about it. At this rate (and it shows no signs of letting up), U.S. publishers double their rate of producing new titles every eight years. That kind of growth makes sense when you're talking about a new invention, like MP players or something, but books? Books have been around forever.

Or have they? Certainly the book world of today is very different from the book world of just a few years ago. Amazon.com has been around less than ten years. Barnes & Noble and Borders superstores have been around only since the 90s. Prior to that, if you went to a bookstore, it was likely to be relatively small, and you probably did not have the option of buying a cup of coffee, let alone a tall double skinny cafe latte.

In many ways the change we have witnessed in the book industry is symptomatic of the pervasive cultural transformation wrought by close technological cousins the microchip and the Internet. Publishing is only one of many, many industries that have been swept into the aftermath of this technological revolution. In fact, one could argue that every major sector of the economy has been revolutionized by post-industrial technology.

So what are we to make of this dramatic increase in the number of titles published each year? Well, for one thing, it gives us more variety, and we have more options to choose from. I don't know about you, but I like choices! On the downside, it is just one more example of information overload. Other examples include the increase of channels available on TV, the infinite sea of websites (and blogs), and the balooning number of magazines now available. (A friend and I recently noticed there is a magazine for people who not only hunt but hunt with not only a dog but with pointer dogs!)

The very phrase information overload, so popular these days, implies such a thing as an excess of information. But when? When does the necessary amount of information stop and an excessive amount begin? Perhaps it's when we are no longer able to pick up and take in and respond to each bit of information that is coming at us. I also think the phrase implies particularly to advertising, which seems a ubiquitous intrusion, whether we're on the Web (where it is especially invasive), driving down a highway, watching TV, or listening to the radio. I was recently bamboozled into forking over $10 for membership into a Blockbusters Rewards program when all I came for was $1.99 rental. The ad for the Rewards program came at me so quickly from the clerk across the counter, I couldn't process the information fast enough and so made a snap decision. A dumb move on my part, I admit, but it serves to illustrate the negative effects information overload can have.

I'm not terribly afraid I'll spend too much money in a snap decision to purchase a book, but isn't it inevitable that if publishers are doubling their rate of production every eight years, the number of books that are not worth reading will increase? When the printing press was invented, only one book was being published. That book was the Bible. And in many ways, as the saying goes, it's all been downhill from there.

I guess my point is that when we go to the store and stare at all the many spines and covers that beckon for our dollars, we'll have to be smart about what we decide to pick up and take home. If we aren't, odds are we'll buy one of the bad ones.