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Today's going to be a little bit of a reflection. Take it with a grain of salt, but I usually talk like this when trying to figure things out internally.
A long time ago it used to be well understood that what you did is what mattered. No matter what bluster you had behind your words, no matter how many wheels you greased, and no matter how many popular buzzwords you spoke to get your foot in the door, in the end it came down to what you did. You couldn't rest on puffing yourself up forever to gather audience attention. If you didn't act, it didn't matter. And we would ourselves back up our beliefs by holding such people's feet to the fire to ensure that they acted.
In other words, we valued the truth, and we valued those who fought for it. If you were a faker, you would get found out soon enough.
That doesn't happen so much anymore. Instead we let anyone above us do what they want as if they simply need to repeat the right codewords and they can have carte blanche to run roughshod over whatever or whoever they want. Simply look at any legacy industry and see them being run into the ground by these exact people these days. Nothing is growing, it's all shrinking. It ties in to our obsession with surface level aesthetic and appearances over proper depth and meaning. Juvenile and shallow. It's no coincidence such folk communicate mainly with teenage snark and prepubescent name-calling. This is who we let in the door, juvenile and bitter.
Who cares if the Superdude comic (this is a general example, not literal) has him murdering and dehumanizing large swaths of the population through silly speeches--it is a comic produced by DC Comics, therefore you need to swallow and accept it as scripture. Meaningless words. None of it has value. But it does send signals to the right people, and that's all that matters. The connection is gone, now it's all lectures.
Everyone seems to know it, but no one really has answer. After all, how do you compete against an industry that simply isn't interested in you? You can't, really. All you can do is vote with your feet, as the saying goes.
And it seems like exactly that is happening.
But, at the same time, who am I to complain about such things? Am I not doing exactly what I'm complaining about above? As a writer, am I not the purest example of words and not deeds? In a sense, yes, and that is one of the many reasons writers no longer command the same sort of respect they once did. We wasted our opportunity and lost the audience's trust. Too few are unwilling to put their money where their mouth is and it has lead to ruin. All we have to do is say the bare minimum of buzzwords and get all the rewards and kudos, or so we think. There's more to left than momentary profit, and we all realize that on some level.
Any man or woman who creates has a duty to use their creation to try and understand more about themselves and others. They must move outward from inward. The other choice is to either pander to the lowest common denominator or to produce propaganda to drag others down, neither of which is art--it is a grab at respectability with the in-crowd, whatever in-crowd that might be, in order to fit in with some pre-established group. This is the perfect example of words instead of deeds. It is about what you say and not what you do. This is anti-art and therefore should be discouraged. Unfortunately, in the modern age, this is the default way of being and is very much encouraged. Unfortunately, it is to our detriment.
Now we desire those buzzwords and ingroups more than we desire art or Truth, and it has led to a giant mess of an industry no one can believe in anymore.
So how does one change that? How do we reverse course this late in the game? How do we do it when no one in charge wishes to listen?
More so, how does one become someone whose words are meant to explain their own actions to others instead of lecturing or pandering instead? How do you avoid talking at others and forcing yourself down their throats instead of just communicating and presenting your ideas for consideration with insistence of acceptance? How does one avoid tripping over that line and losing their way in a medium that incentives losing your way to begin with? There is no guidebook or manual for this kind of thing, after all. It's all so very confusing.
I say this because it has gotten to the point that I don't think I properly understand how to bridge words with actions anymore. I thought I did, but it's only gotten more complicated as I've gotten older and as the industry has gotten more blunt and surface level. How much of myself is to be put into what I say before it just becomes jabbering nonsense detached from actions? When does it cross the line into being real and not foolish hopes or projections onto others?
When do I lose connection and begin drifting off into the void, never to return? That's something I think about a lot.
Many have wondered why I tend to avoid using larger words in my writings, those the ones intellectuals pepper their own works with to sum up larger thoughts, and the reason is that I want to remain crystal clear in what I say to as many people as possible. I don't want to rely on stopgaps, especially when such stopgaps are so easily weaponized these days.
While words matter, so too does the intent behind what we say with them. I do not want to waste them on filter words and cobbled together codewords for a select few who have the matching code rings to decipher them. I want to reach as many as possible, and I don't think it can be done by purposely obscuring my meaning with unneeded clutter. I could be wrong about that, but at this point I think it's the only path forward for me. I have to find a new way forward somehow.
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| Does anyone, these days? |
I've written before about slogans and the insidious way they can be used to kill communication, but that is because of how powerful words are to begin with. They can persuade and they can inspire and, under the right conditions, can also manipulate and destroy. Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will be the motivator for them to be used against you in the first place. Therefore we should take them seriously and learn what they're for, and how to use them in better ways.
Perhaps this post is a call for responsibility among those who use words, much like they are for any other weapon. I know I need that reminder a lot. You need a license for most weapons, but you don't need anything for words. I suppose the closest thing would be "credibility" which is given by publishers or editors these days, in rapidly decreasing amounts. But aside from that, it's free game. And there isn't any way to control who gets influenced by what, as OldPub is very quickly learning. We're all speaking into the void these days, and that does not seem to be changing.
So what is my role as a writer? How do I shape my words into deeds? Can I live the lives my protagonists do, even from my comparatively less exciting existence? Is my way of acting through art used to inspire or to build up? To do it the right way?
There are always a lot of questions, but asking questions is a lot easier than finding answers. It's especially difficult to find answers when no one is on the same page anymore. These days it's a free-for-all, and I'm not convinced that's entirely a good thing.
I don't want to puff my own chest up too much, merely try to figure out how art crosses the line from posturing into accomplishing. Accomplish what, you may ask? I can't really say. Perhaps the expression it wishes to get across from artist to audience. There is a reason for all art, just like everything else. Figuring that reason out, however, is the problem, especially for someone like myself who is not the quickest or sharpest. If it was so easy our industries wouldn't be falling apart as we speak because of their complete inability to do anything but posture. There has to be an answer out there beyond what we've been doing.
What that is, however, is the question.
The
Phantom War serialization and the
Cannon Cruisers podcast, for instance, are my way of filtering all the influences I had growing up into a coherent world that makes sense of it all in the present. I hope I'm getting that feeling across, but telling a story, and talking about them, is the only way I can do so. Finding that undefinable thing that strikes, that hits deep in a way that remains with you, and then trying to explain it to others is a hard task to accomplish. It might just be a fun action story of adventure, but it still means everything in the world to me. Why does that connect so much? All I can do is as the question over and over, trying to find the answer.
Perhaps that's the point? Can't say that I know. The whole purpose of this post is to try and understand it, after all. I'm not sure if I'm any closer now than when I started, but at least I gave it a try. I can't do much else but try. That's what most of us are doing in this ever fluctuating scene: simply trying to find out way forward.
Things change as you get older, as we all know very well, but it's what sticks with you as you age that starts to mean more to you as you contemplate your mortality and where it is you're heading towards. If a silly movie like Bloodsport has stuck with me since I was a young runt, there is probably a reason it has lasted so long where something like, say, Care Bears, has not. What is it that sticks, that refuses to go away, that which sticks with you through the wild times rippling around us? That's what I want to find, and that's what I want to show to others.
And if I can do the same with my own work then all the better. All I can do is to try harder and hope it works out better next time.
