What if I don't actually know my own
voice?
Consider, what's the first thing people do when they hear themselves recorded for the first time? It's often a cringe or insistence it be shut off or even that it isn't them. How many “humble devil's advocates” are nothing but the asshole at the office? How many failed “trying to be funny” types have cast themselves into a pit of aspersions they'll never climb out of? How many pathological professions of love so routinely reduce the feeling to pain and combat? If you never know you're screaming, your answer to why people are crying and running in pain will always be incomplete.
There's a number of lines clashing at once that made me raise the initial question. Kevin Smith just said at the end of the episode of Comic Book Men that it's always fun watching movies, but way more so to be making them. Recently as well, I read an explanation for why The Walking Dead decided to kill Carl. And I've been thinking considerably about the message I profess on my road to self-sufficiency and the excuses I've offered as to why I don't engage in something like stand-up, movie making, or really anything I don't particularly care to suck at.
Maybe first we should talk about the consequences of not knowing your voice. It speaks to many of my old themes. You're a parrot for the times. You're forgoing the requisite thought to take control of your identity. Your ideas become open for manipulation and exploitation in ways that had you a consistent and deliberate message would make such things considerably harder. We take the concept, the individual nature of our own voice as for granted as any other part of our body, despite it surely being of greater implication than your tongue in its physicality.
When it comes to any kind of artistic expression, I hate it when it's done for its own sake. I'm with the pretentious art critic who doesn't really believe AI algorithms making pictures is the same thing as a person putting in the work. I like the genuinely depressive and desperate comedian who's been in pointless feuds and is in recovery considerably more than the 19 year old who can match the pace and set-ups. I'll give them credit if they're funny, sure, but “they” aren't going to stick with me like the comedians and stories of my favorites have.
Writing is really the only example I have of something creative that I do on any sort of regular basis that I bother with people seeing. First, a few pages that I may come to regret are a considerably easier time, money, and effort investment than what it would take to drag people to an open mic or pull together the resources for a film. Second, I tend to only write when I really want to explore something or think I have something to say. If I don't want to write every day, I don't. If what I'm saying I think is more important than how sad it might make you feel or how far you may question what's left of our relationship, I'm putting me before you and telling you to take responsibility for how you perceive me.
That's basically the thing I wonder about everyone who puts together a movie or thinks the world needs to experience their art. Are they doing it for the right reasons? Is it truly the group of friends writing and shooting Clerks who's voice is so powerful a group of Irish guys want to make a movie about that friendship? Seems a huge sign that Kevin Smith is embedded in the right world for the right reasons. Why do certain directors make hit after hit after hit, and they all register as some degree of timeless or quality, and others are Michael Bay?
In the episode of The Walking Dead, the creators explained that they needed a reason for a transformation in Rick. Rick's “voice” as dogged leader who survives and keeps people together tragedy after tragedy, now pushed to the edge of all-out-war having blood feud has been a long and complicated one. What would prevent Rick from killing Negan? “His” voice would have to shine through as his love and commitment to his son. The spirit of what kept the group together is what's needed to keep even the concept of humanity alive in the storm of constant raining shit. At which point does Rick know what he's supposed to do? Is it the thick of it all as the guns are blaring, or in the memory that flashes before his eyes as he refrains from doing something that would betray it all?
People are loathe to defend the show anymore, and I think it's because of the same “I don't want to persistently think and evolve” mindset that plagues the modern era in general. A show comes out and excites you about the prospect of death, the lingering wish at the back of every fat desperate “millennial” mind and child not knowing if they're making it home from school. Now the show wants to speak of humanity and redemption as we're entertaining the idea of arming teachers and hearing that God wants the EPA destroyed? The Walking Dead is going where people might one day be again, but it's certainly no longer where they are.
I woke up to see the first article on my phone telling me that Kevin Smith had a massive heart attack. I read about how after facing his biggest fear, he realized that he had a good run and found himself oddly at peace if this was really it. He had his friends who he's still creating with. He created a family he's crazy about. He's used his underlying love or all he gets involved with to propel him across platforms and into so many worlds. I don't think that happens merely “because he made a movie.” I think it's because he made his movie. And if you never remember a line from it, you'll remember how it made you feel like he feels about his life and friends.
I think that's what I tried in the party house. I think that's why I'm willing to sever ties when the conversation has died and “life” has substituted for your life. It's why I bother to make appeals at all in writing. I feel confident enough that my voice is all of the blogs. If I adapt them into something else, then at least it came from a place I thought only I could speak to in my way. You don't need to hear my record, you don't need to see my routine, you know my motivation. I want to report on what I don't see enough of or where I see weird things connect. I want to create because I have to, not because I can. I want to know that if I get my heart attack well before I or anyone thinks it's due, I can have that same feeling that I did what I could as I thought I should, and how it looks right now is okay.
Maybe I don't want the “workaholic” narration to be so loud. Maybe I don't need to denigrate exploring what other people have created, even if that only involves a screen. Maybe my voice is better for all the people that no longer need to flavor it. The ideas wouldn't bring me a tinge of happiness if they were out and out wrong, right? I wouldn't bother to write if I didn't think my voice existed in the first place. But I'll never know the totality of what I'm saying. I'll only be able to look for how to respect why I said it. That's the voice I hope is in every blog and touches anything else I might think to create in the future. That's what needs to live so that I can die happy.
Consider, what's the first thing people do when they hear themselves recorded for the first time? It's often a cringe or insistence it be shut off or even that it isn't them. How many “humble devil's advocates” are nothing but the asshole at the office? How many failed “trying to be funny” types have cast themselves into a pit of aspersions they'll never climb out of? How many pathological professions of love so routinely reduce the feeling to pain and combat? If you never know you're screaming, your answer to why people are crying and running in pain will always be incomplete.
There's a number of lines clashing at once that made me raise the initial question. Kevin Smith just said at the end of the episode of Comic Book Men that it's always fun watching movies, but way more so to be making them. Recently as well, I read an explanation for why The Walking Dead decided to kill Carl. And I've been thinking considerably about the message I profess on my road to self-sufficiency and the excuses I've offered as to why I don't engage in something like stand-up, movie making, or really anything I don't particularly care to suck at.
Maybe first we should talk about the consequences of not knowing your voice. It speaks to many of my old themes. You're a parrot for the times. You're forgoing the requisite thought to take control of your identity. Your ideas become open for manipulation and exploitation in ways that had you a consistent and deliberate message would make such things considerably harder. We take the concept, the individual nature of our own voice as for granted as any other part of our body, despite it surely being of greater implication than your tongue in its physicality.
When it comes to any kind of artistic expression, I hate it when it's done for its own sake. I'm with the pretentious art critic who doesn't really believe AI algorithms making pictures is the same thing as a person putting in the work. I like the genuinely depressive and desperate comedian who's been in pointless feuds and is in recovery considerably more than the 19 year old who can match the pace and set-ups. I'll give them credit if they're funny, sure, but “they” aren't going to stick with me like the comedians and stories of my favorites have.
Writing is really the only example I have of something creative that I do on any sort of regular basis that I bother with people seeing. First, a few pages that I may come to regret are a considerably easier time, money, and effort investment than what it would take to drag people to an open mic or pull together the resources for a film. Second, I tend to only write when I really want to explore something or think I have something to say. If I don't want to write every day, I don't. If what I'm saying I think is more important than how sad it might make you feel or how far you may question what's left of our relationship, I'm putting me before you and telling you to take responsibility for how you perceive me.
That's basically the thing I wonder about everyone who puts together a movie or thinks the world needs to experience their art. Are they doing it for the right reasons? Is it truly the group of friends writing and shooting Clerks who's voice is so powerful a group of Irish guys want to make a movie about that friendship? Seems a huge sign that Kevin Smith is embedded in the right world for the right reasons. Why do certain directors make hit after hit after hit, and they all register as some degree of timeless or quality, and others are Michael Bay?
In the episode of The Walking Dead, the creators explained that they needed a reason for a transformation in Rick. Rick's “voice” as dogged leader who survives and keeps people together tragedy after tragedy, now pushed to the edge of all-out-war having blood feud has been a long and complicated one. What would prevent Rick from killing Negan? “His” voice would have to shine through as his love and commitment to his son. The spirit of what kept the group together is what's needed to keep even the concept of humanity alive in the storm of constant raining shit. At which point does Rick know what he's supposed to do? Is it the thick of it all as the guns are blaring, or in the memory that flashes before his eyes as he refrains from doing something that would betray it all?
People are loathe to defend the show anymore, and I think it's because of the same “I don't want to persistently think and evolve” mindset that plagues the modern era in general. A show comes out and excites you about the prospect of death, the lingering wish at the back of every fat desperate “millennial” mind and child not knowing if they're making it home from school. Now the show wants to speak of humanity and redemption as we're entertaining the idea of arming teachers and hearing that God wants the EPA destroyed? The Walking Dead is going where people might one day be again, but it's certainly no longer where they are.
I woke up to see the first article on my phone telling me that Kevin Smith had a massive heart attack. I read about how after facing his biggest fear, he realized that he had a good run and found himself oddly at peace if this was really it. He had his friends who he's still creating with. He created a family he's crazy about. He's used his underlying love or all he gets involved with to propel him across platforms and into so many worlds. I don't think that happens merely “because he made a movie.” I think it's because he made his movie. And if you never remember a line from it, you'll remember how it made you feel like he feels about his life and friends.
I think that's what I tried in the party house. I think that's why I'm willing to sever ties when the conversation has died and “life” has substituted for your life. It's why I bother to make appeals at all in writing. I feel confident enough that my voice is all of the blogs. If I adapt them into something else, then at least it came from a place I thought only I could speak to in my way. You don't need to hear my record, you don't need to see my routine, you know my motivation. I want to report on what I don't see enough of or where I see weird things connect. I want to create because I have to, not because I can. I want to know that if I get my heart attack well before I or anyone thinks it's due, I can have that same feeling that I did what I could as I thought I should, and how it looks right now is okay.
Maybe I don't want the “workaholic” narration to be so loud. Maybe I don't need to denigrate exploring what other people have created, even if that only involves a screen. Maybe my voice is better for all the people that no longer need to flavor it. The ideas wouldn't bring me a tinge of happiness if they were out and out wrong, right? I wouldn't bother to write if I didn't think my voice existed in the first place. But I'll never know the totality of what I'm saying. I'll only be able to look for how to respect why I said it. That's the voice I hope is in every blog and touches anything else I might think to create in the future. That's what needs to live so that I can die happy.
