Just as it took Katrina to expose the truly sordid, corrupt emptiness at the core of « compassionate conservatism, » we rarely begin to look into our own hearts of darkness until disaster strikes. In the mundane day-to-day, we seem otherwise hardwired to take so much for granted. For writers — whose very business should be about exploring what lurks beneath the quotidian surface of things — such an inability to face our own feelings seems a terrible self-betrayal. Surely we can’t rely on tragedy to be our muse.
Ancients used a memento mori to counter this folly — a visible reminder of mortality, the skull on the desk that said « remember you will die. » Sometimes when I’m teaching a screenwriting class, I wish I could hand out such skulls to each and every student. Maybe with that horrible bony grin sitting by their computer screen, they wouldn’t be so inclined to write for Them — the powers that be who supposedly run the market — and they’d remember to write only what matters to themselves the most.
It’s part of the same problem — this mistaken belief that the uncomfortable truths, frightening feelings and crazy perceptions that make up what’s called « personal » can’t possibly find an audience. But if you think about the works you love — movies, songs, books, or paintings — chances are good that what you love is the rage, the pain, the wild, subversive joy that fueled these things into being. The recognition that we have met the scary and it is us.
From a great post by Billy Mernit (writer, composer, teacher). Go read the whole thing on his blog.