If you are reading this, you might be wondering, “Why should she get to have a blog? What does she know and why should I care about it?” If I were an outsider reading this blog I would wonder those very same things; unlike many commentators on Fox News, I consider a questioning of what qualifies me to pass judgment on the world a valid inquiry. I present two different theories.
In this instance, like so many others in my life, Pete Townshend of the Who can better speak for me than I can speak for myself. In a song called “Guitar and Pen”—a song arguably beneath Pete’s extraordinary talents as a songwriter that appears on the wildly uneven, swan-song album Who Are You—Pete addresses a hypothetical teenage audience member, who of course stands in for Pete himself: “You’re alone above the street somewhere/ Wondering how you’ll ever count out there.” Never mind that big-nosed Pete had already achieved phenomenal success as a rock star and more than proved that he “counted;” by 1978, the year this song came out, booze had completely torpedoed Pete’s never-steady self-confidence.
As usual Pete hits the nail right on the head, the nail being the fragile psyche of Kristina Caffrey. I wonder every day how I’ll ever “count” in a huge, overpopulated, deeply confused world. Perhaps certain members of this audience also wonder how they will “count.” Perhaps none of you share my existential paranoia. Perhaps none of you have such inflated egos that you feel that you should count. Maybe some people do not even want to count. The subject of “counting” deserves an entire blog post devoted exclusively to the topic, so I will stop here and simply reiterate that I do wonder how I will count out there.
But never fear, Pete said to both himself and the legions of followers showering him with messianic praise. “You can walk, you can talk, you can fight/ But inside you've got something to write/ In your hand you hold your only friend/ Never spend your guitar or your pen.”
We could use up an entire blog post debating whether or not one can use fighting to create meaning in one’s life and one’s world in 2011. Individuals, at least the last time I checked, can still walk and talk without too many legal obstacles. Pete advises, however, that walking, talking, and fighting do not have the same “counting capacity” as writing does. And yes, I totally made up that term: “counting capacity,” meaning the capacity of an activity to help the actor “count” within a given setting.
Thank you, Pete, for giving me support for the contention that I do have something to write. I always knew that I had this something, but it took me many years to figure out what that something was. Of course, I will not just simply claim that I have something to write. I will attempt to prove on this blog that I have quite significant and meaningful things to write. I believe that a writer is nothing without an audience, so it will be in part up to you, my hopefully faithful readers, to decide if I should, counter to Pete’s advice, spend my guitar and pen.
So, in a nutshell, that is why I am writing this blog.
On the other hand, we can subscribe to the Walt Whitman theory of writing, which basically states that if you are a sentient creature, you have an unalienable right to write, to sing, to speak, to make others listen to you, and to simply be. The only qualification needed to pass judgment on the world and oneself is mere consciousness. In the 20th section of his magnum opus “Song of Myself,” Walt wrote, “I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood. I exist as I am, that is enough.”
If I take the same approach to writing as Walt took to being, then in fact I do not have to trouble my writing to vindicate itself. I write as I do, and that is enough.
If it’s enough for Walt, it’s enough for me. That is additionally why I am writing this blog.
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