So here we are, Sunday evening, and like you, I’m excited to see who’s gonna pull out the “Best Sound Design for a Puppet-Based Indie Porno” Oscar tonight. Or maybe your furrowed brow and sweaty palms are due to praying for your favorite in the “Best Key Grip in a Steve Harvey Movie” Oscar? Whatever the case may be, it’s actually one of my least favorite awards shows, since it’s not terribly fun to watch people you’ve never heard of be shuttled offstage by “Crazy Conductor Man”. I’d much rather see Conductor Man try to usher 50 Cent off the stage, only to have 50 pull out a gun and dive into the orchestra pit.
So I’ll be watching, sporadically, but really, only for the first and last 15 minutes of the show. Inexplicably, they front load the show with Best Supporting Actor and Actress Awards, only to delve into approximately 6 hours of “Best Use of A Mug” and “Best Attempt to Play a Scene Against Keanu Reeves Seriously” before getting to the good stuff. Personally, I’m pulling for “Return of the King” all the way, because, well, I got a leeetle drunk last night, and bet a few guys in the North End that ROTK would clean up, and um, if it doesn’t, let’s just say my next entry will be posted remotely from a non-extradition country.
In the meantime, however, the real meat of today’s thoughts: the genesis of the writer.
A lot of people (and by “ a lot” I mean “my mother”) ask me how I started this whole blogging endeavor. And truth be told, I was bored out of my mind when I started, and it was this, or turning tricks in Sullivan Square. I opted for writing. Society as a whole hath benefited from this choice. I’d never written in prose before…or so I thought.
It’s said that some people are “born” to do certain things. Paint, sculpt, perform complex mathematical equations, pickpocket, ram into things with their heads at high velocity after a few too many shots. Genetic dispositions are a hot topic these days, and maybe there’s something do it. After all, my mom recently showed me an ultrasound of me in the womb. Oddly enough, there’s me, with a can of spray paint, pointing to what I had just scrawled on the walls of her uterus: “I’m living Freud’s dream.”
OK, maybe my writing days didn’t start that way. Turns out, well, that the start of my budding career as an essayist has its origins deep in the annals of history, seemingly in the dark ages. And since most people equate “1983” with “the dark ages”, I think my assessment is accurate. I went to my mother’s house on Saturday to help clean out her closets. And yes, I’m aware of the metaphor, so let’s not go there. I also managed to literally trash a lot of my childhood during this endeavor, and again, let’s not go reading anything into this, or I may kick a kitty.
But lo, part of my task involved systematically going through anything that was mine and deeming them trash-worthy. Most of these decisions were pretty easy. Pulitzer Prize for Peace? Keep. Bit of grit? Toss. Framed photograph of Scott Baio? Keeper. Roger Clemens rookie card? Goner. (Kidding, kidding. I don’t own any grit. That’s gross.)
Stuck amidst these boxers, however, lay a bound copy of my 2nd-grade essays. OK, “bound” is a loose term, and this collection is indeed loosely bound by two piece of construction paper and some flimsy yarn. But here, inside this makeshift frame, lies the potential seeds of that which you see now. This man of letters was once a bot of letters. Let’s see what Ryan the Elder can glean from the writings of Ryan the Younger.
I’ve transcribed a few select essays below, verbatim. Buckle up, this should prove interesting. What can we learn?
Colors
Look here, look there, everywhere you look there are colors. Everywhere you look there are colors (unless your watching a black and white T.V.) Here are some things with diferent colors. Fire truckes are red, some cats are black, Some people are white and speak spanish; and some pepole are black and speak english.
Well, first off we can learn that the author probably didn’t head up the “Racial Sensitivity Task Force” in 2nd grade. Before that stunning turn of a last sentence, though, one can detect a certain bravado in the author. He is, from the get go, grabbing the reader’s attention and forcing them to look not simply at the words on the page, but at the very world around them. He drives the point that, “Everywhere you look there are colors…” through the use of repetition, but then backs off, inaccurately deeming black and white to fall outside of the color spectrum. Without defining exactly what black and white truly are, the author’s assertion is a bit weak.
However, things pick up a bit as the author uses evidence to support his primary thesis that 99.999999% of the world hath color. Then, his argument slightly derails as his feeble mind attempts to make a fairly solid point about the ethnic diversity in his hometown and instead comes out sounding like an entrant in “Ms. KKK”. This reviewer is fairly certain that the author meant no harm through these statements, and this reviewer is also fairly certain that the author’s teacher might have spit out her coffee while grading this essay.
So we’ve seen, in this first essay, a desire to examine a world-wide view. This attitude is commendable, though one could argue through the almost Tourette’s-esque ending that the author may have bitten off more than he could chew. Let’s see what he can do with a more mundane topic.
Halloween
Go outside, look up, what do you see? A whitch zooming in the light of the full moon? Halloween is the most fun and scary holidays. It’s the time when ghosts and goblens awake from their year’s sleep. Some people aculley belive they’ve seen these horreble ghols.
Well, once again, we find our overly confident author striving to control the very actions of his reader. Such an autocrat, this author. Maybe the reader doesn’t want to go outside, or, if they do wanna go outside, maybe they wanna look down, ever think of that? Maybe they wanna go and grab a ham sandwich. Who are you to dictate your whims to us, O Unmerciful Author?
Despite his illusions of grandeur, the author also employs a subtle device in this terse takedown of All Hallow’s Eve: the unreliable narrator. We cannot truly trust that this author is indeed a skeptic. Oh sure, he seems to deride those feeble minds that believe in things that go bump in the night, but why would he spend so much time on the topic, and in such detail, if he himself we not a bit queasy? Notice how the spelling becomes worse as he tries to shrug off his own fear. What a wuss.
My Brother
My brother is four years old. He is also a pest. Once he socked me in the eye with a starship. But he is also fun to play with, too. He likes to play soccer, frisbe and other sports. My brother’s name is Casey. I like my brother very much. The only thing I hate is that he’s a pest.
Well, here we can see, early on, a preoccupation with his family as a centrally placed series of figures in his writing. One can only assume that the author means a “toy” starship, although this reviewer readily admits both the actually existence of starships, coupled with a humanoid’s ability to sock another in the eye with one, is really frickin’ cool.
One sense a circular logic at work here. It’s as if, no matter what positive qualities this brother possesses, his status as pest will forever mar any chance at approval in the author’s eyes. Might we humbly suggest that the author goes to the corner and thinks long and hard about the psychological damage he’s inflicting upon his innocent sibling? No? Very well then, no dessert for you.
Africa
Compared to the United States, Africa is bigger and has more countreys. Some of the largest states are ten times bigger then the states in America. The biggest states in Africa are: Zabia, Suden, Libya, Mali and the Ivory Coast. I think that Africa is twenty achors long.
While one should ostensibly applaud his desire to learn about other parts of the world, one simultaneously wishes that the author do a bit of research before attempting such an assessment. Or learn a bit of basic geography. Or be able to not use words like “country” and “state” as if they are somehow synonyms. He just sort of throws a bunch of key words onto the proverbial wall and sees what sticks. And I’m fairly certain he just plain made up Zabia. Maybe he meant “Zambia”, but like Strong Bad when naming the mascot for “Crazy Go Nuts University”, was really tired and confused.
In addition, we’d like to ask the author’s parents to test his spatial reasoning, for while he seems to know that Africa is bigger than America, by his calculations, the United States of America is as big as this reviewer’s living room. One should commend the author clearly stating his beliefs, except in cases such as this when the author’s being a schmuck.
Fraggle Rock
Another show beside The Muppets, Fraggle Rock! Again directed by Jim Henson. This show doesn’t have rock music, but it has music. The caracters on the show are: Gobo, Wembly, Mogie, Red, Boober, The Trash Heap, Gorgs, Doc, and Sprocket. The dangers are : The Terrible Tunnel, And The Invisible Gargoil.
Well, once can certainly see the progeny of his pop culture obsession ringing loud and clear. Let’s see…we have obvious excitement for topic, as evidences by the initial explanation point…we have slight disdain for the homogeny of the product…we have biting criticism of said product…we have an overload of details that no one really cares about…typos all over the place…yup, pretty much nothing’s changed between then and now.
The World Travler
Once there was a man. He was very interested in the world. One day he said, “I am going to explore the world.” No” said the mother “You won’t survive.” “But I must try” he said. So he went off on his trip. The women and her children spent a very unhappy year. Then, one morning, they found him, Eating Breakfast!
Well, now the author’s moving away from slice-of-life narratives, away from pop culture criticism, and straight into that little-known genre of “What The Hell Was He Smoking” Fiction.
Given the amount of padding one finds in modern fiction, it’s refreshing in some way to see the author feel that the “middle” of the story was entirely unnecessary, instead opting to merely insert “a beginning with a lack of context” and a “surprise ending that seems to want to be dramatic but instead is just kinda weird”. Maybe the author wants to test our deductive powers. Maybe the author is challenging the very notion of narrative itself, forcing us, the reader, to supply the gaps, and answering such lingering questions as: Where did he go? Was his mother part of a concubine tribe that collectively mourned his loss? Did his breakfast provide a healthy balance of vitamins and minerals? Does the shock value lie in the fact that, upon his arrival, he invented the very concept of breakfast, providing evolution with that much needed culinary push?
Or did the author simply want to finish his essay before recess? We may never know.
The Wrong Address
One day I mailed a letter to my Grand-Mother. A week later, my Grand-Mother called. “Hi,” I said. “Did you get my letter?” “What letter?” she said. “The one I mailed last week.” I said, then I went to the post office. “Didn’t I bring a letter here last week?” “Oh yes,” he said, “But we didn’t mail it.”
In our final analysis of the day, we find the author’s nascent struggles to communicate. A boy-man trapped in a world full of people who wouldn’t let him write. Speak. Communicate. Express himself. In short, this essay is about that which we hold near and near as American citizens. Nay, as CITIZENS OF THE WORLD: democracy.
Or sure, he was subtle. He may have wanted his teacher to think he was writing the mother of his father, but the clearly use of capitalization and punctuation (“Grand-Mother”) give the game away. Like the characters in a Dan Brown novel, our author here is using code. The first letters, “G” and “M”, obviously are signifying other words, relating the author’s true intended recipient: namely, the “G”reat “M”asses.
Yes, he’s writing, as a member of the world, to the entire population. But the post office, here a stand-in for the government (or any power structure in general, for that matter), won’t let him. They want to shut him down. But nobody puts the author in the corner. Oh no. He might have failed this time, but there’s more than one way to write a letter. More than one way to send a message.
And while the “post office” may have won this battle, his spirit remains indomitable. That’s one to grow on folks.
Many more essays lie within this bound tome, but those will have to see the light of day another time. Soon enough, I promise. In the meantime, I wish you all the best as your battle your personal post offices.
Fight the good fight, people.
Posted by Ryan McGee at February 29, 2004 08:16 PM