A Writer Who Won’t Write

A writer who won’t write

Watching a show about

A writer who won’t write,

 

Written by a writer who did write,

But not truly. Not like it was

Written by a writer who did write

 

Truly of his character,

Out of a love to write,

Truly of his character.

Principles and 経済について

(This piece is a few days old but I didn’t bother to change the “two days ago” to “five days ago” and so on.)

I was just looking at the stats for this blog and found them dismally low. A high a few days ago was ten views, and I think that was me looking at it without being signed in.

I’m not terribly bothered by it, though. If I wanted views I would put it on the front page of my Facebook profile, not the information page, which no one looks at. I’d write stati (plural of status, of course) about it. I’d make some kind of connection between my notes there and the stuff here. But I don’t do any of that, because I’m not terribly desperate to get readers. I’d probably change my content, too, make it a little more relevant and useful and short-term appealing, but, yes, I don’t do any of that.

And that is because this blog is about me. Not just in terms of content but in terms of purpose. I write what I feel like writing. I don’t proofread it (gasp), I don’t really organize it, I just write it stream-of-consciousness-style, which is so cheap. Anyone can do that. The difference between them and me is that they’re writing for others and I’m writing for myself.

But wait, you might say (what a cliché phrase, for both of us – and notice the accent mark on the word ‘cliché’; attention to details, that’s what gets viewers. Maybe. For Julian Smith, yes. For me, not so much). All your posts are clearly written to someone other than yourself – they all sound like letters; very scatter-brained and corny letters.

I would agree with you. Nearly everything I write is to someone, usually a combination of myself and others. But I don’t write for others primarily, I write for myself. Maybe you can get something out of this place, maybe not, but know that you are of secondary consideration. I’m really digging myself into a hole here, were my objective to gain readers; thankfully it’s not. Or maybe it’s simply that I want to be accepted, somewhere, just as I am without any censorship. Ha! There’s plenty of censorship here too. There’s even censorship on my computer journal, which no one else will ever read for years. Perhaps I can’t even be completely truthful with myself. More likely I know the truth but think that recognizing it will only make me more okay with it which is not what I want.

But I write for myself. Perhaps it’s to organize my thoughts. Yeah, that’s it. And yes, I know these pieces aren’t organized; there are far too many topics in each article, but the snippets of each topic are organized. Maybe the word I want is thought-of. At least by writing about things I can guarantee that they’re at least thought about (by me) for half a second. The human ability to not think about things is astounding. We turn off the news and go back to our dinner.

Recently I’ve been thinking more and more about how I’m going to save the world. In this ‘save the world’ I mean in a literary sense. I’ve been reading an amazing book called Redeeming the Time by Russell Kirk. I definitely, absolutely recommend that you read it. It was and is an immediate mind-changer for me.

He talks a lot about the replacement of good literature, which develops the moral imagination and a philosophical habit of mind, by bad literature and television, to name a few of the villains. You may have a knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of television, but please don’t turn away on account of me. I know that description is horribly short and filled with terms specific to the book, but forgive me. It’s hard to summarize such a profound book without considerable time spent cataloging main ideas, and I want to focus more on my reactionary action than the book itself (for now). Just read the book (yes, order it from Amazon, it’ll be your best use of money recently).

The point is that people are not being taught to think for themselves, and now more and more, they’re not being taught to think at all. Schools are becoming mere job-certification centers – what happened to being human? We’re stripping ourselves of everything that distinguishes us from animals, culture being the main thing. No wonder we readily accept that label that science gives us. Oh, and the ‘science’ that society claims to believe, and take over stodgy religion? It’s about a century old. We’re not as advanced as we think we are.

Again, I’m sorry about the mishmash of ideas. I really should take time to analyse the work and give a proper book report. But another time. On to my plan.

It’s very much in its fledgling stages, so forgive the vagueness at points, but I’d like to start a sort of society focused on the important things. This society would share works of art of high culture, and seek to better themselves through mutual pursuit of more than the carnal lusts and diversions this world is addicted to. The ‘Inklings’ come to mind, but I don’t know enough about them to dare to draw the comparison. At the core, I want to make a place for sharing inspirational things in hopes of being motivated towards a better life – a meaningful, more permanent life. This would not be some humanistic endeavor, but rather a recognition of things transcendent, and above all a recognition that we are all settling for far less than what we could accomplish and receive.

What better place for this than Inspiration’s waiting room? But as I mentioned at the beginning, no one comes here. So I might do it on Facebook. Yes, I know, it’s dreadfully ironic, but another core principle would be that things like Facebook and YouTube are tools to be utilized; servants, certainly not things to be mastered by.

I watched Citizen Kane two nights ago and it was interesting (I use that word too much, but it’s just so darn useful, especially in teaching English and hearing so many unsatisfactorily-explained stories). It seemed to be of a higher quality than most modern movies, despite its grainy black-and-white resolution. The story was not particularly enthralling, and certainly not thrilling, but it was thought-provoking – the character development was good. Could it be that character development is, in the end, more effective than good story-telling? I suppose the two go hand-in-hand, but it’s something to think about. Character is story, after all.

Anyway, at one part when Kane takes over the newspaper, he publishes in his first issue a “Declaration of Principles”. He fails these, but I think that might be a good idea for my society…

(I’ve just turned on the TV, what a hypocrite I am. But it’s a show explaining the difficult economic words often used in the news – Japanese, I might add – which I need. It will better myself.)

It’s beginning by talking about stocks, accompanied by numerous cute animations, as always. I suppose I should be writing this in Japanese…

（おっと！日本語でのブログのデビューか？？）

日本のバラエティーと相変わらずのキャラはいるね（茶髪の天然女性芸能人、受ける突っ込めを言おうとする笑い芸人、ちょっと賢くてファッションも良いイケメン等）。ま、今回は勉強になりそう。ノートもとりましたよ！

株が誰か会社を支える為にお金をあげた証拠。その会社は新しい仕事を作ってお金を返す。良く行かなければ金を返せない。だから株価が下がる。

日本経済新聞社（日経）は２２５会社を選んで平均株価を計算してる。しかし各会社の株価が違うから単なる平均じゃダメだ。どうやってその「平均」を計算してるかまだよく分からないけど大体景気の動向を分かれる数値なんだ。

ダウジョーンズって会社なんだ。。ダウさんとジョーンズさんが始めたから。ww

アメリカはたった３０社で計算してる（マクドナルド、マイクロソフト、ディズニー等）。ダウが世界の基準になってる。下がると日経も下がる。日経と同じように目安となる数値。

TOPIXはTokyo Stock Price Index ＝ 東京証券株価指数（間違いないかな？略して東証株価指数。こんな難しい漢字使ってて気持ちいい。w）つまりトピックスは上場してる会社の全部。日経はたったその一部。

そこから番組は政治の話に移って正直付いて行くのが難しくなったけど頑張った。面白い点はいくつか出てきた。

例えば、イギリスの選挙結果によって日本の結果を占える。。らしい。選挙率が少なければ少ないほど民主党に有利（組織票をほとんど取ってるから）。でも意外と「皆の党」も最近人気出してる。

以上です！勉強になったな。。皆もご覧になったんでしょうかね？

では、そろそろこの記事を終えおうじゃないか。でも楽しくて多分これからももっと日本語でポストするよ！変な日本語で申し訳ない。ちょっと変わった言い方を使うのが好きだけど何かが明らかに間違ってたら遠慮なくお教え下さい。And I suppose I should wrap up my earlier thoughts…

I will write out a ‘Declaration of Principles’ sometime, but for now I’ve just created a place where people of high quality themselves can submit and discuss works of art that are quality, and hopefully benefit from each other’s experience and recommendations. The world contains an abundance of good literature, but unfortunately it seems that the mountain of garbage literature looms even higher, and ever higher, sometimes obscuring view of the gems. So we dig together.

I’m getting the stitches out of the gaps left from the removal of my second two wisdom teeth today. It still hurts, it shouldn’t. I may write about the saga of my wisdom teeth…somewhere.

Have a wonderful day.

-Brad