Why Do It At All?
Sometimes I wonder:
Why do it at all?
Why write?
Why try?
There are many other writers.
Better writers.
Smarter than me, anyway.
They make arguments I can't understand.
Better ones, too.
Ones that make me nod my head and say, "Of course."
Which is, of course, what you want.
You want it to feel
obvious,
but only in hindsight.
Arguments so good, they feel effortless.
Mine aren't like that, though.
Mine feel like digging something out of the ground with my bare hands.
It hurts.
So, why bother?
The best writers write the way jazz musicians play jazz.
It flows out of them.
They are in the moment.
But I think too much to be
in the moment.
Not in the "I'm smart" kind of way, but in the
If-I-think-hard-enough-I-can-make-things-turn-out-all-right
kind of way.
Anyway,
text is cheap, now.
ChatGPT writes like Haruki Murakami, now.
it writes whole books and puts them on Amazon.
It writes all the college essays
And the teachers use ChatGPT to grade them
And soon enough the whole world will just be ChatGPT talking to itself.
So,
why write?
Why do it at all?
Then, sometimes,
I have a moment.
Last night I had a moment.
I was putting my son down for bed.
He was reading, wrapped up in a blanket.
He didn't look up when I came in.
I sat on his bed and gave him a hug.
I kissed his head and smelled his hair, which doesn't smell like hair, but smells like him.
I could feel his body, his bones. I could feel how small he is.
I said I love you, bud. I am proud of you.
And he said I love you, too.
And then I left the room
and went to close the door.
and I froze.
Everything stopped for a moment:
the light coming out of the room
the shadows to my left
the sounds of my wife in the other room
the quiet hum of the house
and I knew, for a fact
I will not always be here.
I won't always have this.
I will want to be here, right at this very moment, with everyone exactly as they are -
I will want it more than I've ever wanted anything
and I won't be able to get it.
I knew it for a fact. I felt it in my whole body.
And I wanted so badly to
trap it and catch it and freeze it and capture it
the moment
forever, to make it stop right where it was.
So I took a picture.
Took a picture of my hand,
of the light,
of the shadows,
of the sounds,
of the quiet hum,
because they say a picture is worth a thousand words.
But it isn't.
That's a lie.
A picture can't breathe.
Words can.
Words change when you do.
They mean different things at different times,
they grow,
evolve.
Words do what we do.
And that's why, for the most-human things,
only words will do.
And that's why I write.
That's why I do it at all.
It's just that
it was only obvious
in hindsight.
Yours,
Dan
SOMETHING I'M READING:
An oldie, but a goodie, and something I needed at present.