More Essays?
Every April and October for the last few years, I’ve been taking advantage of a self-built break to write several short fiction stories. When it is time to switch to fiction, I struggle to get the brain thinking in those terms, but by the end of the month, I'm generating story drafts for the next break. Then, I have a difficult time switching back to essays.
You’re not off the hook. I do intend to write more essays. However, this summer I want to try a few “multiple-part” pieces. Slightly longer form essays broken up over a few weeks. It will give me a chance to be more granular and detailed, and help me think in broader terms. I’ve been reading a lot of longer-form essays, and I’ve yet to get to a point where I feel like I need it to be done. I’m hoping to do the same, but over a few weeks, to keep things from getting too intense.
Speaking of which:
Moral Formation
I recently listened to a podcast featuring David Brooks, late of the New York Times, now writing for The Atlantic and still doing political analysis for PBS News Hour every Friday. Brooks takes the Christian conservative position in much of what he writes and says, but on this particular pod, he said some things that I think are worthy of discussing.
He asked whether a decline in religious participation in our nation has led to a lack of moral formation, such that citizens have lost any sense of character, moral values, or a shared code with future generations. This may be a longer-form essay in several parts, because there is much to say and many points worth considering. I would suggest (if you haven’t) taking a stroll through some of Brooks’ work, just to get acquainted. I seldom agreed with him until he became a voice of reason in an otherwise mad, mad, mad, mad world.
Memoir Therapy
Hacking into the deep memories of my youth, pulling them out, untangling, and then trying to give them context and linearity has been very therapeutic for me.
In the previous batch of essays, the one entitled “The House, Crooked to the Eye,” turned out to be one of the most important things I have ever written, if not for your edification or entertainment as readers, then for facing a part of my life and having a gunslinger duel (of sorts) with the thoughts, anxieties, memories, emotions, both excavated and not, that I retain from those days. I’d like very much to do some more. The problem is, I’m not thrilled about displaying all the dirty laundry, so I’m hoping to do something like a character study for some family members who have already passed. It might help me to more fully remember them, and I hope that it is entertaining or at least engaging to read about people who are deeply important to me.
That story, by the way, caught the roots of some deeper wounds that came up from the excavation that needed to be remembered and dealt with. Oddly, but perhaps not surprisingly, I feel way better about that part of my life now. Hopefully, I’ll have a similar experience with further such work.
What We Are Watching/Reading/Listening to
When I was a kid, my brother, Rich, influenced my own music tastes, and what he listened to, I did too. There was a song by a contemporary Christian band (called Petra) that we liked called “Garbage In/Garbage Out.” This was one of those very popular (at the time) warnings about what you put into your head being what you become. A warning on par with “you are what you eat”.
I’ve always been a big media consumer. I love shows, movies, music, (certain) podcasts, and books, and I enjoy the feeling of benefitting from expanding my mind from most of it. Lately, I’ve had the benefit of being able to access some really good content (and some not so great) that I really want to write about. Briefly, I would like to explore my feelings about the HBO Max show, The Pitt; A Great Courses audio experience about the New Testament by Bart Ehrman; Raymond Chandler’s novel, “The Long Goodbye”; and a series of podcasts that I have found to be edifying and thoughtful for learning about the world in a very carefully curated way.
I never bought into the Garbage In/Garbage Out ideology, always being somewhat of an omnivore in media consumption, but I can certainly see how it might be true about social media, which may make me a hypocrite.
As Usual
So, I will be writing about other aspects of my/our lives, with odd book reviews, longer form stuff, stories about people and experiences and much else in the coming months, until October, but as always, I’m grateful for all of you in my small (but awesome) list of readers, who continue to give me and my work the eye and hopefully the mind. I appreciate every bit of time you spend reading and sharing your thoughts.
See you, as my friend Rich Powell says, in the Funny Papers.
