Musings of a Timid observer

There's something really peculiar about the silence. It seems to be the loudest sound in the world. The one in which you seem to fear that your thoughts are audibly being pronounced for all to hear by Morgan Freeman.  Ever since I started living on my own, I have found that the silences are really the one gift I can give myself. But it wasn't easy. Having grown up in a home which was always full of people, I craved having my own little piece of real estate. My father, being the former Marxist man of letters thought the television was a tool to amuse the masses and distract them from the real shit going on. He vilified it and rationed the amount of time his children could sedate themselves on it. This is not to say that Marxism leads inevitably to an authoritarian leadership with rations meted out by the man..but it's a curious coincidence.  When he finally relented to the insipid offspring of his beating each other up, leaving stains in his books and running aroun...

They say you should never meet your heroes. They will ultimately be a disappointment to you. Far better to see them as the infallible creature that we're blessed to have grace this planet. But that's foolish, what person over the age of 12 thinks anyone is perfect ? We live in the age of the anti-hero: where the protagonist has some vice or hampering that makes him/her someone you can relate to. James Bond has his drinking. Abraham Lincoln thought black people were a different race from white people. Vin Diesel clearly has a speech impediment. Being imperfect is to be human. It's to be real. And lord knows how important it is to be real. We all remember the moment we realized our dad wasn't the strongest guy in the world. Or when you discovered that someone else's mother could make a meal that made you want to run home and tell your mother how disappointed you were in the half-assed shit she called a meal. That moment of clarity when the person your loins and heart ...

Writing is inherently more difficult than speaking because you can see the shit you just put out. It's right there laid out for you to see. Much like you cringe at the sound of your own voice on an answering machine, so too do you recoil a little at seeing the ideas your brain has laid out. Chuck Klosterman, one of my favorite writers and by all estimations a smart smart man with an obsession with Pop culture says that writer's block is a thing that happens to amateurs. A writer forms the discipline of writing. He/she fashions a voice by working at it night and day. By pushing through those moments when there's nothing more scary than an open word document awaiting for your wise musings. By not settling for the likes and comments from your last piece, but pressing deeper to find not only a way to touch people in some vein but also in some way, feel like you have articulated your ideas as best you can. This is how I know I will never be a professional writer: that proces...