[SOC]

These SOC posts are where I write whatever comes into my head, but I am finding this particular edition to be problematic because what I am thinking about is not something I want to write about. I can't stop thinking about it, and I can't write about it. Talk about mas problemas!

This presents a mystery for people. What the fuck is Charlie thinking about that he can't write about? Could it be his job? Does he have hemorrhoids? Is he on the run from the law? There is this huge blank left for people to fill, and they fill it with their imaginations. This is a trick minimalist writers use to make stories seem fuller than they are. You have the tip of the iceberg while the rest remains submerged. The reader does the work of imagining it.

This trick is why old horror movies that use shadows and darkness are scarier than modern movies that rely on CGI special effects. No effect can compare to one's imagination. When you write a story, you need to leave room for this expansive imagination. Don't answer all the questions. Don't make all the descriptions. Paint with a few broad strokes and let the people do their thing.

I often wonder if the same technique can be used in painting and art, and I think it can. In fact, this seems to be what modern artists like Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp did with their work. They did not explain the work. They just made it and let it be what it was. This obviously leads to a reputation for inscrutability among artists which is often frustrating and smacking of elitism. What the fuck were they thinking when they made this?

People who are overt in their message are didactic. For instance, a novel like Uncle Tom's Cabin is didactic as it paints a world of black and white that is simplistic. I hate this shit. I don't mind it in my nonfiction, but I want my fiction to not be on the same level of a Sunday School lesson.

Shakespeare was good at this morally ambiguous writing. His most famous example is Hamlet with the melancholy Dane vacillating between action and inaction. Why doesn't he just put a sword in his corrupt uncle? But he can't. And things don't end on a happy note.

In modern times, I have to hear people crap on one of my favorite movies, No Country for Old Men, that has a less than satisfying ending for many people. I think that was what Cormac McCarthy was trying to do. He left the loose ends, the mysteries, and the fucking randomness of it all. The fact is that you can put together a string of purely random events, and people will form it into a narrative. People make stories out of things that aren't stories at all.

The biggest example of this storytelling is the concept of historical inevitability. The Marxists drowned in this particular Kool-Aid as they saw the worker's state being something that was just going to happen. It was inevitable. Then, the Soviet Union collapsed. There was nothing inevitable about it at all. We can laugh at these fools, but we make the same mistake when we yield to pessimism and say that tyranny is inevitable or that freedom will triumph over statism. But history shows no such patterns. Any such patterns are merely distortions.

I am learning to take things as they come. You need to hold things with an open hand. It could be yours. It could not be yours. Instead of trying to control it or predict it, perhaps we should just let it be as it is. Try not to overthink things. Let events proceed as they will.

This loose hold is difficult. But I learn this through my creative endeavors. I write these SOC posts with no idea where they will end. I do the same thing with my fiction now as I leave many of my stories open ended. I don't answer all the questions. I just let it be what it is. I find this leads to more surprising results than anything I could ever plan.

Something unplanned has happened in my life, and I am just going to let it run where it will. I find myself surprised each and every day. Things I thought were so aren't like that at all. And I could explain it, but I think I will leave you guessing. This is because I don't really know myself. I am going to let it be what it is and enjoy it for what it is. The only things that are inevitable are change and motion.

Posted in: