A Writer Without A Keyboard To Write On
Friday, February 6th, 2009
As I sit here attempting to make my way in life by stringing the abstract symbols that we call “letters” into that nebulous concept we call “writing” I cannot help but think how odd it is that I do not own the keys of the laptop that I am pressing down to create whatever this is that you are reading.
How apropos. Is that the word? Yeah I guess that is the word. I ain’t double checking it so it better be. Else I’ll look stoopid.
Here I am “making something” that no one else has any right to, legal or otherwise, because it is completely my own creation and yet I cannot even get that creation out of my head and out for other people to see without jacking my brother’s laptop. So in some weird way this thing that is mine is partly his. Or at least he can lay claim to a portion of the process of creating this little piece. He provided the means for me to communicate my ideas to the world outside of the range of my voice and that means he was somehow involved in the creation of this. That means that what is mine may not be, to him, completely mine.
Now I know he does not feel that way, but think about that. Something that came from me, from my mind, born from who I am, may not be seen as being mine by virtue of the simple fact that someone else provided something incidental to this piece, in this case the means for me to communicate my idea. So a writer without a keyboard to type on doesn’t even own his own work. At least not free and clear enough to convince other people to remember that fact.
Of course that is all most people need to start trying to put their filthy mitts all over something. I’ve seen it dozens of times in all sorts of endeavors, but a lot in the arts, especially the performing arts. I say again, ESPECIALLY in the performing arts. The minute somebody sees someone doing something they try to tell the person doing it what they ought to do or they take some ownership of it. They don’t even wait to get asked. Sometimes (and by “sometimes” I mean “rarely”) this is done out of pure motives, in an attempt to help out and instruct so that the instructed can be given more tools to improve their work. Most of the time, however, it is done because there isn’t hardly anyone alive who doesn’t know how to do anything better than everyone else.
It is this impulse that inspires everyone from people around at the beginning of a project to critics to a creator’s relatives to even the audience itself to declare that the thing created should change to fit their tastes, soothe their qualms, insure that they are not reflected poorly on, and conform to their worldview. They view the piece as theirs by virtue of connection. And acquiescing to these people isn’t bad, so long as the piece being created was being created to satisfy any of those individuals wants. Then it is even admirable to provide the product that is promised. The product will never be representative of the titular creator’s creative impulse, it will never be his, but it will serve the purpose of its maker. It will serve the creative purposes of those its maker seeks to please.
This influence over someone’s work is not good, however, if the thing created was intended to be the work of the creator. Then the effect of these kinds of busybodying is to deprive anyone who creates of their freedom to make what they see fit and stand or fall on the merits of their work alone. It also makes it almost impossible to truthfully claim anything well known is really the work of the purported creator and not of some group of credited or uncredited people.
The only thing possibly more crippling on the creative process than that kind of overt influence is when people re-imagine what you created and pass it off, not as their own, but as the intended version of what was created!
But what can you do? People want to take ownership of stuff that isn’t theirs, of stuff they don’t like, or of stuff they don’t understand. Heck I just learned that in the Eighteenth century people rewrote “Romeo and Juliet” so that Juliet lived just because the original ending didn’t appeal to them. S’true. It really does ensure that regardless of whether you own all the pen and ink in the world you’ll never be free to make what is in you, regardless of how good or bad it is, that you’ll never really have a keyboard to write on.
-Bob
am trying to accomplish here on this blog. And, I am told, that some of the comments reflect this misunderstanding. (I wouldn’t know myself because, covetous as I am for them, I do not read the comments. I am a firm believer in having my minions; secretaries, students, followers, children, and various hangers on et al… read what people have to say to me and then answering back on my behalf with fanatical devotion. It is just more professional. And I will not allow my momentary lack of minionry to force me into something as unseemly as reading what other people have to say about what I have written.)
