It is the year of Coronavirus and we are already in September. It is a year when we could have had a podcast every day about the most bizarre six months of our lives, and every day could have been completely unique, yet I've done absolutely nothing, and so far, not a single cast released. The culprit is, as always, hubris: wanting to write a delicious cinnamon roll of a mega-novel, tomes of Proust or Powell length and Biblical, Melvillian diversity of feature which would transport the characters and readers through the entirety of Jewish history and make this podcaster of little distinction into the most consequential Jewish writer since Saul of Tarsus. He'd practically written the whole thing in his head in states of the ecstasy of upper bipolarity, yet he couldn't get more than a couple thousand of its million words down on paper. Perhaps because there was something in his lower systems which knew how thin the air was the air of its quality, nothing in dimensions of reality is anything like as simply ideal as they are in the shallower dimensions of one's head, to simply exist in the air of being changes all forms, which now evolve, weather, grow and decay - ideal form becomes energy, function, and come into direct tension with other ideal forms. So therefore the breath of life is not to be found in books that achieve some ideal state, but in the ordinary complications of everyday experience. This book was probably never going to be nearly so good as this podcaster's highest reaches assumed it would be, and were ever it to be born, even were it as great on paper as in his head, it would be a book of the type both you and I would forever mean to read, and simply assume its greatness from the knowledge fact that it might collapse your shelf - the type of book everybody would fear and nobody would love, and in spite of all the scenes he thought were funny, a book meant to impose rather than entertain.
It is just one of those many flights of self-deluded ego that populate his life story, it's a type of ego that many people have, the type of ego that shoehorns yourself into goals that contradict the strengths of person you are, and allows you to pursue projects which everybody but you knows are made to bear down on the pressure points of your weaknesses, against which your strengths become defenseless. But every time, 'I'll show them!...' and it goes on, and on, and on, with ever more time, blood, treasure, months, years, and lives. Fortunately, I'll never be a person of particular importance or influence, because projects like this were once called The Vietnam War, or the Star Wars prequel trilogy, or Windows millennial edition. There are certain types of megalomaniacs: Lyndon Johnson, Elon Musk, James Cameron, who are attracted to the larger than life preternaturally, and simply know that to climb a mountain of greatness you have to be ready to fall to the ground from the world's highest peaks. But this podcaster is not that kind of person (3:11-3:18), if he's succeeded at anything in spite of his failures, it's because he was compelled to bugger on, not because he was made of anything particularly sturdy.
Let's give Cynthia Ozick a quick word:
https://youtu.be/TDzfn76sQUU?t=533 (to 9:29)
I used to have the exact opposite point of view, I elucidated it here a number of times: that creating something which reaches across barriers to be truly meaningful and universal requires the feedback of an audience, figuring out what a diverse audience of completely different orientations and backgrounds and tastes and perspectives which reaches out to everyone. And to this day I still can't quite shake that corrupting worm as she calls it, but it can't be denied, that worm kills the whole plant. If you're working in the arts for any other reason than the work itself, you're never going to get done what you want to get done. And part of the reason for my change in attitude is realizing, on the days when I try at all to direct my writing and dictate the words rather than the words dictate themselves to me, I cannot ever write, I grow ever more miserable and beset by my inner horror: writing, a thousand times, has been what saved me and relieved me of this burden of existential horror, and whatever writer I am, however unread I am, however yearningly my heart wishes to be feted and venerated, or at least appreciated, I realize, the only reason to do it is not for you, but for me.
The reason to do this podcast is not because you want to tell the truth to the world and make vindicated pronouncements, you'll probably fail at both. The reason is not to be listened, or even to be useful. The reason is - it gives your life meaning, it's a process that shows that you created something out of nothing - that your life has and had a purpose, that you can get thoughts that forever seem like an insane jumble in your head onto a paper with clarity it never has pre-formation, and thereore have something at the end of every day of which you can be proud.
Life may soon get easier for us all, though I doubt that quite highly.... and we may have resumed this podcast after a gap for precisely the period when it could have been its most interesting, but I'm no longer doing this for you, dear listener, I'm doing this for me, for my ability to create something that every day gives me purpose, meaning, a new breath of life, something to look forward to, a daily reminder to me, to my creator be that creator God or self, that I have a reason to keep going.
Amen.
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