I had the good fortune Saturday to attend a writing workshop that Cary Tennis hosts. It was a great pleasure to meet one of the faces from the Open Salon mothership, Salon.com. But it was also really quite interesting to see how the writing workshop worked and to interact with the other writers who dropped in.
Because of time constraints, I only stayed for part of the event, but it was quite interesting. Leafing through images clipped from magazines, we were asked to spend about 20 minutes writing whatever came to mind inspired by one of the images. It was a lot harder than I had expected, and for the first five or so minutes I sat wondering if I'd write anything at all.
Perhaps just a haiku, I though. I often fall back to that when lost for words. But it seemed a cheap way out only because it wasn't what I'd intended to write and I figured I should force myself, so I started just pushing around phrases and trying to make them look like sentences and see if any of it grabbed me.
The picture I'd chosen was a black and white image of a long table with comfortable looking cushions where chairs might have been. The table was low, so sitting on cushions would have been quite comfortable. There were only a few people sitting at a table that could accommodate more. The plates were a covered style that I imagine goes with some particular cuisine, perhaps from Southeast Asia. The people were of various ethnicities, and I guessed perhaps they were vacationers. They weren't eating, but perhaps had recently been fed. They seemed happy.
But what to write?
I was a little surprised at what I wrote. Not completely surprised, but kind of amused because I wasn't conscious of a desire to say those things, or perhaps to use that tone, until it came out. But sometimes you say or write a thing and then say “oh, is that what I think?” It's as if there is an entity inside seeking to express itself that is not in direct communication with the thought process and that one only learns about by listening their own words.
Here's what I wrote:
Technology is a weed that chews through the more sedate and flowing patterns of our existence, strangling them and replacing them with complex and jarring jungles that serve little need other than the efficient replication of its own kind. Technology begets complexity, which calls for more technology even just to navigate it all.
We are bioengineered to revere the success of our own, and are tricked into thinking that extends to the success of the things we make. We invited technology in. It is our technology. But our technology is not us. And yet we can't help but cheer even successes we can't understand or didn't want, shrugging to ourselves acceptingly, allowing that there must be a reason our own needs and desires were displaced by those more successful. As if the goal did not matter. As if a fragile truth or happiness had no right to a continued existence when faced with a robust but rude pretender. The reason for our lost dreams must be there, we imagine, probably just hidden by all the complexity.
Faster, better, stronger are the inexorable watchwords of the modern world, but these are rarely mentioned as qualities of things we truly value, such as art and love. In the end, as we enable and even root for the success of technology, we often hunger for little more than a moment's peace, a chance to relax and spend time with friends. And though the world evolves at a furious pace, we do not. Our needs are simple, and if we don't meet them, the most likely cause is that we were never chasing them in the first place.
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RomanticPoetess
Sandra Stephens
old new lefty
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Comments
i like what you wrote. and as i am soon to get a smart phone for work, and i AM an internet addict, i am trying to figure out how to set boundaries for my own self. i think a basic one will be to be present where i AM, not where the phone wants me to be. i will not pick it up and read a new text while i am in the middle of speaking to a person sitting next to me. nothing at all in the car, unless i am pulled over or parked. those are the starters i can come up with.
glad you got to go to the class.
Lezlie
Rob, obviously you know I'm of mixed minds on these things, but I'm glad at least part of you came around. :)
Jane, thanks for visiting and offering your take. Yes, setting some boundaries seems a good middle ground. I'm not rabid about what I wrote, I was just letting my mind go where it wanted after seeing a picture of such simple pleasantry.
Lezlie, yeah, as you'll note in my description, I'm a technologist myself. But I think it's useful and properly ethical to stop and ponder direction and effect now and then.
Yesterday I played Minecraft for two hours with my grandsons. I can say and demonstrate so much more of what is good, powerful and beautiful if I include technology in the mix with them. They listen to me more because I am the only one who bothers. You have to want to be a friend or a beloved where the opportunity exists and not just on terms dictated by conventional wisdom.
I am fairly certain that there is no bad technology in the sense of any of it being evil or immoral, but badly used and badly considered purposes abound and vex many of us. I guess that is part of the 'weediness." But that is normal for any human activity.
Some folks do whatever they do with joy and an abundant sense of inquiry, and still a few others can't stand for anybody else to be having a good time if they don't understand how it is that it is possible to have fun in a way that they don't really grok. They grouse and grumble. Phooey on the curmudgeons. I agree with you about meeting our needs, it is really up to us.
bnzoot, glad you could get something useful from it. Thanks for visiting!
Though I've rarely attended writing seminars like the one you describe, I'm plenty familiar with the process you describe. It called to mind my favorite quote from E. M. Forster. When asked what he thought of something, Forster said "How can I know what I think until I've seen what I say?"
And the result of your exploration? Crackerjack. On the money;
"Faster, better, stronger are the inexorable watchwords of the modern world, but these are rarely mentioned as qualities of things we truly value, such as art and love. In the end, as we enable and even root for the success of technology, we often hunger for little more than a moment's peace, a chance to relax and spend time with friends."
Terrific insight, nicely contrasted & all done in 20 minutes? Kudos.