The Fling

This is the ultimate in Jazz Writing. Normally, when I sit down to write, I at least have a topic in my head. I don't necessarily flesh it out because I prefer everything to flow organically. I'll have a thought, sit down, type like a mad man and before you know it, you're sitting there reading it, wondering, "Where does he come up with this crap?"

To tell you the truth, I have no idea where it comes from. I have no idea what the next sentence will be, where it is going or how it will end. It just does. When the story picks up steam, I do the sensible thing and get the hell out of the way. From there, the story basically writes itself and I just sit back, like the rest of you, and shake my head incredulously at what spews out.

I was watching an episode of the best show to ever hit network television, Northern Exposure, about 17-18 years ago. In this particular episode, Chris Stevens, the felon-cum-philosophical disc jockey, was looking to fling a cow using a medieval trebuchet. If you don't know what a trebuchet is, it's basically a catapult, with a counter-weight that provides locomotion and increases velocity (all you trebuchet fans please calm down, you know that's the basic gist of it and it's something my readers understand). Chris abandons the cow for a piano after Ed tells him it was done before in a Monty Python movie. When asked why he was going to fling a cow, he said it was "to create a pure moment."

I really didn't understand what he meant. Philosophically, I understood, but from an artistic point of view, I wasn't fully developed to appreciate it. For me, art had always been eternal, something to walk away from and say, "Yeah, I painted that," or "Do you like that vase? Made it myself." I never really put any stock into transient art, the art of the moment. Here right now and gone in an instant. There is no proof remaining. Well, let me amend that, there may be physical proof, like the dead cow or the ruptured piano, but, that's not the piece of art. Let me take it a step further: a body in the casket no longer remains that person. It's an empty vessel that carried a living person. The true person transcended that body. He/She was a soul, a spirit, a being cased in hair-covered meat. Change the exterior of a person and the same person remains inside. It's like that with transient art. As Chris Stevens said, "It's not the thing you fling, it's the fling itself." Damn straight.

It took me a while to really grasp what he was saying. Oh, I understood it, from a spectator's standpoint, but from an artist's standpoint, I was a drooling idiot. I eventually came to understand the value of creating, the old cliche of "It's not the destination; it's the journey." It's what led me to where I am today, from a creative platform.

Say what you will. I may not be a great writer - hell, I might not even be good enough to be a poor writer - but, the finished products of mine you read are the shattered pianos of my efforts. Truth be told, I really don't care how these stories turn out. Oh, I appreciate the comments others make when they are being sincere, but if reading these stories are those pianos, the process of writing is the fling for me. I'm along for the ride, just like you. I never go back and edit anything. Once it hits the page, it's done. If someone else wants to edit them, be my guest, but I've already moved on to something else. Revisiting a moment in your mind is great when living vicariously through yourself. How many times have you reminisced about a family vacation, laughing with friends or the first time you fell in love? Chances are, you might be doing that at this very moment. That's good; there's nothing wrong with that. It cleanses the soul. However, I cannot revisit the same pure moments I create for myself. All I can do is surge forth and create more, and it's incredibly worthwhile because pure moments are in an endless supply. There is no blueprint, nothing needs to be arranged, there is no right or wrong. All you have to do is feel and express through those feelings.

I've often said I'm an artist without an art. I can't draw worth crap, can't sculpt, can't paint, can't play a musical instrument...hell, I can barely feed and clothe myself. Yet, when I sit down to write, I feel a rush of expression and a giddiness one feels like when you still believed in Santa Claus and Christmas was just a few weeks away. I never really felt at home with people who don't appreciate the daily esoterics (probably not a word, but you know what I mean) of life, how ironies flutter by like butterflies and moments appear before you, however fleeting, that you can't share with anyone else because no one was in your shoes and experienced them like you did. Too many people walk this planet like stimulus/response zombies and the nuances of the incredible nature of life bounce off them like ping pong balls. They miss the ecstasy of being a sponge, absorbing the subtleties that nine out of ten people completely miss. We are mechanical people, in a mechanical age, product-hoarding automatons desperate to remain trendy. It's sad, and sadly, it's not going away.

I owed it to myself to offer something back to this world, no matter how inconsequential. Sure, my writing is basically for my own satisfaction, but others have told me how they enjoyed what I tossed out there, and that's ok, too. It's made me a better person for being able to squeeze that sponge and release those butterflies when I write, and in that, I feel like I am giving something back to this world, if even in my own little way, regardless if anyone reads it or not. Too many people ask "Why?" and not enough people just accept. Everyone seems to be afraid and they care too much what total strangers think and box themselves in. They don't really express themselves; they don't think they have a piano to fling. Paint a picture, write a story, sculpt something, just DO something to express yourself, no matter how poorly you may perceive the end result. THERE is your piano. Fling the hell out of it. It's this creative drive that makes us feel alive - it makes us human.

Don't be a passenger, be a driver, because, in the end, you don't want to be old and regretful of the things you should have done. When the atoms and molecules of this world came together, they created you as a human, not a rock, not a tree, not the crusty residue around the top of the ketchup bottle at a family picnic. As a human, you have an obligation to act on your humanity. Be alive! It's so easy to be self-defeating and make excuses that you are too tired, have no time or are afraid of what others may think or say. Is that really living? Is that really being human? In the words of Peggy Lee, is that all there is? There is not a single one of you out there who doesn't have something to give of themselves. Don't worry if no one sees or reads it, as long as you FEEL it. Dare to be human! Because, in the end, you are not the face in the mirror and you will not be that body in the casket; you are the light you brought to yourself and to others.

My name is Kevin, and I wrote this.

Fling away.