Magic
Predator Press
[LOBO]
I can’t explain it. Sit here and make words. Make stories. No problem.
I can make all kinds of software sing and hum to creations in my head. I can make and play music, but can’t read a note. There’s just this infused trust in all the machines that are the tools of my craft. Electricity, electronics, fussy processing programs … At my fingertips, they dance my idiotic nonsense to life.
But I look at a hammer, and I’m just mystified. I’m in complete awe of the screwdriver. While I hack this garbage on magical toys, those “simple” and "crude" objects create epochs. With them, entire civilizations are housed and fed.
It’s very humbling.
Nothing, ultimately, makes any sense to me.
***
There is a certain healthiness to it, I would argue. Once you stop trying to make “sense” out of everything, your playground expands. It’s not that I don’t care about all the minutia, I just don’t want to know too much about it. Getting too close to the ballet tends to ruin the illusion for me. Tell the magician to keep his yap shut about how the tricks are done. You seemingly never hear Hendrix talking about Arpeggios, Joplin about Baritones.
When I was roughly about five, I was given an assignment at school to draw a picture of “What I Did This Summer”. I drew a picture of me and my dad carrying boards up the runway to a rocket ship, and boldly proclaimed that me an’ Dad went to Mars in the spaceship we built. We fought a big robot space dinosaur, saved a civilization of little green men from becoming grizzly appetizers, and got home before Mom's macaroni and cheese got cold.
The teacher sat me in the corner, and made me an ill-fitting custom dunce cap. She put masking tape over my mouth. And at the end of the day she sent home humiliated --Evil Knievel lunchbox in tow-- with an eviscerating note pinned to my yellow sweater outlining my devilish behavior in excruciating detail.
I'll never forget the impact. Here's this mean-spirited venomous little middle-aged gutless shrew paying her mortgage stompin on imaginations, completely devoid of any motivation other than making other good little cookie-cutter "honest" citizens such as herself.
I promptly scuttled my Presidential aspirations --as well as the bloated education, welfare and humanitarian budgets implied-- and swore a dark allegiance to our future space dinosaur overlords.
***
Today I look at children’s artwork and see such a clear window to their souls, and wonder how and how long until the surgical steel of soulless adult derision amputates this unwanted quality.
... and I feel so sorry for them ...
[LOBO]
I can’t explain it. Sit here and make words. Make stories. No problem.
I can make all kinds of software sing and hum to creations in my head. I can make and play music, but can’t read a note. There’s just this infused trust in all the machines that are the tools of my craft. Electricity, electronics, fussy processing programs … At my fingertips, they dance my idiotic nonsense to life.
But I look at a hammer, and I’m just mystified. I’m in complete awe of the screwdriver. While I hack this garbage on magical toys, those “simple” and "crude" objects create epochs. With them, entire civilizations are housed and fed.
It’s very humbling.
Nothing, ultimately, makes any sense to me.
There is a certain healthiness to it, I would argue. Once you stop trying to make “sense” out of everything, your playground expands. It’s not that I don’t care about all the minutia, I just don’t want to know too much about it. Getting too close to the ballet tends to ruin the illusion for me. Tell the magician to keep his yap shut about how the tricks are done. You seemingly never hear Hendrix talking about Arpeggios, Joplin about Baritones.
When I was roughly about five, I was given an assignment at school to draw a picture of “What I Did This Summer”. I drew a picture of me and my dad carrying boards up the runway to a rocket ship, and boldly proclaimed that me an’ Dad went to Mars in the spaceship we built. We fought a big robot space dinosaur, saved a civilization of little green men from becoming grizzly appetizers, and got home before Mom's macaroni and cheese got cold.
The teacher sat me in the corner, and made me an ill-fitting custom dunce cap. She put masking tape over my mouth. And at the end of the day she sent home humiliated --Evil Knievel lunchbox in tow-- with an eviscerating note pinned to my yellow sweater outlining my devilish behavior in excruciating detail.
I'll never forget the impact. Here's this mean-spirited venomous little middle-aged gutless shrew paying her mortgage stompin on imaginations, completely devoid of any motivation other than making other good little cookie-cutter "honest" citizens such as herself.
I promptly scuttled my Presidential aspirations --as well as the bloated education, welfare and humanitarian budgets implied-- and swore a dark allegiance to our future space dinosaur overlords.
Today I look at children’s artwork and see such a clear window to their souls, and wonder how and how long until the surgical steel of soulless adult derision amputates this unwanted quality.
... and I feel so sorry for them ...
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