It’s amazing how in a matter of minutes the process of expressing ourselves can be good or bad only based on the opinions of those who listen and think they know what we mean.
The truth is the truth is nonexistent.
My Hemingway-loving prof used to talk about Cubism and Picasso. She used to tell us that works of the Lost Generation used to be this way. You zoom in, pick up one piece of the puzzle and say, it doesn’t make sense. Of course it doesn’t. But when you look at the whole picture you might see a man or violins and then go, yes, it makes sense…
I personally like the works of Leonid Afremov.
My favorite is Dancing in the Rain, of which there is a mention in my first novel-in-progress. (I’d insert a picture but I don’t know the copyright laws.)
The work of Afremov, I believes functions as a more coherent version of Cubism artwork. With Picasso, it doesn’t matter how much you zoom out, it doesn’t make sense a hundred percent. With Afremov, the paint strokes with a palette knife do giver me a better picture. One of more clarity.
Whether it be in fiction, in real life, or anywhere else, a story is like a painting that’s zoomed in. There are as many perspectives in this world as there are people, all the way from a newborn opening their eyes for the first time outside the womb, breathing in the oxygen they never knew they needed, to an old person taking their last dying breath. And you take a single perspective and you slap it onto the canvas and you have a single brush stroke or palette knife stroke (or at least, I think it’s still called a stroke). You take a couple more, as many as you can fit and you get half a canvas, then a full canvas, and you keep painting trying to keep up with the population change and when someone changes their perspective you cover their previous stroke with another bit of paint and you keep going and going and going…
And when does it end?
There will never be a perfect painting that makes sense.
Afremov’s work is the ideal. It’s what we wish life to be. Coherent and pretty.
Picasso is what I believe the majority see the world as. Slightly confusing, but if you focus, it makes sense.
But it neither of these. There’s something else. There may be no artist or writer that can encompass the true depths of how misshaped life is.
Not in one day. not in one year, not in a million.
It’s impossible.
We wish that people could understand each other and listen, but the truth is our own egos will always hinder us from doing so, at least a little.
It’s strange how being human is to be this way though. And yet it isn’t all the same. Being “human”, in the physical, biological, psychological sense is to be this way. But humanity, and wisdom, it’s to fight against this. It’s to acknowledge that there are other perspectives than our own. And they may never truly make sense to us but that does not mean they are of any less value.
I have spent my entire life trying to understand these perspectives and my own. It’s the reason I watch crime show after crime show, studying criminology and psychology, watch and read mysteries that analyze the human psyche, pay attention to every single conversation my eardrums can find. All in hopes that I can understand.
And I’m sorry to say no textbook or TV show or documentary will ever give us those answers.
Some people are just the way they are. And it doesn’t matter if we wait five days, five years, or fifty – they don’t change.
Some do – don’t get me wrong. There are people capable of understanding the people around them better or, when they don’t, not letting it hinder them from listening and empathizing and saying “okay” once in a while and simply letting others think and feel the way they do, even if it’s different from the way they do themselves.
But not everyone is this way.
And that’s okay. When you’ve reached a point where you’ve failed to understand humanity itself, the best you can do is say “okay” to that, shake it off, and go on with life.
So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll go one with my life, live each moment to best I possibly can, be the best I possibly can…
My friend this morning was saying he wants to see my novel get published soon. And so do I. So, I apologize if I don’t post as often for the next few days. I’m spending the next week getting this damn book done and the next time you hear from me I’ll be letting you know where and how you can buy it.
Until then, au revoir mes amis. Love you lots, Miss you lots!
