No Path Ahead for Writers

With an extended rainy season, no one has to worry about watering the plants around here just yet.

It's been raining again today, off and on. Everything is growing just fine without any additional attention from us.

In conversations with a few other writers lately, they complained about editors who never have a nice word for their work, but often are bluntly critical. The writers described how, bit by bit, they feel themselves shutting down.

One friend likened it starving a plant. "You water it less and less until it dies. That's how writers die."

Another friend notes that writers survive more or less like camels in a desert sometimes until a "great editor finds them. Then everyone wants to suck them dry."

This kind of cynicism is common among writers, all the more so in a time when we are so badly underpaid that the minimum wage would be a giant step up.

A society that kills off its writers is much like a land that kills off its plants. Once the nutrition is gone, the inhabitants will starve.

***

When I worked as an editor, I loved working with writers and designers, and I know that most of them loved working with me back. It is a collaborative art -- content creation -- and there are many ways to tell a good story.

But writers, like all artists, need to be nourished, to be brought along.

Too bad that kind of editing appears to be largely forgotten, and most definitely under-valued.

Those employed as "editors" in today's publishing industry should answer this question. Do you find yourself complaining about writers more than praising them?

If so, perhaps you are in the wrong job. (Emphasis added but not meant.)

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Tea Parties Calling Kettles Black

Listening to the traffic reports here in Northern California means hearing stuff like, "Meanwhile, on the Zinfandel on-ramp..."

One of those cute toys we give little kids, rubber duckies, really are pretty good role models, when you think about it. No matter how much they get bounced around in the bath water, they don't sink.

The just keep bobbing back up to the top of the water.

***

The health insurance company for myself and my kids is Anthem Blue Cross, that's right, the one raising premiums on us by 39 percent this spring.

Those of you who have stuck with me over the past year will perhaps remember that this same company refused me coverage when I got laid off a year-plus ago, claiming I had a pre-existing condition -- falsely.

I still would be uninsured except for President Obama, whose stimulus package brought this and other insurance companies back after folks like me in order to collect their two-thirds reimbursement checks.

It worked like this -- a half-year after cutting me and others off, the companies took us back on and then charged us back fees for all those months we thought we were uninsured.

This way they made a killing off the stimulus money and we got to be insured again. Of course, we hadn't gone to doctors all those "uninsured" months, so now we were literally paying for nothing but that's how capitalism works in America.

This week, Obama has finally gotten back out into the country to lobby for what's left of his dream for health policy reform. In the process, he's telling the truth about Anthem and the other monstrous gougers who continue their shameless plundering of poor and working Americans, and he is using their foolish actions to mobilize support for the bill awaiting passage by Congress.

Is this a perfect bill, or even a very good one?

Of course not.

Blame can be assigned, depending on your political persuasion, but that seems pointless now. If Obama has to use raw political power to get it passed, so be it. He's got the votes and who knows how much longer he will have, so I say, do it now.

We can all ignore the Republicans who denounce him for not being non-partisan.

Let the tea-party call the kettle black. Who gives a fuck about them?

Bad losers always scream.

Let's just use any means possible to slam these out-of-control health insurance companies against the wall, break up their monopolies (which are corporate socialism) and start allowing working people the chance to try and start taking care of our health care needs once again.

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Sharing a Smile

Seen through a journalist's eyes, social media are extraordinary sharing channels -- people use email, Twitter and Facebook, etc., to share links to stories, photos, charts, podcasts, video clips, blog posts -- anything they find of interest.

It's one of the most natural things for humans to do (though this tendency varies somewhat by culture).

Americans in particular do like to share content with one another, especially with friends, family, colleagues.

I have often relied on friends who forward me links to articles about the media business for my BNET blog posts, for example.

***

Let me share a personal story with you. Today, for the first time in a while, I was able to take a long walk. It was a cold, clear morning, and I walked a mile to a meeting and back.

On the way back I spotted a Latina woman selling cut mango from a street cart.

My 15-year-old loves mango and I knew I'd be picking him up after track practive later today, so I purchased a bag.

It cost $2.

In the exchange with this vendor, we tried English, then used Spanish to complete the transaction. She apologized for not speaking English very well (in English), and I apologized for not speaking Spanish very well (in Spanish.)

I told her that her English was beautiful and she could feel proud of speaking so well. Then she smiled at me, a most beautiful smile.

At that moment, I knew this would be a good day.

On the way home I ran into my neighbor, a songwriter, returning home with his late-morning coffee from the Atlas Cafe.

He stopped by my place for a while and we compared notes about our different writing forms. He said he wrote his best music during a stay in a remote cabin in Arizona. "It's hard for me to write with people around, I get distracted."

We then talked about the content of his songs, which tend to be simple lyrical poems about loneliness, love, loss -- all the basics of life no matter where you live or what you do.

I told him I felt ready to start writing music again, and we talked about the song I wrote last summer, "Missed Connections."

We agreed that a simple encounter could be the basis for a very good song. Then I told him about the woman and the mango cart.

I told him about her smile.

He understood.

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Stuck in a mudhole with a stale dog biscuit for company

Ranging far to the east one day and to the south the next, my car and I are getting to know another better once again. The commuter's life, at least in my case, involves much more radio than usual (NPR, alt. rock, sports) and immediately connects me with a certain segment of society -- mainly employed, living a 9-5 work schedule, and trying to balance a lot of things.

The radio I hear tends to be "drive time" programming, pitched exactly for this demographic, which also happens to be the peak radio audience on any given weekday -- and therefore the most lucrative (thus all the ads.)

Media consumption over the course of my lifetime and career has evolved so rapidly and proliferated so greatly that in today's America there appears to be much more media than there is a critical mass to consume it.

Or maybe that's just my impression.

But millions of people still tune into prime time television, and millions more still read newspapers and magazines.

Meanwhile, the media habits of the young are not conforming to set programming schedules. From social media to texting to Tivo to YouTube and streaming movies over game consoles, there is a generational divide greater than the Grand Canyon.

Overall, media messages have become so pervasive that most of us, even if acutely self-aware, probably re-channel ideas far more often than create our own. (Here, I have to quote cliches like "there are no new ideas" just to cover my bases, but you know what I mean.)

I'll cop to being a synthesizer of ideas myself; rarely do I come up with such an innovative concept as to qualify for an intellectual patent, even if there were such a thing available.

Rather, I absorb inputs and spew out my own conclusions, often joining disparate data into some weird new pattern that may appeal only to someone as odd as I am -- or so I think until I hear from people I meet here or elsewhere online. (What surprises, sometimes, is that there are so many of us.)

In that context, it increasingly seems like the trappings around content have become more important than the stories themselves. Maybe it's not fair to point to events like the Oscars or the Super Bowl, but the designer gowns of stars or the ads during commercial breaks command more enduring attention from a large segment of the media industry (and presumably the audience) than do the awards or the games.

I overheard one breathless analyst dismissing the film awards themselves as insignificant but the "look" of certain actresses something we'd be remembering for years.

Count me clueless on that one. I wouldn't be able to tell you what most actresses wore last night 14 days from now, let alone a year or more. I did get the impression that J-Lo's dress could have easily gotten up and walked away without her, but beyond that I noticed little and cared less.

Call me a typical male, if that helps. But the content of "The Hurt Locker," which I've not yet seen, as well as certain other films, is likely to have a better shot at sticking with me in the years to come than anyone's outfit, no matter how much yapping occurs online or on TV.

For a lifelong journalist to admit this may seem strange but I've come to despise mass media. Come to think of it, maybe it is not so strange in that I've devoted so much effort to trying to create substantive articles, books, documentaries, and blog posts that the mindlessness of what surrounds us in our McLuhanistic culture quite naturally is offensive to someone like me.

I cannot even pretend to enjoy it. It's boring, alienating and makes me feel worse than being stuck in a mudhole with a stale dog biscuit for company.

So I must have missed the memo somewhere along the line to become celebrity-focused, worship the latest guy gadgets, and celebrate the accomplishments of rich asses like Donald Trump.

Because absolutely none of this holds my attention for even a nano-second. Writing this post tonight is, in fact, a kind of therapy for me. The radio and TV is off; I am not checking email or browsing the web.

No other media is reaching me. It's just the wish of having a conversation with you, dear visitor, that heals me, so thank you for stopping by...

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Two Nights, Three Months Apart

The last time I visited this local nightclub to see a friend play it was winter, exactly three months ago tonight.

A lot's changed since then. Tonight, after the Oscars, on an extremely windy San Francisco night, I returned to see my friend perform again.

He's getting better as a singer; I'm getting better as a listener.

Driving home after the show, I again was struck by the nature of time -- slowed down, sped up, drip drip drip or racing like a rocket.

That December Sunday night, I walked back home. For whatever set of reasons, I can recall every block on that walk, the way the walls of buildings looked, the wood paneling here, the rows of bricks there, a mural that lay in shadows outside the streetlights swaying in the night.

This night, the only music back home is from a set of wind chimes a friend from Malaysia gave me years ago when visiting my home in Mill Valley, some 15 miles north of here, across the Golden Gate Bridge.

That was probably 23 years ago.

On that property, which was wooded and terraced uphill, a night's wind could rattle the chimes outside our basement door as the possums worked their way uphill, or the deer ate their way down.

Here, on my back porch, the same chimes swing in a Pacific gale, summoning me back then to that place and that time, that friend and those moments.

I ran into an old friend tonight at the club, a former softball teammate, now a performer himself. I love hanging around live music venues -- I love the energy, the anticipation of each act, and of course the performances themselves.

Into a warm place, surrounded by people and music; or out again, alone in the night. Either way the clock keeps ticking, oblivious to anything written or read here.

Three months vs. 23 years. Any of it could be today, yesterday or tomorrow.

Life is what you make of it. If I had mine to live over, I would have made much more music...

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