Hello imaginary audience,
Well, it's been a minute, hasn't it? In my humblest of defenses, a global pandemic kind of knocked me off my trajectory of ever updating this website. And you know what, I would say "that's no excuse," except who the hell could have predicted THAT!?
Anyway, regardless, I have returned. Now it's two years later and I feel way more articulate, nihilistic, and excited to try this whole thing again. I'm at the end of my college experience and am going to be moving somewhere to do something real soon. It's very intimidating. But I think it's going to be a good time for reflection and growth.
Lots of reflection, and maybe some sad times. But hey, that's part of it, right?
Also, as per last time, I'll keep doing reviews of stuff, but I'm not going to limit myself. I want to learn how to write music reviews, and book reviews, and food reviews, so this will become all of that. I'll try to keep spoiler-free reviews shorter, though any analyses I do (which will likely be few and far between) are probably still gonna be dense.
Since we've last spoken, I've watched a lot of TV, read a lot of books, and done a LOT of writing. I have a draft of a novel in the works, and we'll see if that ever becomes anything.
What I loosely wanted to talk about today (at 2 AM while I'm surrounded by 3 simultaneously burning candles) is the concept of writing as a whole. I'm in only 2 writing classes this semester. One of my classes looks at "Digital Writing," the other at "The Politics of Language and Rhetoric."
For my digital writing class, we have to read a book called Writing On the Wall by Tom Standage. For a "textbook" it's conversational and easy to read, though sometimes his examples are a little over-explained in my opinion.
Basically this book unpacks the history of written language and "social networking." It talks about Cicero and King Henry VIII and Gutenberg and Martin Luther. As Standage recounts history, he talks about how people have always used the most recent technology to talk about basically the same thing. In Ancient Rome there was the equivalent of a daily newspaper called the Acta where people would transcribe the news, comment on it, and send it to their friends. Standage's argument is that social media is just the newest version of this technology that allows us to communicate and expand our social networks.
This concept is entirely mind-boggling to me. Of course, I understand that people have lived for a long time before me, in theory, and that they have endured the same trials and tribulations. For example, shortly after the Protestant Reformation, so many people could print pamphlets that there was a problem with rampant misinformation—sound familiar? There is something reassuring about understanding that the issues currently plaguing our society have been around since humanity. If they can figure it out enough to carry on, then maybe we can too.
My other class, my "politics" class, argues that we are barreling toward ruin and looks for optimistic ways of dealing with it. In class, one of my peers asked me, "What author [of the three we had read] do you [as in me, personally] agree with?"
I've seen his computer screen: he plays chess the entire time in class. So why would he possibly care about my opinion? Granted, I speak the most in that class and I say the shit that no one else even knows how to reply to—including the professor, sometimes. Stuff that is so out of left field and riddled with pop culture references no one knows where to begin.
But when he asked me my opinion, I was struck. I feel like I've become so good at parroting others' ideas back to them and expanding it with other things I've heard, I've barely taken the time to develop my own opinions. Now, my roommate would definitely disagree with me on this one, but even on my tirades in her room, I'm still just repeating what other people have told me.
When writing a story, people always say there's no original idea, there's no original story. My dad used to tell me that. And I would always try to come up with a story no one had thought of before. We would play it like a game. I would say, "Okay Dad, I have THIS grand idea." And he would sit on it for a few days, think about it, and then give me three existing movies that were replicas of my idea.
So I'm thinking about how I remember and repeat others' ideas, how there's no true originality, and how even our problems are not original. And I am simultaneously repulsed and relieved by this idea. On the one hand, we've done everything before, so we have an idea of what is coming. After all, history is cyclical. But in the same vein of our past constantly rewriting itself, does that mean that nothing we do will be remembered?
But people remember Johannas Gutenberg and Martin Luther and people will remember Steve Jobs. But what about the people like me? Who haven't invented the latest and greatest communication technology? What about all the "insignificant" people history has forgotten? The ones whose families don't have written records of them, where they only live on in genes? But then I remember that all carbon is recycled, as mass cannot be truly created or destroyed. We are all physically made up of pieces of each other.
And I know you've seen those posts circling on social media, the ones where the author talks about all the little mannerisms and nuances they've picked up from other people as proof that we're nothing more than collections of others. And I posit that's maybe the only thing that matters.
Okay, maybe not the ONLY thing.
But, in the end, why does it matter if someone 3,000 years from now remembers me? Why does my legacy have to last that long when I've gotten my friends to say "Uffdah"? Who needs to remember my roommate in 1,500 years when I will forever cook salmon the way she taught me? Like sure, some people have changed the fabric of our reality. But people have been doing that forever, and sure enough in 200 years, they will mean nothing more to the collective than Gutenberg does now. And my mom only taught me how to fry an egg in this lifetime. And that means more to me, practically speaking.
So maybe others have revolutionized the world, but my friends and family have revolutionized mine. And maybe I've changed theirs. And maybe it's okay if that's enough.
Or maybe I'm just being dramatic and overthinking on this fine Saturday night.
Anyway. I'm back and excited to be here.
Cowabunga,
Ashley
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