(Wonderful images provided by The Drifter)
In the present age, the writer has one single solitary job to do which is far, far more important and crucial than all other aspects of the writer’s work.
It is a job so important that if the writer fails in this, she or he immediately loses all credibility and all right to call one’s self a writer.
It is a job so important, too, that it’s more important than any other job anyone else in society is called upon to do – by far.
It is a job so crucial, and so difficult, and so nearly impossible almost all the time, that it shows us why so few people in this world have really earned the right to call themselves writer in the highest sense of the word.
Without this job, which the writer must do alone, totally alone, society itself is utterly doomed. Utterly doomed as in destined to fail, to completely collapse, if this job of the writer, this one key job of the writer, were to completely disappear from society.
This job of the writer is so important that it’s even more important than the writer actually writing anything, especially today in a world drowning in meaningless words.
And it’s far more important than the writer gaining any kind of mainstream “success.” (Fame in a land of zombies is about as solid and valuable as air, as thin, thin air.)
This job will sound simple. It will sound so simple that you may even be amazed – at first.
THE WRITER MUST STAY SANE.
THEY MUST STAY SANE, BE SANE, REMAIN SANE, ALWAYS BE SANE, AND NEVER NOT BE SANE. THE WRITER MUST BE, WITHOUT PEER, THE SANEST PERSON IN HIS OR HER SOCIETY.
An AI computer, no matter how intelligent it becomes, cannot do this job for humans. Only humans ARE humans, and only humans can think for humans about what it means to be human.
The writer is a thinker who sees more nuance than anyone else. Without nuanced thought, which is profound thinking, which is against “black and white,” “us and them” thinking, the writer’s work becomes mere regurgitated entertainment, a thing the world is literally swamped with, a thing that may cause a flood so bad it will make the Noah’s Ark story look like child’s play.
The real (human) writer must stay sane and be able to see reality for what it truly, really is.
All other jobs of the real writer are utterly subservient to this.
…
The irony is that, in this society, USA America 2025, the writer looks like the nuttiest person on the block to most folks in mainstream society.
Staying apart from the herd, refusing to believe what almost everyone else believes (because they are lies sold to us by snake oil sales folks), drifting around with your eyes wide open, living “underground” (literally or metaphorically), and keeping your inner eye so clear that IT IS NEVER DELUDED, NOT EVEN FOR A SINGLE SECOND, are all jobs that are so hard to do it can actually cause one to lose one’s footing again and again and again. And to fail, and to fall, again and again and again.
But the real writer never stays down; or not for long.
They may stay down long enough so they can rise again once rested.
And that too is sanity, though it surely looks like madness to the rest of the world, as the writer lays there in plain sight with eyes closed, refusing to move, almost as if paralyzed.
But the writer is never paralyzed. Not if they really are a writer.
The inner vision, the eye that sees beyond the party line, the other eye that can see around corners, the eyes that can see through walls, the eyes that can see someone who is thousands of miles away, the eyes that can see the future and the past as clearly as they can see the present, are always the sanest eyes in town.
…
Many millions of American men stand around outside with their leaf blowers now in November determined to obliterate every beautiful fallen leaf from their well-manicured lawns. And they will stay there all day, with their blinders on and their leaf blowers blowing, creating horrendous noise pollution and other pollution, and do it. Meanwhile the world burns with global warming, rising seas, species extinctions happening before our eyes, climate change – faster, much, much faster climate change than has ever happened on the Planet before except from extreme events like an asteroid hitting the ground and blowing up the dinosaurs.
Many millions of American women sit around online, watching each other take fancy vacations and shop endlessly at the most fun online locations, whether that be shopping for goods or services or romantic partners. Meanwhile, seven hundred thousand Americans live on the streets and don’t know where their next meal is coming from (and in many cases they are much happier than the people within the houses, which also says something profound).
Many millions of American children live their lives chained to tiny, dominating machines that shape, mold, shrink, and rot their brains, and turn their eyes into useless orbs of nothingness reflecting unreal, lifeless screen dreams manufactured by technological monsters. And getting a pat on the head from mom and dad before being sent back to their rooms for more screen time.
And those three examples are just a tiny few of the surface symptoms.
There is something much, much deeper and more profound going on. It’s so evil it doesn’t even have a name.
…
And people in the United States have lost touch with themselves.
And they have lost touch with reality.
And they have lost touch with each other, too.
Our cold and distant and sometimes even frozen hearts have gotten the leaders and the systems and the lifestyles that we deserve.
Only the writer, or people like the writer (and there are many of them, although they are a vast minority), can see through it all, beyond it all, within it all, around it all, and over it all – above it all.
The writer must stay the course, remain sane in an insane world, and tell the human truth.
Great fiction itself is nothing less than a lie that tells the truth.
Great poetry is the truth boiled down to its essence in beautiful language.
Great essays are poetry in the form of prose.
Staying sane in an insane world is the hardest thing in the world to do.
It’s a thankless task but somebody has to do it.
The reward for the writer is inner wholeness, and ultimately, inner peace, an inner peace that can perhaps only be matched by someone like a genuine Buddhist monk, a Tibetan Buddhist monk – who is a kind of writer.
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake,” wrote the writer Henry David Thoreau.
Saragun Springs 
Good Sunday, Drifter
I hope your cold is improving. But the wild swings in Midwest weather will probably be hard to defend against.
Yes, sane is the key. Insane people have no objectivity, nor do they have much in the way of humor or imagination. Reporting hallucinations, in my mind, is not imagination. Reporting “herd” hallucinations takes even less mental strength. One of the problems comes from how easy it is to make a lie go “viral.” It is similar to the old saying “if something is in print it must be true.”
Lies are pretty cheap and do not stand up to much pressure. Yet repeated tropes and plays to ancient tribal feelings can keep nonsense alive.
The human race, like all other life forms is under constant testing. The test is whether it continues to earn the “right” to exist. The test is never ending. By right I mean can we continue to evolve and shed destructive tendencies. To be fair, we are able to do so in a half-assed sort of way, but half-assed is seldom good enough. For example, some people are so limited in their understanding of time that they feel we have already successfully avoided destroying ourselves with the bomb. The bomb celebrated its 80th birthday this year. We still are as in danger of nuclear suicide as we were in 1945. Yet many people deny that, they are swaddled in ignorance. Then we get “hate fanning” in which supposedly trusted information sites such as Wikipedia fail to strongly list the Nation of Islam as a homophobic, antisemitic and misogynistic organization apparently due to the fact that anyone who does that is instantly placed inside a white sheet topped by a pointy hat. Such truths about NOI are mentioned, but well into the article, like a sidebar, an unproven accusation. That’s like giving the ignorant Fuckheads in the Klan a pass and referring to it as something similar in philosophic flavor as the Kiwanis.
Excellent post. There is something to be said for standing up against the Hopeless Cause and not waking up thinking you are the Good Witch From the South (only Wiccan not mentioned in Oz–hope she is a fine person–hey, there you go, a new resident of Saragun Springs).
Leila
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Hi Leila
My cold is hugely improved, thanks for asking, but you’re right, every time the temperature plummets again (like it did last night), it seems to bring with it further rounds of sniffles, sneezes and coughs. Most of the malaise and weird fatigue is gone so I’ve got that going for me. Huge kudos to Boo, Bandit and Colonel whose enthusiasm about going outside never abates no matter the weather (until it’s 95 degrees or during pouring rain or tornadoes). Their positive attitude is infectious, except as it becomes irritating when I’m trying to finish writing something and they’re begging for their walk/s.
This column built itself as rhythmic and metaphorical language that “wrote itself” around a core, central idea. And I do believe that idea is solid. Hemingway’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech is worth reading or rereading (available online) many times. Many of the ideas in this column were influenced by him.
And right as I was in the middle of writing it, some a–hole with his leaf blower started up his incredible NOISE again down below (even though there were only a few leaves left). So he proudly got himself incorporated into the column without knowing it.
The issues feel so complicated that only metaphorical language can really begin to say anything real, it feels like.
Thanks for being one of the sanest people in the USA!
D
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Hello Drifter
I hope your feeling better continues as the trend. Rainy and pushing 60 around here–mildew weather.
To sane I might add brave. When you tell unpoplular truths you’re bound to be “pelted with rocks and garbage” (an old Letterman saying chanted by “Larry Bud Mellman”).
The cool thing there is the writer does not have to take the abuse. Stoic silence is for the westerns.
I hope you and yours feel better soon.
Leila
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Hi Drifter
I was drawn in by these pictures. They look like something out of a David Lynch movie. Like “The Lost Highway.” the artistic eye sees what it see. Awesome!
This totally engrosses the mind. Especially if you (I) claim to be a writer. A writer would want to know what the most important job is. This sacred task.
I like how you stretched out the answer, building the tension. I kept wanting to know what the answer is? This of-course kept me reading. Always a great technique of the writer.
It might be wrong that I don’t immediately know the answer. My answer, at least in fiction writing, is telling the truth while creating a big lie. That’s almost a rip off of what Stephen King said in “On Writing.” But so true, so in my own words…Writing about situations that never happened, but do happen all of the time, and will happen, again and again.
I relate to this amorphous feeling we live in. There is something wrong. We know this and IT comes at us in many confusing ways. the Bible doesn’t say, we are smarter than Satan. We will get wiser and weaker.
I also like how you point out that the writer SEES, and he has a nuanced view. Yes it takes sanity to see that the crazy house is indeed crazy. The writer must stand apart and report on which direction the wind is blowing over the shit hole.
Great essay!
Christopher
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Christopher
Glad you like the pictures. The descriptor “Lynchian” does seem to fit, now that you mention it. He’s one of those artists who it would be madness to imitate directly but whose overall work does seem to infuse a lot of what goes on in America (and vice versa). His history as a painter played a huge role in his work as a director so he’s an intriguing figure to mention within the context of the photograph as an art form.
I was thinking about Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” in the context of today’s Drifter column. A traveling salesman who lives with mom and dad and sis and wakes up only to find that he IS an insect. Then his bosses arrive at the door looking for him. Eventually dad wages war and attacks, literally. The mother has checked out long ago. And now your sister, the only one you could ever really relate to, also thinks you are an abominable monster. Then everybody is glad – relieved – when you are finally carted off to the ash heap. “The End.” When he brought the manuscript to his publisher he was probably looked upon as just a little mad, at least (or maybe more so). But that’s only because the story is so convincing.
Same thing with Vincent. Many of his pictures were, while he lived, literally considered to be the visual ravings of a madman. “We will put Vincent back in the nuthouse and let him paint so he keeps himself busy.”
Along with generalized sanity, the artist also needs a massive amount of SELF TRUST, or trust in one’s self, not only to do her or his work, but even just to survive. How ironic that that iron-clad trust in the self can also look like a kind of madness to the outside world. Yet the artist’s ability TO TRUST HIM- OR HERSELF is one of the most important things in the world in an Age of Mindless and Rising Conformity like ours.
As I said unto Leila, I say unto you too: thanks for being one of the sanest people in the USA!
Dale
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Dale –
Thanks for mentioning leaf blowers AKA the Devil’s Tool (can be read more than one way). The leaves left in place would add nutrients to the soil, not to mention the other horrors they commit. Raking leaves is good exercise – on of my jobs as a kid.
mm
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Mirthful
Thanks for backing me up about the leaf blowers. Selective use of such tools might be OK but their obsessive, needless, heedless use when so many other productive things could be going on instead is one of the irritants. (And doing nothing is often more productive than making noise.) Also when one observes the culprit’s surreptitiously blowing their own leaves onto someone else’s yard then casually turning around as if nothing had happened. It’s a crime against the wind and sensitive eardrums everywhere.
D
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