Alexander, RIP
by Doug Linder

"Can you tell me, is there something more to believe in?
Or is this all there is?
There's something wrong
It's hard to believe that love will prevail..."

- Jane Siberry, "It Can't Rain All The Time"

I just sat down to write. I really tried. I kept at it. I composed, I edited. And what did I end up with? Out of all of it, only two paragraphs are even worth a tiny bit more than the electrons they're made of. And if they were to accidentally disappear, I wouldn't even feel sad. I'd just turn off the computer and walk away. I'd probably even feel relieved.

But it was a worthwhile experience because I discovered something interesting about why I want to write but can't bring myself to do it. It's quite simple, really: I want to write because I feel like I have interesting and maybe even important things to say. I can't bring myself to do it because I have to squeeze my ideas out into these tiny, lifeless words and it just doesn't work. It's like trying to capture the essence of the Grand Canyon with a Lite-Brite set, or trying to describe Mozart's music with a kazoo. It's like trying to funnel the ocean through a straw, or look at the stars in the night sky through a pinhole. In short, the medium is incapable of capturing what I'm thinking or how I'm feeling.

As always, someone else said it better:
"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish then - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."

- Steven King
So I can't write because no matter how well I do it, even if I do it better than anyone ever has done before, even if people weep or dance or laugh or get angry when they read it, it will always be just a pale shadow of what I meant to say, of how I really feel. It will never be an accurate reflection. I can only convey a small percentage, the most basic idea. And so the reason I think everything I write sucks is because, compared to what I meant to say, it's always a poor-quality translation. And maybe I'm a perfectionist, or an aesthete artiste, but I don't like to sully my thoughts by converting them from Technicolor to grainy black and white. It can never truly make anyone feel the way I was feeling when I wrote it.

I've always wanted to be a writer. I've always thought of myself, sort of, as a writer, and that's nothing more than the height of arrogance. Despite a few unpaid, unsolicited, and accidental publications of worthless things I've written on the spur of the moment, I'm basically a complete failure at it. I write, and when I look back on what I wrote all I can ever think is "NO! No, no, no! That isn't what I meant at ALL!" And then I have to either delete it or file it away in the deepest, darkest recesses of my computer where it will get archived and grow electronic dust. My drives are full of the bits and pieces of half-started works, begun with the best intentions and abandoned with bitterness and frustration.

And, really, why write anyway? In all likelihood I can make a much better living in my computer career. And the intellectual realm is dead. What's the point in writing the most amazing philosophical work ever if only a thousand academics in ivory towers will read it? The day when the written word can change mankind is long over. When Thomas Paine wrote "Common Sense", he may very well have instigated the American Revolution almost singlehandedly, or at least hastened it. These days it wouldn't even get published, let alone read. He'd be dismissed as a crank and end up on streetcorners distributing badly-xeroxed copies of his work as people hurried by on their way to the tanning salon and video store.

No, people are far too busy reading Danielle Steele. They don't give a shit about reading anything meaningful. Even the best writers of the last hundred years, the ones who have somehow defied the odds and managed to be both meaningful and relatively successful, what have they really written? Has Kurt Vonnegut's work really changed the opinions of enough people to make any kind of difference? Has John Irving made more than a handful of the literati stop and think, or feel?

In a world where the worst kind of pablum gets passed off as serious works, where people read "The Celestine Prophecies" and pat themselves on the back for being enlightened, spiritual, forward-thinking folks, where could a writer of anything actually meaningful fit? How many people have even read this all the way to here? How can a real writer compete against 30-second, quickie, fast-food philosophy? Really meaningful material takes time and effort to absorb. Wisdom can't be attained by reading "Johnathan Livingston Seagull" in bits and pieces while riding the Metro. Sorry, folks, it ain't that easy: wisdom is the product of long and arduous years of study and experience. It doesn't come from anything on the bestseller list.

Oh, sure. "Write for yourself", people say. "Better to write for one's self and have no public, than write for the public and have no self", they quote. But screw that. I already know what I think. If I were to write a fictional story, I'd already know the ending, and since finding out what happens next is the part of any story, I'd be bored silly writing it.

And even if I could write, and do it with some feeling that people who read my work would "get it", there's just nothing meaningful left in the world to write about, or even to do. Every human emotion or condition has already been expressed as eloquently as it ever will be. Anything new is just a re-hash. There's no way to avoid cliches when everything's been said. Like George Harrison said when he was sued for allegedly copying the music of a song which sounded similar to his, "there are only so many ways to put the notes together." Statistically, eventually we have to start repeating ourselves. Whenever I try to express something, I can think of a way it's already been said perfectly, and so my efforts seem like cheap fakes when I know that all I have to do is quote someone else to in order to get it perfect.

Honestly, where can one go to find adventure these days, to do something new and interesting, that's not a tourist experience? The legendary guru on top of the Tibetan mountain probably sells T-shirts to the twice-daily tour groups. And if there are any unsullied places left, the people there most certainly guard them zealously.

I can't imagine what it must have been like for Lewis and Clark. They stood at the Mississippi looking west, with a canoe and some provisions, and their job was "See what's out there, then come back and tell us." No one knew for sure exactly what lay between them and the Pacific, but they knew there was a lot of it.

The entire world has been mapped. There aren't any surprises left, noplace left to go that someone else hasn't already been. Even the moon and Mars have been mapped. There's no adventure left, no romance, no way to set out for unknown horizons. Even Darkest Africa can be reached relatively easily with Jeeps and airplanes. No more coming to a clearing and finding the Lost Temple. Exploring space would be interesting, but the technology isn't there and it would take lifetimes to get anywhere interesting.

Where can one go to feel alive, to feel as if they aren't doing something ten million other people haven't already done? Where are the exciting, romantic stories of high adventure? In a world of CNN and religious massacres, where are the noble causes? The causes exist, but are made considerably less noble by the necessity for lobbyists and funding coordinators. No more dragons to slay, no more windmills to tilt at. No revolutions to be in the middle of, at least none where the revolutionaries aren't as big a gang of thugs as the dictator they wish to replace.

There's no place left to discover, in the physical, social, or intellectual realms. Oh, sure, there are *facts* left, and details we don't know. But it's just filling in the blanks. The world will change, and if we get lucky it may even change for the better. But it won't change into something more interesting. It will continue to grow more homogenized, more predictable, more controlled by faceless corporations and self-interested governments. There's no place left to go, nothing left to think, that will make people go "Wow!"

No, we've seen it all before, and nothing is very much fun anymore. We're jaded and hardened, numb from a constant stream of overstimulation. We can make our lives more comfortable, and I guess that's the best course of action these days, because there are no new horizons. And this makes me dissatisfied and frustrated. It's so limiting. Is is too much to ask to be able to say with pride, someday, "Yeah. I was there while that was happening. It sure was an exciting time to be alive!"?

The old myth goes that Alexander wept when he heard there were no more worlds left to conquer. Little did he know. If Alexander were alive today, he'd have killed himself. Not only are there no more worlds left to conquer, there isn't even anything meaningful to do in this one anymore.

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