Tunes fly through the head. Words fly from the fingers. Birds lost to the moment of inspiration, loosed on the world like so much flak, clouding the web, destroying what was once a beautiful garden, now just a trash dump with diamonds in the rough.
***
I’ve heard so many people tell me they have published something with the whispered tag of “self” added almost silent. As if self was something to be ashamed of. Maybe in this day and age, it should be. Self once stood for independence, for liberty, for strength, for courage… no more. Now it seems to be a right that people club others with over the head like so many baby seals.
I’m not saying I’m that great a writer, I’m not even going to remotely compare myself with the likes of Tennyson, Twain, Chopin, O’Connor or O’Brien…
I am even sort of impressed by a person’s ability to finish a novel because it is something that I struggle with.
***
Buy me. Drink me. Eat me. As the amateur draws his catgut across the strings and causes the white rabbit to drop his watch and run from the wailing screech that bleeds his ears. “The audacity!” the creator bemoans, “You’re just jealous,” he shrills, drowning out his horrid playing in one breath.
***
Like so many others in this world, my time is important. So is my money. Why would I ever want to waste either? And yet, with Amazon and iTunes (and a plethora of others that would elongate this list to an unmanageable tangle of gnarls) leading the cause of the indie artist and making publishing it as simple as pushing a button, we have delved down a rabbit hole that may not have a cure, or at least one that in so many ways is a great thing, it has been abused and there are no police to moderate it.
***
“Back beast! Back I say!” The artist swings his keyboard in defense of his creation. “Trolls! All of you!” The fury at which he hits his delete key makes Hillary jealous. “He is not a monster! He is alive I tell you. Alive!!!”
***
And much like Dr. Frankenstein, we are so concerned with producing the next great piece of art, did we ever stop and ask ourselves whether we should?
***
Yes, yes. I know.
It’s “Franc-En-Shteen”
Thoughts from the Front 