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An Inquiry Into Society, Causality And The Effects Of Sleep Deprivation
By Dan Wilson
Genre: Non-fiction Level: High School 10-12
Year: 2002 Category: UAA/ADN Creative Writing Contest

"... But where is this freedom we claim to possess? I have looked for it, though never have I caught even a fleeting glimpse of its shadow, because nowhere does it manifest itself in tangible form. How may we pretend to keep it then? Its maintenance is by no other means than an understood agreement between the state and the citizen and other citizens, and only by force may it be protected. But this political freedom is not the only liberty I speak of for there must also exist in our world creative freedom; for by what other avenue may the human race prevent that horrid stagnation that is sure to pass with the victory of complacency? We are all susceptible to it, without occasional jarring by the original minds who gain such rightful fame in our histories. Therefore I say that creative freedom, unlike political liberty, derives its authority from the carefully reasoned assent of the entire human race, and is subject to no temporal power. Creativity transcends boundaries, is indifferent to transitory concerns except where these afford opportunity for artistic expression, and is only responsible to humanity, while remaining ever cognizant of the eternal and the universal and the free and the conscious and the unconscious and the powerful. It is by turns reasonable and romantic, confident and critical. Creativity must be. It emanates from Descartes' famous "cogito ergo sum," it is necessary to the race's survival and potent and lasting and irrefutable; it retains its authority from the collective will of humanity. It is constantly renewed, continuously skeptical, and forever phoenix-like, transforming. Creativity is the soul of the human race. Creativity is hope. It follows then, that it is the only truly super-animal, self- justified liberated activity a human can pursue. Creative freedom is preexistent, a dictation of nature; beyond base instinct, and before the dubious influence of culture and society, lies the pure and undiminished need to fashion new and bold works, felt by every person to some extent. Hence the Precept of Creative Inclination states that the attainment of something wholly original and ingenious is the highest achievement a human of talent may reach. I, however, suggest we go further, that we establish a Law of Creativity, an incentive for the creatively-minded to explore and find new solutions to old problems and new ways to express old thoughts and feelings. The preeminent right to create, in the highest sense, must be prioritized, and glorified. We must guarantee the continued dynamic expansion of the horizons of human endeavor. Essentially, the goal would be to eventually occupy the entire race in one kind or another of creative project. In suggesting this, I am aware that it is probably not fully realizable in the foreseeable future, but it is assuredly the only method by which the race may be saved from languishing and subsequently decaying into unthinking, materialistic stagnancy. Without encouragement for originality, humanity's soul will certainly die, though its body may live on. By avoiding this eventuality we may triumph over death itself."

 

--Inflammatory, controversial and eloquent manifesto, which serves as the Introduction to the massive Summa Creativa, the encyclopedic and mysteriously brilliant work which encompasses the entire history of human creativity up to the Revolution of the Mind, is considered the primary precipitator of said Revolution; one of the most famous documents in human history.
--Written by... uh, well I just had it here a minute ago... damn it...

That quote above starts out the discussion on a lofty note, doesn't it? I won't even attempt to match its simple beauty. But it does raise an issue, which continually hounds me. As someone who likes to think he might have some spark of creativity in him, I am aware of and disturbed by the persistent thought that there is nothing original left to do in the arts. With the effect of the mass media and the spread of all ideas that have any merit, it seems there are no stories left to tell or new ways in which to tell them. But the fate (or more probably the curse) of those who are self-glorifying enough to believe that they have brilliance within them, is to eternally search for that unexplored territory, untracked and as alluring to them as a mountain of fresh powder. Then there are those, almost all of us actually, who love the familiar and the comfortable, and hold on dearly to the cliché and the stereotypical. I admit that I, on occasion, yearn for such worn-out plots as we are constantly bombarded with in the movies and books and on TV. In books I perceive that there may yet be some potential left, ironic because literature is the oldest of these forms of art. Movies I hold out a little hope for, and TV far less; these media are so heavily dependent on mass appeal that they are forced into the puerile antics and stereotyped storylines we all know and love. The written word I suppose has become the refuge of the most creative people, as it has been in the past. God, I want to be one of those great writers that awe the reader and speak so perfectly for him!

But these days, imitation and simple plot-oriented stories with a twist are what most often get you noticed, and so perhaps this is what I should aim for. They've been done almost to exhaustion it seems, but nonetheless there are plenty of writers that continue to this minute to crank them out, sequel after torturous sequel. Why don't I take the easy route and become one of them? Why am I trying to free myself when everyone else is frantically binding themselves (binding, yes, that's an apt word for the context, the connotation works well) to something, to anything, which will anchor them and give them a place and a genre and a group to identify with. Blazing a new trail, as the greatest have always done, does not suit most. What a plague, what a hopeless activity, to try to write a great novel! The odds are ten thousand to one that you will even be noticed as an original, assuming you get past the initial publishing process. School forces me to conform to writing just so, in this or that format, logical and thorough or flowery and descriptive or whatever. Whatever! (Dammit, I hate that word.) Any career I enter besides creative writing will restrict my writing to specific report form or dissertation or article or whatever. Whatever! (Dammit, I hate that word!) Where is the time or space for thinking, for creating? So why free myself when following traditional forms is so easy? Well, that is my dilemma, which is the part I haven't figured out yet.

There is another dilemma here: do the traditional forms naturally lead to boring, repetitive material, or can I exploit traditional forms and work within them to produce something yet more ingenious? (That's not something even remotely original, it was a serious controversy among classical composers in the Romantic era and beyond.) Everywhere there are dilemmas, conflicts and arguments but there is no decision, no settlement. There are times when my jaw drops at the incredible talent the human race has produced, and I wonder at how, how this is possible for something to be so damn good. Then the thought slaps me -- that's right, it just winds up and hits me with enough sting to turn my cheek pink -- maybe I should be a little jealous since it is so completely impossible that I could generate something that could live in the middle-class neighborhood within sight of the avenue of mansions where these works of brilliance reside. These testaments to genius glide around above my head, so happy on their puffy white clouds, on an altogether different but far more beautiful and imaginative plane of existence than our own. But, to speak truthfully, (and that of course is the first step to writing something great, right? Honesty is the best policy in literature, though perhaps not in other areas of life) I cannot say that I envy them, I merely desire to be one of them, to be inducted into their club, and to have my plaque presented to me by the Pulitzer people or the Nobel people or whoever. (But remember that Jorge Luis Borges never received a Nobel Prize for Literature, and he was certainly a fascinating and amazing escritor; I wouldn't mind being as skilled as he -- he and not him, don't ask why {oh, but you just had to ask why? well I actually don't know why I wanted to say he instead of him there, it just felt sort of right -- no more questions, they're really getting me sidetracked}.) WAKE UP!!!!! WAAAAKE UUUUUUP!!! !!! !!!! Sorry, I'm getting paranoid about putting people to sleep since I feel like crawling into bed myself right now; this is probably so boring to everyone besides me. Well, for me, this paper is pretty loose and fun, but no guarantees for the reader.

Now back to what I am really feeling conscious of, and what I really wanted to talk about in this memoir. The whole "everything is so cliché" deal. I think you understand what I'm getting at. Everyone I know can be compared to a stereotyped sort of character in some TV show. Every movie is so predictable...

I read a book in which the author says he feels he has somehow been chosen to write about his life, since both his parents died a few months apart and he raised his little brother almost by himself. For me the feeling is different. I feel somehow chosen, but not for any particular purpose-my life has been pretty boring by the standards of our culture-parents aren't divorced, no suicidal friends, no childhood trauma, father was a good man and not alcoholic, mother wasn't a teenager when she had me, siblings are pretty normal. The only notable thing in my experience is my mom and my sister both having serious illnesses requiring surgery and treatment. But these didn't shatter my cozy world, I was not bereaved of a family member, life went on with little damage. But I like to write, and maybe I just don't have the horrible life experiences (yet) that prompt great literature. I'm in most ways pretty average, middle-class; I do above average in school, but this is another dilemma, because you never hear of a class valedictorian who does well in school going on to an amazing career in creative writing. The only real thing working for me, at least environmentally, is growing up in Alaska since it's pretty rare for an incredible writer to spring from Alaska. Perhaps that's a stretch. Or is it? But who needs to be chosen anyway? I can play the suburban, WASP, "majority" angle. (Funny, because us heterosexual, male WASPs seem to be quite in the minority.) I can be so many things. I could easily become a Gen-Y cynic, brutally satirizing our ridiculous society with its ultimately meaningless ideals and overabundance of beautiful women, but Goddamn that has been so overdone, and is getting to be pretty thin ice to skate on. As I said before, stereotypes are more repulsive to me every day. Even this whole rejection of the clichés of our culture is wearing out; reactionism can be overused just like anything else. I am almost as tired of writing and reading about the cliché-ish nature of our society as I am of the clichés themselves. (Cliché is such a cliché word! And even if it wasn't before, I've made it so now {for a cliché is only what it is when people are conscious of its over usage, right?}) So I've got two options: Suddenly (which will annoy the reader) jump to an utterly unrelated topic, or stop this paper altogether, thereby ending the bitchy, whining, nonstop barrage of complaints that this paper is and now was. Thank you, come again.

(In case you didn't catch it, that was an ironic use of a stereotypical phrase from The Simpsons, designed to make you chuckle, but certainly not laugh, as it is always embarrassing when you burst out giggling as you read something and nobody else around you knows what you find so funny. Then you have to read it and explain the whole thing to them and they don't get it. "Pretty humorous and maybe a little bit clever," you say. Then the person you're talking to is thinking Oh my god, what a clich? situation, this has happened so often with the same story every damn time. And then you start to think that this is giving you that d?j? vu feeling {because this exchange is so stereotypical, duh} and it just becomes a convoluted mess, in place of what should have been pure enjoyment. But this just occurred to me-what the hell else are you going to do with your time?)



And that's when I wake up, though I'm about to fall asleep, and realize that this whole paper has been done before, that this whole elaborate and probably not-so-subtle attempt at subtle, clever humor has failed utterly to be original in any way and that I just can't do it it's too hard I just can't create anything that is really my own because it has all been done before what is there left for me to do and dammit writing is the most difficult thing I can imagine doing for a living but what the hell else am I going to with my time because what else is worthy of such painful effort and immense toil and great big huge monstrous amounts of work but that is the only way and maybe just maybe there is that little light at the end of the tunnel that I can and will succeed and be brilliant though tortured and eccentric and loved and despised and slightly clever in just the right way so that it's totally fresh and "startlingly original" and at the same time sentimental and then I realize that the "soothing light at the end of my tunnel is just a freight train coming my way" and it's a shame I can't do this as well as Dave Eggers who wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius which is one of the best books I've ever read and I'd recommend it to anyone and from that book Jam copying this extremely powerful stream-of-consciousness sort of style which hits so hard with such edge and precision and beauty and really from which I stole the whole free-flowing and unbounded and restless notion that this memoir rests upon and really from which I learned everything there is to learn about life and love and all other things important and Dave Eggers is the only hero I'll ever have in these times of uncertainty and I'm going to bed and goodnight...



And that's when I wake up and realize this whole paper has been done before...




Finished 3:18 a.m. Tuesday March 5, 2002, for YOUR READING PLEASURE (and a little personal amusement, because I crack myself up sometimes even with such stupid, obvious, copied devices and I'm really going to stop talking right now --I'm as tired as you! But one more thing: Where the hell do I get the right to bother you with such pointless verbosities? My civil liberty as an American citizen, and the creative freedom that all humans are born into permit me to write something even as incoherent as this. But where is this freedom we claim to possess? Don't get me started...)


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