Serious writing

Well obviously that plan didn't work. I guess I should have figured that me at 7am post subway pre-lunch would not be very motivated to wax poetic. At that time I only care about getting the wax paper off my bagel to eat it.
(My bagel is wrapped in tin foil, not wax paper. But cleverness>truth).

What to write about? An English professor of mine in college, in a Shakespeare class, told me I'm a talented writer, if a bit careless, and that I should really try to marry my ideas to less non-chalant writing. That probably won't happen on this blog because it's supposed to be non-chalant and semi stream of consciousness, but I would like to try to write something for real. What to write about? Life, the universe and everything? The merits of a butter-and-extra-toasted bagel?

Sidebar before all that: the recent past.
Last Saturday night (today is Thursday) I went to Radio City Music Hall with my cousin John to see Dave Chappelle and Childish Gambino. Hannibal Buress also did a surprise opening set. Two other comics did short openers, Mo Amer and Will (Sylvance?), and they were both good.
I'd been looking forward to this night for a long time, and it didn't disappoint. Radio city is an amazing venue, maybe the nicest theater I've been in, and it impressed in both size and luxury. There was a band playing in the lobby before the show and during intermission which was great. Hannibal did a really funny set, using video in it to great effect. I'll now forever remember the image of him humping a toaster that he wants played at his funeral. I also appreciate that he still uses Flylo as his walk up music.
Side side note the guy sitting next to John (John made it to the show just in time after driving back from Nantucket with Aunt Jessie) was extremely drunk, getting progressively more drunk throughout the show. He passed out during Chappelle and then was close to falling over the balcony railing during Gambino. It went from funny to sad to scary, I'm glad I don't drink like that.

Chappelle was amazing. He's a gladiator. He commands the audience so forcefully, even more so than in his early career I'd say. His demeanor and presence have changed as he's gotten older, from a spritely young comic inviting you into his personality to a wise sage revealing his worldview. But the material is as strong as ever, maybe even stronger. He's able to toe the line of preachy or "mmhmm that's true" material but stay funny enough while doing it that it never feels like a sermon, but instead a hilarious lesson from a hilarious professor.
Also he did the man rape joke and I got to see it live and I'm still bewildered at that, since it's one of my favorites of his. With a new punchline on the end too.
His content and technique were impeccable, but his presence was most important. He's a leader without being a preacher, a clown without being an embarrassment, and a human without being an open book.

Gambino was good too I guess.

No but really Donald Glover is ridiculously talented. It's weird to watch someone perform a full funk concert of music they've made and realize he's doing all this while also writing, directing and starring in the second season of an Emmy winning show. John and I talked afterwards about how his music is building on old funk greats like Funkadelic and Bootsy on its sleeve, but that's okay because he's actively adding something to the conversation and trying to do something exciting. I doubt his next album (supposedly his last) will have the same sound, and that''s good, he's exciting for his fresh ideas.
After the show we went to Fat Cat and talked about my future in business, what I hope for in radio city, what he's experienced, and we played pool. As usual I shot well then lost my mojo the later it got. Maybe I should drop everything and become a pool shark, I can actually be very good at it when I practice and really enjoy it. It's like yoga for me.


Other than that, I still need to write about Ireland, the rest of summer, I think 4th of July?, and more. Work today was fine, Manon and Holly were both out so I covered everything and did Today Show Confidential alone (with someone covering phones). On the way home from work the trains stopped working at Barclay's Center so I got out and decided to walk, stopped at Shake Shack for a milkshake on the way.

What to write about? The problem with writing something serious like an essay about the world is confronting that some of my ideas about the world I think would be smart are not smart, not good. Those ideas you say "well I'd say them but they'd never be put into practice anyway even though they're really good and would solve problems", well maybe they aren't in practice because they actually don't work. Or maybe they could work but people can't commit to them so they won't work. So you keep them in your head so you can relish their supposed quality, rather than illuminating them to find that they don't shine as brightly as you'd hoped.
That sentence is me trying to get less non-chalant (more chalant? I think I'm going to start saying chalant and will it into being a word), but not fully. Some of the Chappelle stuff above was me approaching serious writing as well.

Serious writing is difficult because it's a combination of good "academic" writing and honest "non-chalant" writing. It's easy write well in an academic manner, for me I suppose because of so much practice, but it's very difficult to infuse that academic prose with honest expression and emotion. I think in the paper I wrote about objectification I had some of that, because I felt I was writing some very novel and personal ideas.

{the above is "serious writing}
(the gist was that we all objectify the partners we desire because -get this- they're the "object"!! of our desire. Meaning, you value their personality traits as objects to fulfill your desires in a partner much in the same way you value their physical features as objects. Is it bad then to objectify? Not really, but try to recognize when you're doing it, understand why, and what you're valuing in a person. You can't really desire someone without valuing them because they fulfill your desires,
no that's not what I mean. I was going to delete that sentence but I'll let it stand for posterity.
What I meant was, in the more sophomoric sense, we value bodies equally with minds, but we feel worse about valuing people for their bodies. Marrying someone because they're rich is pretty much the same as marrying them for being hot, it's just different calculations of values and desires. So then how to avoid valuing someone based on how they fulfill your desires? Be Kantian and treat them as an end in themselves? That seems to be somewhat it, understand that you're also valuable to their desires and try to fulfill them as well.
I'll read back through that paper and see if that's what I was saying).
^Tangent!

Well, this has mostly been an attempt to get my writing juices flowing. The writing club I used to be in (RIP) was good for developing some creative writing, but I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a full fictional creative writer. There's enough material in the world that I don't need to go creating my own.
So, where do I start?





Music still, too!
Dent May, Across the Multiverse (full album)
http://hypem.com/premiere/dent+may