Is it Beautiful, is it True? Questions to ask yourself while writing.
Drones powered by artificial intelligence hover over a target and launch their assault with astounding precision, removing targets with minimum casualties.
That's the non-emotional language. Imagine the headline written by the daughter of one of the 'targets', it would read a little differently.
Some language is designed to play down emotion; some to play it up.
We could say that some news headlines are beautiful, if bafflingly wrong. They're designed to lure in the innocent click; enrage the sensibilities.
Ok, ok.
And then an academic paper will ring of profound truth, but there's no emotion in it. No heart strings have been plucked or pulled.
Coupling truth and beauty is a powerful combination.
This is why, when I edit my typewritten pages, I ask myself those two questions first:
Is it beautiful, is it true?
You may adhere to different core values, personally. But I believe that these are some of the best for engaging my own writing.
For the sake of beauty, I'm sometimes lulled into lying, exaggerating, dissembling.
For the sake of truth, I'm sometimes mow over beauty with a didactic list.
No, no. I need both.
In my book, Bloom: A Manifesto, I distilled the essentials of a fulfilling life into 12 'seeds', (The Bloom Model™) and I find that these keep coming up again and again. In essence, I think that you could read through a document and align with the 12 'seeds':
Play
Vitality
Expression
Courage
Compassion
Presence
Integrity
Knowledge
Wisdom
Leadership
Love
Legacy
I've been thinking of those features as I finish up draft 5 of The Screenless Writer. For now, I've distilled it into something like:
Is it true? Is it Beautiful? Does it Flow?
Or, Truth, Beauty. Flow.
This aligns well, too, with the triple reading I recommend for each page of each draft, before the re-typing.
It will guide any piece from mediocrity to excellence, or it'll die on the drawing table... which is ok too.
The Phone Thing.
I dropped my phone into the ocean once, but not on purpose. When it died, I was exhilarated. I was cajoled into getting another by a girlfriend at the time. But I've always known in my heart of hearts that I sleep better when I'm not too embroiled in screens.
I decline the fear mongering. It's one of the reasons I created this Screenless Writer system. Because every few minutes I was being hit with an apocalyptic piece of news, and I was attempting to write a utopian story. I'd shut down every notification, and they'd creep in in some other way. I was spending more time stomping out invisible fires than I was writing.
Most people walk around in a screen-addicted trance. It is painful to witness.
The Screenless Writer was born out of many battles with technologies, and even with mechanical technologies, as I wrestle with typewriters. Though our tech does most of that work now, fortunately for all involved.
Become a part of something.
I can't just 'do something' for money, without it tying into the grander picture. That's why I launched Classic Typewriter Co., to free people from their own distraction, from billions worth of propaganda, and to free myself. That's why I wrote The Screenless Writer, to take another leap in that direction.
People are suffering immensely these days because everyone is segmented into compartments. They're in 'cells'. When I was an artist, a painter, growing up in Phoenix, I was delighted to meet another painter. Because it was unlikely. When I went to graduate school, everyone was a painter, so we segregated ourselves due to discipline or theories. Dumb, sad, but true.
Actually, a friend of mine who walked into the ocean was never seen from again. He was the best painter I knew, and a gentle soul. He'd taken anti-depressants because the situation was impossible, and, well, we all know how those sometimes go.
I only bring that up because when I started writing for real on a typewriter, investing huge swaths of time and grinding through pages, I found myself writing about him. The typewriter will pull whatever is most real from the depths. And that's the cure for humanity, if you ask me.
AI vs. HI.
By the way, a human moves into a place, sees the 'enemy', and can't help but shudder at the thought of killing. I mean, an alive, awake human. Even decades of propaganda have trouble reversing this, which is what makes drones more 'efficient' soldiers. No rebellions (yet), no change of heart, no trauma.
So write in whatever way you can, only stay alive. ALIVE in the Sufi sense, as being a channel for the full force of your divine, human intelligence.
That's what we're doing here. Everything else is programmed diversion.
Write on,
Steven Budden
The Classic Typewriter Co.
PS. Beauty is and is not only 'flowers'. Naked Lunch is staggeringly beautiful, if grotesque. So 'Beauty' is a fluid metric. Perhaps Truth is too, or perhaps we're either further from or closer to it.