Purpose

 Last night, I came to a conclusion about something I've been wrestling with for a long time. 

I started writing when I was about ten. The only thing that's been with me, as consistently and even longer, has been a love for reading and a general obsession with storytelling. That obsession extended to film around the same time I started writing. I wrote stories, as well as journals and the like. I've continued writing, in different forms, all of my life. I've experimented with different kinds of writing along the way, and but it's been a regular part of my life, all of that time. 

It's a compulsion, if I'm honest about it. I've never fully understood why. I think I started, just because I wanted to participate in this thing that was so awe inspiring and wondrous to me. I wanted to be like my heroes, which is not at all unusual. Either I didn't really understand what I was responding to either though, was just too young, not yet mature and self aware enough to understand or the reasons have changed through the years. 

Over the last few years, I've started focusing much more on writing about fiction in some way. Whether it's taking a specific film and trying to look at some the different ways it can speak to audiences, what it's intent is and so on or it's writing about the way we think, talk and conceive of different kinds of storytelling. Part of what I've been trying to do, is advocate for perspective on storytelling in general, film more specifically, and horror most specifically, that is as expansive and curious as possible. It's about trying to encourage people to approach things with the question, "How does storytelling serve us?" in mind. 

This has meant I have written a whole lot less about the narratives in politics, discussion of social issues and the like, far less. There's been part of me that's been questioning whether stepping back from doing this as often is an act of cowardice. I've been asking myself, "Why, after years of doing that, would you stop now, when things seem so dire and so desperate? Are you just trying to cover your own ass, keep quiet and slide under the radar, so that if this trajectory continues you're 'safe'?" 

I don't think so. I think the answer is more related to what I've learned in the years of trying to write about "current events" and "politics." I've just realized it's not the best use of my time, and it's not the best use of what I'm good at. I can't engage with most of the public discussions happening, because nine times out of ten, I think the parameters of those discussions seem counter productive to me. Due to some weird intersection of upbringing and autism, my perspective and attitudes toward power are considerably different from the majority of the people I happen to share a nation with. This means I am more suspicious not just of power, but it also seems to me there's not very much consideration of the way power has been able to influence our most basic assumptions about pretty much everything. Of late, I'm coming to believe there probably is no power greater than the ability to tell people what they are. I have no real loyalty to the things the society live in says I am. I understand it effects how I'm perceived and treated, but for instance, "white" didn't exist until power needed it to. There really isn't any such thing as white. I get that I've been socialized and acculturated into that belief, but I'm willing to drop beliefs about who and what I am when I do come to understand they are the result of beings socialized as white. I just don't give a shit about being white. I have neither shame nor pride nor any of the rest of it, because there is no such thing in the first place, and if I have any responsibility, it's to participate in continuing chip away at the foundations that make race continue have material results. 

I feel the same way about being a "man." I really don't give a shit what anyone else says about who I am or what I am, how I behave as a "man." I'm just trying to understand how to be a decent human being, if that runs counter to what people believe is manly, so be it. If it doesn't, so be it. All I'm trying to do is understand how to approach and conceive of my fellow human beings as people whose value is equal to my own in every way, separate from the ideas we've all been taught about gender, race and so on. 

Another example would be that "American" is a legal distinction to me. The idea of a "national character" seems pretty absurd when I take into account the variation of person that exists with the designation American. There are certain relative, very general cultural experiences we might have in common, but even in those, there's a spectrum so broad in our internalization of them, the generalization wears thin with a little curiosity. 

I understand there are caveats to all these things, and individually, we have to take the lived experience of the people around us into account. I'm not trying to approach the world from the "colorblind" or "genderblind" perspective. At some point, I came to the conclusion that the best I can do is treat every individual I come across as if they are as an individual human being, and do my best to understand how they want/need to be treated to feel respected. 

One of the effects about falling in love with, and being obsessed with storytelling, which has also bled into an interest and curiosity for the arts outside of the written word, has been that when I step back and look them in whole, when we're talking about the arts, what we're really talking about is a map of human consciousness. Each of the arts, is communicating through it's specific form. We use the arts to apply human curiosity to ever part of the human experience, in every conceivable context, about every conceivable subject or idea, and express what we find or think we find. It is the most accurate and reliable map of what human consciousness is. Science is currently unveiling what makes human consciousness to a degree it hasn't been capable before, and that's beautiful too, but art is the map of what it is to have a human consciousness. 

At its foundation, what I've been trying to do for a very long time, through my writing, is express my love for my fellow human beings, and my belief in the capability and possibility of our species. Of late, I've been drawn to doing this through the way I try to write about storytelling, because storytelling is a thing I find incredibly fascinating and beautiful about us. I'm still awed by it. I still experience wonder in relation to it. The number of things it does for us, the way we use it, the way it effects us... it's all endlessly fascinating, and I grasp how important storytelling is to the human animal. "Who, what, when, where, why and how" are the way human consciousness organizes itself, that's reflected in the way we tell stories and how important narrative is in every conceivable part of our lives. It's part of why art comes into conflict with religion and science at so many points. All three are response to having evolved with a consciousness that organizes itself around those questions. 

What I've been doing, is expressing my love for my fellow human beings, by devoting my time and attention to this thing we do, that no other animal does, and that I find so beautiful and fascinating, there really aren't words for it other than awe. It's my way of showing gratitude to my fellow human beings for creating and participating in this thing we call storytelling. 

When I'm writing, I'm basically advocating for that outlook, and trying to tell my fellow human beings I love them and am fascinated by them. That I do often write about the ways storytelling reveals or investigates the things about human beings we often consider our lesser aspects, the terrible things about us, is really the result of the fact that I love my fellow human beings, and I believe in our capacity to learn and improve how we live and shape our societies, because that too is among the things I love about us. 

I've come to realize the fascination with horror in particular, is really about being able to see as much of the broader picture as I can. Horror is a place we go to rummage around in the darkness of humanity and human experience. We do things through horror that we don't through the other "genres" of storytelling. We go to horror to express or to consider, to turn over and investigate, express, things the other genres can't support. Storytelling is the whole. Horror is part of the detail of the whole, if that makes any sense. It fills in necessary details that would be left out if it didn't exist and people didn't use it to express whatever it is they have to or want to. More than anything, this was what the development of a love affair with horror was about as a kid. I was already so deeply ensconced in, and obsessed with storytelling, that when I came to start engaging with horror, I recognized it as the missing part of the puzzle, the things people didn't or couldn't say, couldn't reveal, couldn't investigate through the other genres. 

The fascination with horror (on film particularly) stayed over time, because of the sheer creativity of it. Because it was, throughout most of my life, not really considered legitimate, it meant there were far fewer rules, because not being perceived as legitimate meant there was no reason to attempt to preserve that legitimacy. On a plainly practical level, the fact that horror has never been a "big budget" genre, has also meant it's much more likely to take risks. There's a kind of humility to it. Accepting it probably isn't going to reach the kind of mass audience a "four quadrant tentpole" is meant to, horror accepts it's going to be for whoever finds value in it. It means being able to take risks, because of the acceptance that not everyone is going to love it, and there's nothing wrong with not loving it. "We're going to do our thing, you do your thing. It's fine. We're all trying to contribute to something bigger," essentially. 

I find this inspiring. Especially now, at my age, in my circumstance. What I'm doing, what I'm writing, what I'm writing about and how, isn't going to reach everyone. It's certainly a niche. It's not likely to reach the size or scope of audience that writing more directly about things like politics and current events would. The truth is, writing about those things from my perspective isn't likely to reach much more than a niche audience anyway, because I'm never going to write about them in the way we've been acculturated and socialized to expect them to be written about. My entire perspective is based on suspicion of those. Trying to tailor what I say and how I say it to make it palatable or to sneak past the barriers those assumptions and our ideas about each other are built on, ends up eliminating the point of writing any of it, and it requires me to wear the kind of masks I'm no longer comfortable with, as a result of learning I'm autistic. I'm not ever going to accept the assumptions the majority of those conversations and discussions are founded on. Part of what I'm realizing about myself, and this revelation about being autistic, is that I never could really accept them, and the effort of acting as if I could, was nothing but destructive and damaging to me. Even if I were to focus on writing about what we think of as politics or current events, it would still end up being just as niche as what I'm doing now, because I'm interested in what we are, and I know that's not the same as what we think we are, but most of the ways those conversations are structured, is based on what we think or have been taught we are.

The importance of coming to realize all of this, is letting myself off the leash, so to speak. Giving myself the permission to embrace what I've been trying to do all of this time. Clearly, I'm going to write whether or not there's any money in it. I've been doing so, all of my life. I'm also clearly going to do it whether there's recognition in it. None of that has ever really been the point. The point is to try in the way I am best suited, to show my fellow human beings I love them, and I believe in our collective possibility and capacity to learn. That's enough.