The Glory of the Mundane

I admire an artist that can make the mundane interesting. To me this is the high point of art. That a writer can write about perfectly normal everyday people and make them as fascinating as a knight saving the world from an evil dragon that was once a zombie. It really is something to read a book find yourself furiously turning the pages only to realize that what you've been reading is a relatively common dinner conversation. There is a high level of skill involved in capturing life and not only that capturing the life that happens everyday.

Think about what you remember from your daily life. You can't recall every single moment. I am certain no one reading this remembers brushing their teeth. You may remember that you did it but you don't remember every stroke or what set today's brushing of the teeth apart from yesterdays, and because we so often times fail to remember these remarkably unmemorable moments it is hard to put them down in writing.

This brings me to the overall point I want to make. I was going to call this blog post "Why I Started Writing Again," but "The Glory of the Mundane" sounded much better, and the reason I started writing again isn't an easy thing to answer and has nothing to do with writing itself, but as I stated above there are things I like in writing and so when I saw an interview with Samuel L. Jackson about Quentin Tarantino there was a part that stuck out to me. Samuel L. Jackson was talking about the people that have been critical of Tarantino and he mentioned that what originally drew him to Tarantino was that he was a filmmaker who loved films.

It goes back to all those old saying your High School English teacher told you about how you have to be your own toughest critic. Here I was enjoying books and writing and poetry and yet I felt I was the last person that should judge my work. We are taught to be our own toughest critics but at the same time that there are people better suited to judge us than ourselves. I am not certain that both can be true. So this statement on Tarantino sparked something in me. It reminded me of how I used to write and many times I wouldn't like what I wrote but other people would, and because it pleased other people I thought it was good, but yet I view myself as a person perfectly capable of judging good writing, and so with this new writing, while not writing for myself, I am writing work that I like.

That was really only part one of what caused me to start writing again. That was the ignition switch. It took a few other instances for everything to explode. The next was a Kevin Smith question and answer session that he filmed. It was about the controversy caused by Red State and he said many of the same things Samuel L. Jackson said about Tarantino, but about himself. He was making movies that he would like and then he added another layer. He told the story of his father's death and how he got there too late and his brother told him that his father died screaming. This shocked him, but it also caused in him a realization that we're all going to die screaming or die in someway, and if we don't leave all that we can of ourselves on Earth then we wasted our lives. He then recited the famous Gretzky quote, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

That was the second thing. I guess Samuel L. Jackson on Tarantino gave me the means, write what you like, Kevin Smith the opportunity, and finally I got the motivation in two separate parts. The first was Mick Foley, the professional wrestler, oddly enough. He was talking about how he knew early on in his career that he was never going to be strong enough, agile enough, or have the look to take a traditional approach to wrestling. He had to carve out his own unique style and be different enough from everyone else to get noticed.

I don't really know exactly what this meant to me or how it became step one of what happened next, but then I was driving home from a client's house and saw the most perfectly tan jogger wearing hardly any clothes. I wanted to drive after her and tell her that if truth was beauty then she was the truest thing the world had ever created. It was that old familiar feeling of inspiration. Something I had inexplicably lacked for so many years and it had returned. Early the next day I furiously typed an introduction and began my 100 days of writing. An ode to that jogger was going to be day one and yet I still haven't written it yet. She was in many ways a muse come to life. I glimpsed her from my car as she turned down a side street, was struck by inspiration, looked back and she was gone. Out of my life forever, and there is no chance she is as beautiful as I remember.

That brings us full circle, because my life is wholly uninteresting and if I want to be able to write for 100 days I have to be able to write about the glory of the mundane. I have to be able to capture life, but not the meaning or essence of life but the everyday normal boring life of a 32 year old pet sitter. I have to be able to show people the world as I see it and I can never be afraid to do it, I have to do it in my own unique style, and it has to be something that I enjoy, and if I enjoy it then there is a chance there are other like minded people who will also enjoy it.

This is my mundane happening of the week. I was leaving the grocery store and a cashier asked someone if they found everything they need, and in response to that somewhat absurd question I wrote this:

At the Safeway

I was taught

the meaning of life by

the Trix rabbit,

found love in the arms

of Aunt Jemima, and learned

the secrets of peace in

a sermon delivered by

an Anheuser-Busch eagle.