Shouts From Down Under

Real writers can be found. Still. You don't have to buy them

Our daughter once said to me,

"Dad. Are you real? Are you, and the van, real?"

She felt like the moment was a dream and that I hadn't come in the van to pick her up from school. She needed reassurance. Not just that I was real but that I WAS her father and that the van and myself were HER life, not someone else's. She was about 15-16 at the time. How could she not know I was real? A normal sensible mature father?



But, I'm so glad that I didn't laugh that day, or react in a manner so she felt stupid, or felt unable to tell me the rest of something so strange to her.

Listen to people more and speak less. That's what I learned. And the cruncher?



Be real. Try to be unreal real.

What will you sell to gain fame as a literary main name?

Your sanity? Your dignity? Your identity? Will you sell out your own dear mother?

Will you sell your soul? And finally, something that seems worse than all these.

Will you sell your skin colour?

http://shareallthis.com/skinwhite.html

I saw this link on a twitter follower who I was about to follow back. This rang warning bells for me. The person has dark skin colour, which doesn't make a scrap of difference to me.

However, they are supporting the sale and use of a product to "whiten skin"? Seriously? I suppose I am just so naive. I really am living an overprotected life!

But I just feel sad to think that someone, possibly under the pressure of others, wants to change their skin colour, and believes that will make a difference in their life.

Well, even as I write this I know deep down that there are folks who take a lot of notice of skin colour. Racism. That is just a word, symbols on a page. Black symbols on a white page. Strange to think that racists don't realise, don't get it, don't admit, don't acknowledge, don't accept that even reading involves the profitable merging, cooperation, brother and sisterhood, sharing of space, supporting each another, of black and white.

Racism. It isn't just a word for some. They do treat people who are different to them, differently.

This blog entry isn't about racism, but about what lengths people go to to gain attention to their writing. It's about how far people, whatever their skin colour and wherever they live, will prostitute themselves in order to get more readers to look at their stuff.

Maybe that wasn't the person's intention posting that link. Perhaps it was just another random tweet promoting whatever product. Maybe the conclusion of racial profit was just my cynical interpretation.

There are other stances people take, other stuff they do to sell their "profile".

I mean, what about whacking some poor defenceless vegetable Halloween victims?



I like to check out people who "follow" me. I'm a tiny, unknown, insignificant person who is hardly qualified to express things, to take a stab at philosophical conjecture, to have a crack at writing anything of worth.

So generally I examine new followers closely before I follow them back. Even blue ticked people. Especially blue ticked folks. Are they really who they claim, or as influential as Twitter says, when that organisation hoists the little symbol of celebratory celebrity selection upon them.

And when I "check them out" I find some doubtful entities. Of course the easy shams to spot are the follower salespeople. They are wasting their virtual time with me. I suddenly get proud and dignified when someone suggests I would buy readership or followers.

Others are less crass. They are basically a robot, or perhaps a product that has become humanoid in its purpose. The entire addition of following you is for business.

Well, we are all here for that aren't we? But surely we can be human, be real, be someone with deeper character than just selling stuff to our friends and acquaintances?

Surely we can be REAL WRITERS?

Then there are the folks who are most likely human as opposed to robots, definitely, yet they are desperate. That's OK but I think it would work much better for them if they didn't follow a couple of thousand in a day, yet only have ten people following them.

I have enjoyed so much when someone follows me from a far country, and they have completely different skin colour, culture, interests, and so forth, to me. I love that. Because it means a lot to me when someone joins literary hands with me for to share a walk together through words, through writing, through thought, through lots and lots of sharply intense reading, and also through many sips of coffee.

You know what it's like to share the aroma of coffee, and share the time together while imbibing such eye rolling pleasure as cake. Together with writers of far places.

Yes. I enjoy those followers attention very much. They make me feel alive. Their respect and attention that has extended towards me through a simple follow on social media represents my aim.

And my aim is to reach out through these black letters on white background, to you. Whatever place you come from, and where ever your ultimate goal in the journey, you are my favorite follower. Yes even the blue tickers

We seem to be immersed in a world of chaos. A stormy sea of attitudes, claims, attacks, defences, arguments, theories, dismay. One word. Confusion.

It is so easy to dream of easy money, easy fame, easy shortcuts, easy editing, easy thinking, easy agreement, easy common sense, easy authority, easy authoration and writereskness. Just sell something of yourself that probably doesn't matter anyway. Huh? Why not? Nobody will notice anyway that you aren't quite the same as before.

Who needs to be noble inside where no one can see or hear your privacy? They have no right to that proximity anyhow. Who needs an unhampered mind and a genuinely clean mind where it isn't dirtiness or failure that makes you afraid but giving in to grief?
Who needs hidden honesty, working for satisfaction, giving something to others for nothing, and sharing of your ideas and passions?

Who needs all that stuff? Why not just nip a little bit of it off every tweet, every facey post, every snapchat whatsy, every pinterest board pin, every text message, every uchoob comment?
No one will be any the wiser. Why did they say that, by the way? "any the wiser". Why not just say "No one will be wiser"?

My point here should be plain as daylight shining through a bullet hole after a murder was committed in a garden shed last summer by a disgruntled lawn mower mechanic who didn't get paid in a timely manner by the owner of the repaired rusty Rover.

In this world of increasingly loud clashes of basic instinct and lifestyle mannerisms, in this world where it is a terrible crime to still have the same beliefs you did forty five years ago, doesn't it make sense to be real?



There are a lot of folks gritting their teeth these days, and thinking of doing things they once thought were horrible. Even sell followers on Twitter. Yes. The unthinkable has become reality. People are lowering their standard because the effort to even think about being strong takes too much effort, let alone be accused of pedantically holding to some long forgotten benchmark.

Ok. Time to take a step back and remember. Bow my head for a moment in deep thought and attempt a memory recall of why I began writing this entry.
Sometimes I think humans really do all need to contract that disease called Alzheimer's, or the other dooverwhatsit condition, Dementia.

I tried to feebly capture this idea in the scratchy beginnings for a novel that I've never been bothered to do anything with, at least while editing and mucking about with the first and second I've cobbled together.

Here it is. Only a couple of chaptery things that don't take long to read. Do you ever do that? You write with great gusto on some idea but it's not long before you realise you can't remember what the heck it was REALLY about.

STATIC

Shadows of Dementia  (E) Time between entries...2007-2013! Nothing will prepare you for this...NOTHING i tell you!! #1310146 by Sparky

And that's what I'm sayin. Are we as real a writer as we were when we first picked up a blunt HB and started poking inside a dictionary and thesaurus for inspiration?

Are we real? Still?

Sparky