Stories are Action Potentials

What's the point of stories? Why do we tell each other such crazy stuff? For entertainment? Sure. But we're not just trying to pass the time. We tell each other stories so we can tell ourselves our own story. We learn what we might be and do, what we could be and do, what we should be and do, and how best to achieve it.

Stories are action potentials just like nerve impulses. The Action Potential is what a story actually does to your life. In 2007, I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. In 2009, I hitchhiked across the USA. That was probably the most formative experience of my life and it was a direct result of reading Kerouac.

Action Potentials are often subtle and extremely hard to measure. I'm not sure how Ayn Rand changed my story, but I'm motherfuckin sure she did as I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. What actions did I take after reading Forgotten Voices of WWI or Ordinary Men or, or, or... You know what I'm saying?

Just because I don't have the eyes to see or the brainpower to process the intricacies and the interconnectedness of these stories and my story doesn't mean they aren't one and the same.

I know who I am because of the stories I read, have read, and will read. The more I read, the better my story.

The Unhappy Death of Ben W., Failed Writer

I guess it's important to set my intentions.

I don't wanna be famous. I don't want a huge fan base. I don't want any critical acclaim.

Well, that's obviously not true.

How do I wanna deal with journalists when they ask me about my writing? How do I wanna deal with crazy fans? What about partying with fans? These are all things I'm gonna have to think about before they happen. I'ma be fine. How bad can wealth and fame be? What's the worst that can happen?

My writing starts getting worse so I spend more time with my fans who make me feel better. I start partying all the time and making bad decisions with the young women I'm partying with and my wife takes my kids and leaves.

I start resenting my fans because I feel like they're the ones keeping me from my work. I start acting like a dick. They fuck off, calling me sad and a has-been.

I return to my pages, full of fire and determination. I'm gonna finish this project then start my masterpiece. I'll get clean and get my wife and kids back. I feel more motivated than I have done in years.

I start reading what I've written so far. It's garbage. Nonsense. Drivel. It's barely coherent. Well, that's okay. Fuck all that shit. I'm a new man. It's time to start that project I've always wanted to write. It's time for my masterpiece.

So I go make an Old Fashioned and sit down in front of my computer with a new document open and before I know it there's tears sliding down my face. Why? Because I know my wife's words are true. I'm washed up. I've lost my edge.

So I take my drink out on the porch and in a quiet summer dawn with just the birds singing, I survey the destruction of my life.

I'd like to think I've made more people happy than unhappy but I'm really not sure. And anyway, it's the people closest to me that matter and I've driven them all away. And where are my friends now? My so-called friends have fucked off to the next house party, leaving me with a hangover and an empty pit in my stomach.

It's crushing to achieve all your goals only to realise you don't actually want them. In confusion and distress, I look to my past to see where I went wrong and see now that I'd had what I wanted.

I'd had a little family with no money but time and space to write beautiful and fantastic words, necessary words. Now I've got money but no time and I've weakened my mind. I squandered my most precious gift.

So I take a last look at the land I love, toss the Old Fashioned into the grass, stick the .45 in my mouth and tell myself I'm being a hero.

(P.S. it's fiction, my friends x)

Who's In Charge Here?

I love writing because I'm in command.

It's a messy world out there and I control practically none of it. I do control the marks on the page, though, don't I?

I don't control my subconscious or the collective unconscious which work together through me. Nor do I, in fact, control the words themselves. Not really. They spill forward like they came into life somewhere between my eyes and my brain.

The rules of grammar and syntax dictate some of my sayings, as does my whole educational background. All the teachers I had lean over my shoulder. Each one has their say in what word comes next.

But I'm the CEO, COO, or maybe MD. I'm one of those suit-and-tie acronyms that's actually pronounced Fuck You. I'm in charge here and you're not.

But as I look around, it starts dawning on me that the only actual decision I make is to sit down and let the Writing do its thing through me.

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

Let's walk a while in the hallucinatory fields of the concept streams. The bubbling brooks babble through the trees and you follow them up the slope, past the treeline, up through the rubble and scree to a cave at the top of the mountain.

There you find an old woman and child, a girl barely a month or two old. It's your job to carry the baby back down the mountain, through the lightning and thunder, through the bears and wolves, eagles and snakes, bogs, quagmires, and quicksands, rapids and waterfalls, and many eyes in the night all trying to kidnap, murder, and eat the child.

Don't let go; keep her secret and safe. Do you think you can do that? Can you shoulder the burden? If you accept this challenge, you get a gas mask, a shotgun, and a Game Boy Advance.

Good luck. This message will self-destruct in ten days and two ounces.

All Hail Energy!

We must fuel ourselves forward. Instead of burning fossils, maybe we should burn ideas in the furnaces of our hearts. What if ideas could fuel a rocketship? What if there was a way to harness the electrical impulses from our bodies? Just swallow this microchip and say your prayers. Let us all give thanks to the Power Outlet, our God.

We'll go far as a species by respecting fire in our engines. But we'll go further worshipping the fire in our bellies. It's the fire in our hearts we should use to fuel society, not a dirty oil patch or dinosaur bones. The engine of progress needs to Green the fuck up if we're all gonna survive. We've got the science. We've got the tech. If only we had the passion and conviction to actually drive change forward.

Let's crush the naysayers. Now is no time for dissent. Let us unite behind a cause we all know to be true. Let's light the fire in each of our souls and save the motherfuckin planet.

Or we can Netflix and chill. Whatever.

One of the Crowd

We're all in a fuckin sci-fi show here and I ain't the hero. One thing the pandemic's shown me is that I'm not Tom Cruise with the cure who'll kill his way to the top, through a bunch of bad guys, and take out a global conspiracy to save the whole planet.

Nope. I'm one of the crowd. In the scene in the movie where the ferry's jammed with cars and swarms of people and it's pulling away from the dock and people are falling into the water, I'm way at the back, not even on the dock but way back on the road. My tall skinny ass is stuck in a crush, about to be wiped out by the oncoming aliens.

It's weird though cause I'm one of the crowd but I'm also the hero. I'm on my own hero's journey here. I'm not the center of the world but the center of a world.

As one of the crowd, I move along as directed. I have no control over my actions. I'm a cog in a piece of a part of a machine in a shed in a shop out on the coast somewhere. I ain't disconnected or even disconnectable from the surrounding system. I'm integrated like a motherfucker. I'm a cell in a tissue in an organ in a body. I am a leaf on a tree.

There's no difference between me, my culture, and my society. I think its thoughts. I speak its words. And there I was thinking I was the Marlboro Man, sitting atop my steed at a safe distance, surveilling the scene with wise, silent eyes.

The truth is I'm not independent in mind, body, or soul.

The Difference Between Mother Nature and Me

I got too comfy and let my guard down.

What happens when a zebra lets its guard down?

Chomp.

I am not separate from Mother Earth. Even though I try my hardest: walking on concrete, only touching plastic, metal and glass. I am unnatural, and I live in an unnatural world.

Fuck Mother Nature. She's a pain in my ass. She's the ants in my kitchen. She's my lawn that needs mowing. She's the rain on my windshield when I'm driving to work. She's always in my way, slowing me down.

And I wonder why I'm in prison.

Mother Nature lets me do whatever I want. She's the best kind of teacher, letting me figure out shit for myself. If it gets too much and I get tired and crabby, she holds me and sings me to sleep.

Mother Nature didn't go away because I concreted her over. She is the air I breathe, the bacteria on my hands, the flora and fauna prancing around in my gut. The distance between me and Mother Nature is a half a fraction of a millisecond of a micron, not even.

Because I am Mother Nature and Mother Nature is me.