As I predicted before I left I
used Saatchi’s ‘Be The Worst You Can Be’ more like a self-help referral guide
to making yourself feel better before I went out on my own (it helped by the
way, it’s very funny and insightful in places) and Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of
Wrath’ was unmoved from my baggage, it is now on my ‘To-Do’ pile of books that
I have every intention of reading but for one reason or several dozen I haven’t
yet…however, yes, ‘Hitch 22’ I couldn’t put down. I thought I would share my
thoughts, not on Christopher Hitchens specifically, but people that impress in
general and how they help me to write.
I happen to like
Mr Hitchens and I happen to share a lot of his views but I can see why people
do not like him and I can see why people would take umbrage with his opinions
but (I would hope) even his enemies would credit him with skills and attributes
that make him the important figure he is (sorry not to use the word ‘was’, it
feels like I should refer to him in a way that shows his meaning is still
alive, for those of you who need to look him up (Christopher
Hitchen's Wikipedia Link), he sadly passed away last year from cancer). Talking
more generally there are thousands of people that have certain terms applied to
them when they get to a certain position in the public’s eye; sayings like, ‘an
institution…’, ‘heroic…’, ‘a leading figure…’, ‘intellectual…’, ‘veteran...’,
it doesn’t necessarily have to be because they have spent decades working on a
subject, although it does seem more readily applied to surrogate father/mother
or uncle/aunt figures, but more because they are readily associated with a cause.
You don’t have to believe in that cause, you don’t even have to believe in that
person, commentators on public life seem to be more trusted than politicians
say, but they have an undeniable influence on what we read, watch and hear…we
all have our favourites, they could be musicians, actors, authors or any number
of public/semi-public people that we tend to listen and believe more than
others (or they could be your grandmother). Those are the people I am interested in, I
can’t list them, everyone reading this will have their own inclinations, some
will be extremely famous and hugely influential in the mainstream media, some
may be underground/obscure less well know figures; but I’m not worried about
how radical or not someone’s views are; I’m keen to understand why those people
influence us in a way that changes our lives. I’ll keep reminding you (actually
myself) that I’m linking this all to writing so bear with me if I do veer off
occasionally.
I want to write
stories that convey the topics I’m interested in and one of the main tools to
do so is to create characters. They are my vehicles of expression but they are
limited to my total sum of knowledge. If I never accepted any external
information into my brain then I’m stuck with what I’ve got and I would have to
twist, re-twist and re-twist some more of what I already carry. Imagination is
boundless as they say but that’s okay if as a 32-year-old man I have already
gone through the educational system and had access to information and other
people’s views all my life and know how to think for myself. If I was cut off
now then how much could I say is new of what I come up with? Convert
imagination into physical matter then I may have ideas the size of several
planets stored away ready to be unlocked and molded but what is
interesting to me is how other people, people who impress, have the potential
to unlock those ideas for you. I read about how The Hitch talks about this or
talks about that, or travels here and travels there; and I think I want to do
that or I want to write about that. Would I ever have done so if I had never
read his books, or seen his debates on YouTube? Probably not, but that doesn’t
mean those ideas and interests weren’t there lying in wait for the Hitch to jog
them out of their hiding places. The same goes for all those people that have
inspired you one way or another, they may reveal a concept so brand new to you
it takes you somewhere you never would have got to alone…or they could have
just slightly nudged you…just enough…to make you take the metaphorical jump. Both,
I think, are as important as each other. We all have so much we want to achieve
yet we are chained by constraints, our health, our finances and so on and so
on.
As I mentioned,
there are thousands. It would be impossible to say who these people are, they
are everywhere, and they can be in the least likely of places. You may love
them or you may hate them. What the problem seems to be is energy…what I mean
by that is that the passion, euphoria, inspiration, or whatever you feel like
calling it seems to disappear soon after we close the final page of the book,
the final curtain goes down, the concert finishes, the argument dies down, etc…we
feel empowered and energetic and we rush off to make a go of it our way and then…soon
enough we tire…we go back to our normal lives…we return to acceptance. Those
people that impress seem to never lose that burst of energy, of course I’m not
suggesting they don’t need to work hard or a blessed with genetic material that
the rest of us don’t have so it’s easy for them; I’m suggesting in fact the
very opposite thing, THEY WORK VERY HARD! That seems to be it, they go through
turmoil like all of us, they go through those painful difficult stages of life
and what makes a lot of them so special is that they go through far worse than
the average person ever experiences or has forced on them. Yet they continue.
They persevere. I hope that by reminding myself of this, every time I read a
book, watch a play, watch a film, listen to a song, watch an interview, watch
the news, tell myself something is too much of a risk, see someone do something
very normal walking down the street in front of me or see someone do something
exceptional on the other side of the globe, I remember that just to live is
hard work but to do more is impressive...so get writing.
RGR
P.S: Please join me on all my social media pages:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Robert.G.Rankine
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thinkingplainly
- Google+: https://plus.google.com/+RGRankine
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rgrankine
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/rgrankine
- Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/thinkingplainly/
- YouTube 1: https://www.youtube.com/thinkingplainly (Personal Channel)
- YouTube 2: https://www.youtube.com/thinkingplainlyltd (Company Channel)
- Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/thinkingplainly/
- Foursquare: https://foursquare.com/thinkingplainly
And Author Profile Pages to keep informed of the latest releases:
- Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/IqRZK (Click 'Add to Favourites’ under profile photo)
- Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1CIEjaf (Click 'Add to Favourites’ under profile photo)
- Nook: http://amzn.to/1CIEjaf
- Google: http://bit.ly/1yyMhQx
- Scribd: http://bit.ly/1xVQlLh
- Apple: Author page not available yet - search R.G Rankine
- Kobo: Author page not available yet - search R.G Rankine