Sometimes I think about why I think so much as to feel that I need somewhere to share my thoughts. In my mind, I think the thoughts worthy enough of others’ contemplation and this is a strange thing, in my mind at least, because I have no real gauge to help me determine whether or not this be true. The solution to hesitancy to share for fear of the irrelevance of what I have to say is to share anyway. I do not have thousands of followers, hardly ever are there twenty who read the posts on this site and I do, at times, think myself, as a commentator, as a thinker, irrelevant. I think I should just stop putting it out there to be ignored but I keep on posting and that is, I know, a good thing if for no other reason than to keep me from going mad for having no outlet for what this mind of mine constantly has to spin out.
So I write for therapy but the cure remains illusive, maybe because I do not know what the problem I am trying to solve actually is. Or maybe I do and it is that problem that I have been working on for a lifetime and cannot find a way to ignore even now as I close in on seventy. Maybe I should pat myself on the back for it, rub my brow is a loving as satisfied way for sustaining a focus on something vital and impossible, the impossibility of it never allowed to interfere with the sense of necessity that drives thought on and on and on despite regular bouts of wrestling with that sense of futility, windmills.
I get from reading history that any one person knowing of the place of self in the broader history of the universe understands that he or she is but little except unto oneself and makes the oneself part of the equation sufficient reason for continuing to breath. But in every era, during every era there are some who somehow find a way to gain more attention than others and how they do that, why it is that their rise is supported by those they rise before, has something to do with the nature of the era and the values of those populating an era.
So, in the era or, maybe, eras for which I have been present, there have been telling trends in who achieves recognition, who gains the attention of the society and in the society and I go back and forth between believing that my era/eras have given more prominence than have others to individuals whose prominence resides in their unworthiness, that prominence, for it having been confirmed, showing dysfunction in the society rather than its good health.
Recently, I have been playing with Twitter, reading massive numbers of tweetings from people I know to be stars in the eyes of those being twittered and some are of an odd type, not the kind of celebrities that are the ones of the popular culture–entertainment stars of the actor, sports hero, music scene type–but of the political realm and not of the old type political star, like a Kennedy, for example, but of the commentator type–Chris Hayes, Megan Kelly, Joy Reid, Joan Walsh, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper sort, people who appear on television enough to have become known to millions as opposed to the rest of us who are known to but a few. Deborah Messing, Ted Nugent, Bono, Katy Perry, a who other class.
And these people, because they are recognizable become the legitimate experts on all things on which their positions at news stations allow them to have a say about. I think that they are truly arbiters of present day truths and journalists only in so far as they may report a bit of news on occasion when they are forced by some aspect of reality to leave their expert persona to show that they know as much or as little about the things they discuss as the rest of us, at least those of us who do what is necessary to stay informed and think about the information we find.
Yes, sour grapes of a sort, not because these folk have somehow worked their way into positions through which their voices are amplified beyond the decibel range allowed those who are not members of their rather elite club. And the magnitude of the gap between the potency of their presence and the rest of us is of concern to me, not because they do speak wisely but because whether wise or not they have the kind of say that can influence others, lots of others, an advantage clearly shown in the numbers on feeds such as Twitter or Facebook of people reading what they have to say.
Sour grapes because they get hundreds of times the response I get but sour because the reason they get those hits is because of their celebrity and only in part because they say things that are wise. In fact, looking at some of the responses to what they have to say, I would say that it is often the fact of celebrity that is reason for a response and less often a response provoked by the particularly profound and useful nature of what they have to say.
Okay, so I am not pleased with the fact that I am not being heard as well as I wish to be and, of course, there is something about ego gratification in the mix that I need to consider, that I do consider regularly, wondering about myself and my ideas as to whether those ideas are worthy of more attention or whether it is ego and ego alone that allows me to think them good enough to be read more widely.
I will continue to grapple with issues of me as they relate for reasons for writing and reasons for wanting to be read by more than a few. I will continue to write even if no one reads what I have written because I have to write. I have no other way of talking to myself about what I mean and, therefore, about who I am as the person I am. It is celebrity with which I am having problems and whether it is about what I am not or who they are or one more so than the other or not, I do not know but cannot help myself from thinking about.
