I’m wondering if its possible to ever understand audience taste. Is it better to write from the headlines or find a voice and nurture it?
Can the popularity of writing from the headlines ever be considered an art form? Certainty satire and some other forms of comedy about headlines might be artistic but can expressing an opinion about current events be any more than gossip? Of course most of us know politics or plane crashes are oh so much more sophisticated to write about that say celebrity divorces. Reminds me a bit of the alcoholic that insists on “Russian Standard” rather than “Smirnoff”, I don’t gossip because I care about the politics I write about. I really care about my opinions so how could it be gossip. I understand what drives someone to find their voice. IMO, when successful, finding a voice, appears to have a god like or immortal quality. On the other hand I find writing about the headlines a little harder to understand. Have we all become mini me Walter Winchell’s without any of his talent to create drama from human weakness. And also wonder how we got here. Since I read it the first time as a kid in the Sixties I’ve aften wondered what “Soma” in “Brave New World” is. For a time I was sure it was television which---with the consolidation of all the important media outlets---I then expanded to all media. Currently “Social Media” looks like an excellent candidate, but then how do we fit “Itunes and ipads and i as the most overused f**king letter in the alphabet. In many ways it seems just that the Internet will be for us what that meteor was for the dinosaurs because isn’t it our consciousness not our physicality (we seem to fear so much for) that makes us different? I just wonder if finding a voice could save us from ourselves.
