Burning to Write. And Vice Versa.
Among all artists, writers alone suffer the illusion that the world needs to hear what they have to say.
I thought that line, or something like it, came from Rollo May, probably in The Courage to Create. But a search within that book says no. ChatGPT and Gemini both tell me May didn’t say it anywhere.
Still, I think it’s true that writers write because they have to. They can’t not write. It’s what they do, how they live. And I’m one of them.
The need to write is for me a vivid fact this morning, a few days past a catheter ablation on my heart. There is so much I need to say, because I suffer the illusion that the world needs to hear it. Does it?
I am sure C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein had the same affliction. I am also sure that the world is better for having read both of them, even if the world could have lived without their writing.
As for time, I have had twelve more years to write than Lewis got, so far, and five less than Tolkein.
Time to say what?
I want to say that personal AI will do far more for all of us than what we will ever get from AI as a corporate service. And to say it better than I just did.
I want to say that we will do better with rulers who care about people than with rulers who merely rule. And to say that better than I just did.
I want to complete the work of John McPhee by reporting as best I can what has happened to the great characters that anchored every one of his essays and books. But that project is not on the back burner. It’s in the fridge, where I’ve kept it for decades (while continuing to read the entire McPhee oeuvre, much of it repeatedly).
Speaking of burning, I am impelled by Dylan Thomas, who wrote “Do not go gentle into That Good Night,” before dying at just thirty-nine. The poem was for his father:
Old age should burn and rave at close of day,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And so I do.
