This is my second shot at writing a monthly column and I slammed into a wall sometime between the first and this sophomore effort. Initially, I wrote about the downside of social media, while bringing the world together, it has also created the potential for a kind of detachment. It was pretty good and I labored over it, something I noticed about my writing quite a number of years ago. The idea that knowing you will read this in a week, in a month or whenever, holds me to a high, personal standard. After all, I grew up with my Mother always warning, “What will the neighbors think?”
I confess to caring about what you think of my writing and that helped push me into this sophomore wall. When the opportunity to write in ForKauai happened, my mother’s voice was somewhere in the back of my mind. These pieces would obligate me to exude substance, dealing with important issues in an erudite manner. Maybe these articles could become a platform to promote my literary talent to a larger audience?
We were heading down that road for number two and then it happened. The title for this second attempt was, The Tangled Tango of Heart and Mind. I had really worked on it, writing at least two incarnations. When Laura, my girlfriend and a gifted writer, asked me what the point of the piece was, I had no answer, plus no passion. If obligation and calculation commandeer the page, they create deception and that crosses over for me into an arena that even trumps what others think.
I need to be present in my writing because that is how I love to do this discipline. The initial commentary on technology was for an audience and not just you. I have been accused of being anti-social, which is not true. My favorite format is being with one other person because I get confused easily with numbers. For me, this means keeping an eye on the platitude quotient and other signs of encroaching pomposity, not to mention withdrawal. My voice is much easier for me to find when it’s just the two of us.
At this precise moment, I am in beautiful Kalauea, sitting on a single bed in a screened in lanai, supported by stonewalls and columns. It is Saturday, November 15th at 1:38PM HST and I’m listening to Ella Fitzgerald, singing I Didn’t Know About You, segueing into Creedence singing one of their classics. As a survivor of the Sixties, I don’t know how it could ever be possible to live in a world without music. Just so you know, there will likely always be music in the background when I am writing to you and it will be mentioned every now and then.
I can’t think of a more interesting time than right now, for Kauai and the world she floats in. I think our island is becoming dangerously discordant and the reliance on tourism and real estate is a suicide strategy. The intention of aloha, the breath of our island, has taken a back seat to selfishness. Our country has been hijacked right out from under us, victims of our own lethargy and brainwashed impotence. The vast majority of us, the 99.9 percent, have been bought and sold by the United States of Oligarchy. We have a Congress in a Fifties Mind Warp and a President sitting on an Imperial Throne. The most basic right of freedom is the guarantee of privacy and that is now gone.
Moving forward, there will be no shortage of material, but I really wanted to take this time to say hello and to thank you for reading the above. We’ll be talking. Next time, I do need to tell you about Mind and the Motorcycle.
Larry has spent a lifetime in marketing and wondering what we’re all about. Welcome to his blog, Mind and the Motorcycle. Email: larry@larryf.biz