[BRIEF NOTE] Lovely transience

[rfmcdonald]

As is her wont, matociquala wrote a fantastic post on writing, this one on the importance of real life, of the life experiences of people not at the epicentre of great events.

One of the things I was really interested in when writing the Jenny books--hell, a major ongoing tic of mine as a writer that one might even justify discussing as an ur-theme--was the effect of world events on people. There's this really artificial thing that happens in genre fiction where the entire world starts revolving around the Event. Whereas, in real life, we're far more concerned, on a daily basis, with our love affairs and our children's grades and Mom's heart condition and whether we remembered to make an appointment at the dentist--and the larger world of politics and world events encroaches on that life.

The news, in other words, is a subplot. Until we wake up one morning and the civil war is in our living room.

And the thing is, in my opinion, that stuff--the slopping of the hogs, as I like to call it--is the important stuff. Yes, world events are, you know, worth keeping an eye on. But the thing that makes a difference in your happiness in the long term is how you manage your own life. It depends on whether you maintain your honor as best you can and strive to do well by yourself and others.

I had an argument with Peter Watts a while back about whether a novel about the life of an Argentinian dirt farmer left behind by the Singularity would have any relevance. He didn't think so, because that person no longer had any influence on the wider world.

My answer was yes, of course it does. As much relevance as the life of Beowulf or Kimball Kinnison has. Or the old man, the one with the fish. Or Othello. Or--

...The vast majority of humanity has always been peasants. There is only one human narrative: we are born, we strive, we comprehend--or fail to--and we die.

We are all flecks of dust in the eye of the cosmos. Some of us argue the point more strenuously than others. We are natural solipsists; we are inclined to think of ourselves as important. We like to believe we'd be the guy, like Zaphod, who could eat the fairy cake.

This, in turn. brought to my mind of a passage from the very end of Derek Jarman's last film, 1993's Blue

Our name will be forgotten
In time
No one will remember our work
Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud
And be scattered like
Mist that is chased by the
Rays of the sun
For our time is the passing of a shadow
And our lives will run like
Sparks through the stubble.

As a reviewer argued, Jarman recites this last bit "as if this is a good thing, because it allows us to concentrate on our love, which is what really matters. Freed from self-conception as artists, queers, or anything else, we are free to become what only death can make us, human, and hence free to realize the true potential of our estate. Beyond words, beyond names, beyond subject and object." Something interesting can be done with this; doubtless, some things already have been.