Forewarning: This is a very indulgent entry, so if you'll excuse me while binge write. When I sit down to compose one of these entries, there are so many things to deal with. First I look at that title line. It's blank, like a static-y television station that's lost it's feed. For me, the title is the connection to the rest of the story, post, poem, whatever. One look at that flippin' title line, and it's complete chaos in my head; similar to the way a local network turns into a frenzy of technical babel and wire checking when they don't have any audio with their six o'clock news broadcast.

And that's only the beginning. Usually, I don't get that taken care of, I don't find a title, so the rest of the writing process is performed in the hum of that confused noise. Then there's my fingers that start to jam up and and jerk around (they don't know what they're doing, stupid fingers, like little wild caged cats)...then, DELETE, DELETE, DELETE. Uh, I need something to drink. Crap, I forgot to turn off the oven. Wait, no I didn't. I remember taking the pan out and then turning the knob from bake to off. Oh, just go check the oven dufus. So I check the oven, and of course it's been turned off.

Back to the blank screen. So full of potential. There's this little flickering neon sign that I see in my mind as well, that says, "prize writer" or "you are the writer". But it's really far away, not dominating the view or anything, and fading. So I have to go find the switch to that damned sign and turn it off. I'm not sure what that is all about, but I would imagine it has something to do with finding voice. Writers should not be writers first. Writing only shows us who we are and what we have to say about something else. Unless of course you wish to write about writing. Then I suppose it is recursive, teetering along the edge of helpful and annoying.

So I'm dedicating this post to freeing myself from these expectations (that I've placed on myself) to identify with other great wordsmiths in the world. I'm not a wordsmith, just a guy who likes words and think that they are very useful when chosen carefully.

And another thing. There are some odd road blocks to get past inherent within this art of blog writing, if you want to call it that. What makes a piece honest? How can I be honest without being careless? If our art is inspired mostly or partly by what is happening in our real lives, then how will we protect those we love? So, it seems the point of this blog, for me, should not be to discover as much what is going on in my personal life, rather to comment on it.

So then, now that I've decided this, what will determine honest or true work? For instance, I was talking to a painter friend of mine who was doing portraits of homeless people from photographs he had taken here. After visiting an old professor to get some feedback on the work he had done, he was forced to take an "honest" look at his work. The portraits were more or less what he thought would be good material for him to reproduce with paint, but perhaps what he really saw best were the friends, family, and percieved enemies around him. In the end, what he found was most interesting at the time were these composed photos of people huddling around at bus stops. And I believe he found that his work was more inspired after locating what he was most interested in.

Honesty in art is determined by the author's willingness to deal with subjects that are truly within his perspective. From there the path may lead to addressing the subject that he or she thought they "should" be portraying, but for now, honesty will affect the audience (no matter how diminished) more profoundly.