the brewing machine

Who reads blogs?

As normal human beings (By "normal" I mean egocentric and narcissistic. Hehe.), our impulse to speak is infinitely stronger than our impulse to listen. Our urge to express ourselves is more imminent than our tendency to take notice of others’ bellyaching.

So who reads blogs?

I don’t have a damn clue how many, or should a say how few, have read my pieces, including this one. The last thing I want is to delude my self in thinking that some actually read my crap if that is not the case.

Stephen King defined writing in one word—telepathy. It couldn’t be put any better. Right now as you read, we are not in the same place and time as when I wrote this. We may not know each other personally, or we may not know each other, period.

It doesn’t matter.

If I am an effective writer, as you read you will have the same cognitive and emotional experience I had when I wrote this. For five minutes, we will have a common experience, an arcane communion of thought and feelings.
Regardless of how we are connected in the real world, while your perspicacious intellect absorbs the ideas and emotions conveyed by my words, we will be the closest of friends.

We will share a fleeting yet personal journey that only you and I can relate to.

Call into mind your favorite book. Chances are it made significant emotional impact on you. Do you remember how the author, through his eloquent story telling, roused your deepest passions and desires? Do you recall smiling or even giggling by yourself (yeah, exactly like a psycho) because the story or the character was hilarious?

How about falling in love? Interestingly, to no particular person, right? But yes, a story can make you experience that euphoric feeling of as if you’re floating in the air. You felt what the character felt. That seemingly infinite emotion that conquers all!

Can you explain why it was so difficult to unglue it from your eyes until either you finish it or you drop asleep?

And how about when you’ve finished reading, closed the back page, held the book with both hands and contemplated? You looked blankly into space and acknowledged the fact that the story touched you. And you like the feeling. It’s almost addictive.

What the writer was successful at doing is connect with you telepathically. Penetrated your mind and stirred your heart even though he wrote it in a different place and time.

So what’s your book?

I know mine.

There, for five minutes we thought of our favorite book. I know you know what I mean by saying it made us fall in love. We understood each other. We knew each other.

We took that ephemeral telepathic ride together when you read what I wrote.

For five minutes.

But now that five minutes is over. I don’t know who you are again. No matter what I do, I cannot know who you are reading this article.

I don’t have a clue, but I’m content.

No art form is meant to be the bread-and-butter for the artist who practices it. Works of art are products of spontaneous spurts of the creative instinct, which are usually unleashed by highly emotional or intellectual stimuli from daily experiences. It is a rare ability to be able invoke one’s creative prowess on-call.

For today’s gallant artisans who have their craft as their day job, there is one thing they dread experiencing more than the common flu. It’s called the “artist’s block.”

I aspire to be a writer by profession someday. Being a columnist would be quite fulfilling, not to mention keeewool. And yes, I think every aspiring writer wishes to write a book and have it published and read by a multitude of readers.

But how can I expect to be a writer if I can’t even regularly write a decent entry on this blog? How do those guys do it? How can they put verbal wizardry to use on-call? Stephen King said on The Master on the Craft to prod your self to write everyday. The idea is to make quality-writing part-and-parcel of your daily activities, to be your second skin.

And that is the remedy for the writer’s block? I guess I have to try it first before questioning.

Anyway, whether I land a writing job or not, I will still write for this blog. And who knows, I might inspire somebody. And maybe with that one bored pathetic bum, who is a computer addict at night and a potato couch during the day, I could form an alliance. Later on we might decide to form a cult, with me as the morale leader and him as my liaison for our goings-on with future affiliations with international secret societies.

I will call it The Priory of Vincent, a new world order for the brave and the enlightened. And it will be such a cool success story because it all started with an ordinary blog entry

Who knows, it might be THIS blog entry.

Shit it’s almost 5PM! I still have a class!

I think I’ve accomplished something just now. I think I overcame my writer’s block for today. Cool.

It took a whale free-falling from 50,000 feet above sea level, experiencing firsthand acceleration-due–to-gravity while asking “what is my purpose in life?” to prod me to write another entry. The picture you have in mind may be utterly surreal. That’s exactly the word to describe the movie from which that scene of the philosophizing falling whale came from.

No it’s not a Charlie Kaufman or a Cameron Crowe film. In fact I don’t know who that brilliant-bordering-to-schizophrenic screenwriter is. If you happen to pass by Video City, you might want to check out Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

In this flick, a narcissistic president whose demeanor is a cross between that of a rock star and a futuristic prince governs the entire galaxy. It also features a super computer whose answer to the “ultimate question” is a numerical value—42. When asked by the galaxies population to expound on it, the computer rationalizes that they did not give an exact definition for the “ultimate question” hence it gave some sort of a, numerical estimate. If you don’t get it, so do I!

A controvertial fictional book whose title, Where God Went Wrong, was also fleetingly mentioned in the story.

But all these out-of-this-world stuff entered the picture when Vogons—eight-hundred-pound monsters with an IQ of an eight-year-old kid—annihilated planet earth to pave the way for the construction of a transportation system that makes use of applications of cutting edge quantum physics. Wheeew!

Deep!!!!

But wait a minute. This flick really is a comedy more than anything else. Despite being a sci-fi movie with tremendous philosophical undertone, it’s fraught with silly comedy in every scene.

If you’re having a hard time imagining how this film really is like, just go check it out for your self. But hold on tight to your sanity, because this movie’s psychotic brand of comedy might snatch it right at the get-go.