I am dreaming of worlds to come.
I think I new my world had changed one afternoon in the Omaha, Nebraska airport in 2008 on a book tour, watching all these grown men in suits crying while the CNN ribbon showed the market crashing through the floor. I am not a businessman, but a writer, so I was not as quick as they were to understand that the world I knew was gone, and gone forever, and a new one would emerge to take it’s place. Instinctively I knew I had to change, and I did change and have been changing but it was not until this morning, reading a quote from the Dalai Lama about people who think they will never die, so do not ever fully live that I quite got it: that world is never coming back. It was a good day to mark this passing. I was holed up today, I have painful blisters on my feet from walking around Brooklyn so much taking photos in the wrong shoes so I couldn’t much go anywhere. I’ve been threatened if I walk around, forbidden to take photos or do chores (I put up a lot of photos on the blog!), my shoes taken away.
It occurred to me – finally and for all time – that the world of the writer as I knew it – and the world of many other people – was gone forever that Fall and was not ever coming back. I have not been one of those writers wringing my hands about change and squawking about Amazon or the decline of civilization, but neither did I quite get just how much change would engulf my life and how much it would affect my work. I had fantasies of the old days, the big score, the runaway book, the movie deal that would change everything, bring it all back. I suppose it didn’t help that I got divorced the same time the recession hit and the real estate market collapsed, but I knew what I was doing and did it with a full heart and open mind. I don’t regret it either.
There are many people whose world ended a few years ago, and many for whom the new world was and is just beginning. If you’re at the center of things, the world looks great, and if you feel that you aren’t, it can look bleak. New kinds of writers writing new kinds of books are thriving, old kinds of writers trying new kinds of books might or might not make it, depending on what they do and how they do it. Creativity doesn’t mean the same thing it used to mean. Musicians, artists, teachers, there are so many people for whom the world has changed. I’m letting go of the idea that I will find away to return to my former life, make a big score. That’s magical thinking, as they say in AA, it’s delusional. The newspapers and magazines I once wrote for are gone, academe doesn’t hire full or part-time professors any more for a year or two, publishers don’t pay advances for books that haven’t yet made money. A hard cover book costs about as much as a glass of decent red wine. The very definition of what a book is is changing, the subsidized world is gone, and writers and artists often have a hard time recognizing that they were subsidized. Everyone is in the same boat, we are not special any longer, nobody wants to support us because we are special.
I am getting it and reacting to it. My blog was the first step, then the photography, then a strong and diverse presence on social media, a decision to publish my own e-books with a new agent, and soon, my first podcast. Tomorrow I go to Mannix Marketing to figure the podcast out. I tell my writing students in the Hubbard Hall Workshop (come meet us May 31, it’s interesting, entertaining and free). An analyst told me a few years ago he had never seen a man my age undertake quite so much change, and he didn’t know the half of it. Neither did I.
So I am letting go of the idea that my old world shall return, it will not. My choice is the same as many creative people – change or vanish into the maw, the world of whining, lament and irrelevance. I would not be missed for more than a nano-second if that. I choose to remain relevant as a writer and I want to accept the collapse of my world with grace and change in good faith. The point is not to lament the old world, it died a natural death it was clearly not wanted any longer and could not sustain itself. Newspaper and magazine people went into shock when they saw how easily the new world let them go. Many book writers too.
The creative task is to be part of the new world that is emerging and to help build it. Lots of people are thriving in the new world, they don’t even remember mine. I sometimes grieve it, I loved the life of the book writer, the book tours, the empathetic editors, the powerful bookstores, the standing room only readings, waiting for all the reviews, rushing off to New York and Washington for all of those important interviews. It is fun, after all, to be a big shot, to ride in limos, have big expense account meals, be on TV all day everywhere, have strangers come up to you in distant cities to say they recognize your voice. You feel like you matter. You did matter. I ran up some spectacular credit card bills, if I wanted something I just bought it.
In the new world, that sense of importance and centrality often has to be self-generated, there hardly are any real book reviewers and more and commercial television, like commercial cable has become a kind of cultural sewer, selling sludge to the distracted viewers. Movie stars get on TV but book writers are not welcome any longer. Not flashy enough. Book writers live on the books they sell, not the ones they might sell.
I say goodbye to my world, I never really got the chance. No closure, as they like to say. I am ready for the new world, I have a hunch I will be a part of it. I have lots of stories to tell and lots of people who want to hear them. My blog, begun reluctantly under pressure to support book tours, has become something else, something much larger, the gateway to the new world, part of my passport there, a new kind of living memoir, and how strange and wonderful that is. And I laugh sometimes, I was a writer for Wired Magazine and Rolling Stone, wrote for Hotwired, one of the first blogs on the Internet. And I still didn’t see it coming, even though I predicted much of it. The world is a strange place, we are a strange species.
So thanks to those of you who are crossing the bridge with me, I know you are coping with as much change as I am. Let’s find grace in our evolution. Ours will not be a Rainbow Bridge, legions of cute puppies waiting for us for all eternity on the other side. Ours will lead us into the strange and alien lands of the New Order Of Things, our own version of Oz. I don’t know if witches or wizards will be awaiting us, probably, we will be trawling for likes on Facebook, putting up our boards on Pinterest, broadcasting our podcasts. But I do intend to get there, and I hope to see you all on the other side. I will always remember the Old World, it was a glorious place for me, but I can picture the sweet day I make it to the other side and look back and say, see, I changed with grace and learned humility. I can picture that in my dreams of worlds to come.
