Musings (2000 essay)
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| Title: | Musings |
| Creator: | James Walkswithwind |
| Date(s): | January 23, 2000 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Musings, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Fandom of the Archetype is a 2000 essay by James Walkswithwind.
It is part of the Fanfic Symposium series.
The essay's topic is the gift of fandom, and how fandom can help others in small ways.
Excerpts
How useful is a quilt? How does having another -- yet another -- quilt, help anybody?
I guess I've been watching too many emergency rescue shows lately. I'm thinking that if I'm not saving someone's life, I must not be helping, must not be doing all I can.
I know we can't all be firefighters, we can't all be doctors or police or social workers or clergy. We can't all have our neighbors' lives or souls in our hands, to cradle and comfort and carry out of the depths. Some of us are teachers, builders, nurturers, artists. Some of us save lives, some of us feed souls.
But how do I know I shouldn't be saving someone's life? How do I know that writing these stories, these pieces of third-hand literature, is where I ought to be? How does fanfic save anyone's soul?
I remember watching TV when I was young. Hardy Boys, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica. Every cartoon known to kidkind, through the 70s and 80s. Typical US middle-class child, watching TV regularly, two or three or four hours a day.
How can I justify celebrating, in fiction, the time I wasted then?
I fully believe that television has contributed to some of society's ills, today. Too much time spent in front of the tube, brain switched off, parents in another room or another building not knowing how many deaths and crimes the child has seen. How can I write something which makes use of those very shows we are glued to, hour after hour?
I don't really have to justify it. I have already realised that TV isn't the source of ill. It's what you do with it that causes problems. I watch TV now in order to inspire myself to write. I watch it less, sometimes, but sometimes I still sit for hours, absorbing everything I see and hear. But then I turn it off and I turn it into something else: fiction, or conversation with someone about how they did this and why they did that. It becomes a forum, not an excuse.
But I'm still left with a question. How do I justify doing what I do? How does fanfic help anybody, except turn them onto another show, give them yet more hours to spend watching the tube, escaping and enjoying and being entertained?
I write now to make someone laugh, make someone cry, make someone glad they spent a few minutes or hours reading a story. I'm an entertainer, and I guess that's OK. I'm a quilter, which means I help decorate, help give gifts, help keep someone warm at night. They would have survived without the quilt. You folks would survive without fanfic.
You might not enjoy it as much.
Maybe that's why flowers and birds and everything alive comes in colours. If we were all shades of grey I bet we'd survive just fine. Insects could still camoflague themselves, plants could still absorb light. (OK, actually I'm not so sure about that o ne. Maybe my analogy would work better if I said "shades of green"? Well, whatever. Just go with me here. You can probably see where I'm going with this, anyhow.) Why bother with the colours?
Why bother with artists at all?
What happens when the firefighter has come home, exhausted and disheartened and wondering if he or she has the energy to go back again?
What if he turns on the TV and watches a game, forgets about the suffering and the stupidity and the bad luck for awhile?
What if she watches something that makes her laugh?
What if they read something erotic that makes them smile, laugh, cry, turn to someone and say 'let's get naked'?
How many lives were saved because the people responsible felt like doing it again that day?
I guess we all have our roles, all have our contributions to our worlds. We all have ways to make life better for those around us. I might not ever hold a bloody hand, dripping from wounds and shaking with pain. But if I reach out, I might find that I can hold a bloody hand, smeared from the day's chores, ready to be washed clean.
Is this noble? Is this arrogance? To hope that my writing can give someone the desire to push on? Ease them out of their pains for a while? Make them giggle? Why do we have colours, anyway? Couldn't we live just fine in shades of green?
I have a quilt, given to me when I felt as if I were completely alone. I don't know if she knew I felt that way, when she handed the quilt over. I'm sure my great-grandmother probably never dreamed it would do more than keep someone warm at night, when she made it. It never saved my life, but it made me feel loved.
So maybe next time I sit down to quilt, or sew another block, I'll remember that maybe, someday, someone will wrap themselves in a green and blue and yellow quilt and cry themselves to sleep, finally believing that someone who has never hurt them, also loves them.
Maybe a quilt can save a life. I suppose it depends on what you do with it.