Saturday With The Sea of Stories

Hey, guys!

I've realized something lately. If you've got no one to share your life with, if you're alone, than you might as well be broke.

Wait, no, that's a line from Annie. Sorry, the stress of the play must be getting to me. But I HAVE realized something! The whole concept of a rigid schedule, where I have to talk about a specific something, has kind of deterred me from blogging. I'm going to restart the Scratchpad tomorrow, but other than that, there'll be no more scheduled things over here! Instead, I promise to write something, anything, on this blog every Saturday. It could be about anything. Time travel, Lost, writing, peanut butter in a tube, it'll be a surprise! (Thanks to CBR's Greg Hatcher for the "weekly column"idea He's awesome, and you should click on this link and look at his stuff.) So, the question here is: what will I be talking about today?

Well, today I'll be talking about a specific quote from a book I've never read.* It sounds weird, but bear with me.**

During LA X, the season 6 premiere of Lost***, Desmond is shown reading a book called Haroun and the Sea of Stories. The fans of Lost, knowing the writers' tendency to show characters reading books that mirror future events in the show, immediately took to Google and searched Hauron. The specific quote they found? "What's the use of stories that aren't even true?"

So, today, I'm taking a crack at that question. Is fiction important, and, if so, why should we care about it?

First of all, fiction is going to be my main source of income, so, yeah, that's pretty important.

Oh, you meant "why is fiction important to people other than you?" Well then, you really should be more specific next time. In my opinion, fiction is important because it's a way to explore humanity without actually exploring reality. Let me clarify.

Time for a little poll: how many of you have read a book, read a comic, watched a movie, or played a video game, and then afterwards thought just how much of a manipulative, no-good, toxic piece of donkey crap a certain character is? Another poll: how many of you have done the reverse of the above, seeing a moment so undeniably awesome that you want to run up and hug the character? Last poll: how many of you would be comfortable with either of the situations in real life?

Survey says...

*DING!* None of you would!

See, guys? There's you're answer. As humans, we tend to think of ourselves in terms of extremes. That person who just cut in front of you in the line for the movie ticket? A piece of flaming scum with the brains of an ant and a black hole for a soul! Chuck Norris? A perfect manifestation of all thing pure, good, and awesome whose tears can heal the sick, and who can fight any force of evil with both hands behind his back! We choose this line of thought because it eliminates any "gray areas". There's choice A, or choice B. It's hard to believe that Hitler ever did a single good deed, or that George Washington ever did evil. It's hard for us to think of ourselves as a mixture of "good" and "bad, "yin" and "yang".

That's exactly why we need fiction. To ponder ourselves in a distant, detached way. To think about Earth through the lens of another planet, to think about America through Camazotz, to think about religion through Superman, justice through Batman, peace through Wonder Woman. There's no use to stories that aren't true, because when it all boils over, every story contains truth.

Tomato

*It's in my library que as we speak, though

**I just realized how funny "bear" is as a homonym! :D

***How's the Lost watching coming, Mrs. N?

SIDENOTE:

I apologize for spacing issues in this and in all subsequent posts. Blogger adds the spacing gaps, and I can't fix them. I've contacted Blogger's support, and hopefully it'll be fixed soon.