This has turned suddenly profound. I really just planned to bitch and moan about lacking a blog topic. Oh, the places we can go when we start typing.
Goodnight, Tiny Humans.
06 August 2010
BEDA 6: Adventures
It's only day six and already I have no clue what to blog about. I wish I had life experience. You know, like one of those people that make it a point to do something interesting and exciting every day, and then I could sit down and tell you all about it here. But no, I sit all day on the computer, browsing Tumblr, watching Psych, and playing on Photoshop. I must face the facts: I am a giant nerd, and my life is such. So whatever, I'm going to go bury my head in a book, and live my adventures there. I'm going to open up a Word document and live my adventure there. And at the end of the day, I won't have a story to blog about, but I sure as hell can make one up, or enjoy someone else's. And who says I can't get pretend-life-experience from that? If I get that close to a character, a world, an adventure, who's to say I can't take it and make it my own? After all, isn't that what the world of fiction is actually about?
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I'd argue that sometimes fiction changes as much, if not more, than real life experience. Look at Harry Potter. Those books are more responsible for who I am than anything else in my life, real or fictional.
ReplyDelete@Brad Kind of my point, isn't it? You don't really need life experience. I don't need to be in an abusive relationship to understand the fear, and love, and pain behind it. I don't need one to empathize with a character in a book, or even write one for that matter. I also don't need to jump out of a plane to understand the exhilaration and anxiety that comes with it. Etc, etc. Life experience is very subjective.
ReplyDeleteHah, it's funny, because this is what I've been telling you for so long. For so long you were convinced that the only way to truly know anything was to experience it for yourself.
ReplyDeleteJust look at you now.
Oh, how I've grown. But I mean it. Maybe it's the writer in me, maybe it's just human nature. I mean, some people need to do something to understand it. I don't think so. Not for most things.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, there are some things you don't truly need to understand fully.
ReplyDeleteYou gave the example of an abusive relationship. You can know enough about how undesirable such a relationship is WITHOUT having to be in one yourself. Can you ever know how truly horrible and entrapping it is without having been in one? No, I don't think so. You can't truly understand. But that's a good thing. Understanding is painful.
You just know what you need to know. You know that sticking your hand in the fire gets you burned, without having to suffer the burns and find out for yourself.
Well I suppose it can go either way. I mean, would I rather sit here and read about Hogwarts, and the Trio's adventures, or would I rather be out living it all? Obviously the latter, but that doesn't mean that I can't still be content with immersing in a good story, and having the feeling of having had those adventures while sitting right here.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'd much rather be on a wild chase across the country, saving someone that I loved from the clutches of an evil villain, but whatever, I'll just sit here and write about it instead.
I'm still on that adventure, to some degree.
I very much agree.
ReplyDeleteI guess it does go both ways. But the great thing about fiction is that it's designed for you to appreciate that way. Your understanding of it is limited to what you can get from the page. What you can learn from it without being able to experience any of it yourself. The medium is designed that way, obviously. I think that's part of why it's so fascinating.
Fiction is designed for you to take something from it simply by reading. By sitting down with a book, you're absorbing the life experiences of someone who could live on the opposite end of the world, or who could've lived hundreds of years ago, or who saw and did things we can only imagine. And that's why it's so damned important.
Basically. :]
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