"People who say they don't care about what others think of what they write are fooling themselves, or just dishonest," a friend, once told me. People write because they want to be read; there can be no other reason.
But then, how to explain diaries? Those, at least putatively, are meant NOT to be read, except by the writer himself (or herself.) One can argue that diarist secretly hopes to be discovered, or that the diarist wants to go back, some day, for a glimpse of what they were like in years past, at some forgotten, lost time of development.
Personally, Mad Dog, has always been with Joan Didion on this: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means."
So, for years, Mad Dog's blogs have served that purpose and he has paddled onward, against the current, undaunted by an indifferent world. This blog has two followers, and a typical blog post may garner 2,000 views, most of which are likely robots from Brazil, Vietnam and India.
So why bother? Simply to organize and examine one's own thoughts?
Walking by "Speakers' Corner" in Hyde Park, London, years ago, Mad Dog drifted over to a crowd which had formed around a twenty-something, a man with "ginger" hair, who had attracted maybe eight people. Most speakers were speaking to less than a half dozen, but this guy had attracted maybe a score of people, and I wondered what he could be saying to warrant such attention as people were hustling to get to work and on with their days. His pitch was that he had important things to say and they were so important he refused to say them to a small audience, as such brilliance of his needed a large audience--Baryshnikov does not dance on street corners. Rachmaninov does not play in smoke filled dives full of cigarette smoke and people talking.
The very act of casting his pearls into the pigsty, not necessarily before swine, but just put there, was destructive of the value of what he had to offer.
It was a neat bit of irony--he was disparaging the worth of the very people who had stopped to listen to him because, he was saying, by their numbers alone, they were unworthy.
Watching buskers like Allie Sherlock, who sings as people stream by her Dublin corner, ignoring her, or pausing only momentarily in a fleeting acknowledgment of her talent, I can understand his point now.
Joshua Bell played his violin in front of the entrance to a Washington, D.C. subway, and federal employees, being what they are, hustled to get to work on time, ignoring him. One little boy was mesmerized, and his scolding mother dragged him away, unaware that he had recognized and responded to something really extraordinary, which she had missed.
Annie Hall's lovely voice is lost amid the sounds of plates clattering and people calling for beers in the nightclub.
And that's the lethal poison to real brilliance, not jeers or catcalls, but simple indifference.
Not that Mad Dog is in the "brilliant" spectrum--but the point is, if a tree falls in the forest but no sentient being hears or listens to it, was there even a sound? The sound waves may be radiating, but they mean nothing unless there is a receptive device to make sense of it.
It's not the "Sounds of Silence," but the silent sounds.
In the past, Mad Dog has rationalized his output by recognizing that he is not seeing his positions adequately presented in The New York Times, The Atlantic or the New Yorker--three wonderful platforms hosting, for the most part, thoughtful, insightful writers, but writers, nevertheless, who are only writers, who--with some exceptions--are not doctors, lawyers, engineers, i.e., they are not people who have come to their ideas by personal struggle, but only by reading and talking with other people.
But now, an occult phenomenon has changed things: Somebody has managed to simulate Christopher Hitchens' voice, his written voice, and to address a slate of important topics as Hitchens would have done, had he lived. (Just to make it fun, whoever it is has simulated Hitchens' spoken voice as well.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHkN9GUaFJU&t=213s
Mad Dog has been unable to ascertain who has managed this youtube Channel feat, "Hitchens Resurrected," and it is likely the final product has had some help from artificial intelligence, but, in the end, Mad Dog has realized, with this channel going strong, there is really nothing left to say, at least, for the moment.
It is all said so much better on this youtube thing, by whoever it is, speaking in the style of Hitchens, but, more importantly, saying what needs to be said, what Mad Dog has not come close to organizing as well.
So, for now, Mad Dog will retire, sit back and simply read the Hitch, only to return if Mad Dog needs to add something Resurrected missed.
