The Pen, The Paper and The Wire

Monday, 19 October 2009

I will do pretty much anything to avoid writing new songs. And over the past few months, it seems I'll also do anything to avoid writing a blog entry.

It's not without a mild sense of shame that I make that admission, but nevertheless, I take some small comfort from the fact that - at least - it's the truth.

The excuse, as always, is that there are no ideas, there's no inspiration, there's nothing to write about at the moment. It's a weak excuse really, because there are always ideas and inspiration and things to write about. It's just that they only tend to come when you take that first bold step of putting pen to paper and opening whatever internal doors you've been keeping closed and locked.

But that physical act of putting pen to paper, that's the most difficult part. And my refusal to do so is nothing more than a base fear that nothing good will actually come from the act. There are rafts of words floating through my mind, but I don't know where they're going and to start writing them down opens up the possibility that they will actually go nowhere, which is not something I like to think about.

Still, writing this now, it seems almost laughable that I can't bring myself to engage in such a simple task and additionally, that I've invested it with such heavily weighted gravity. And I should make it clear that I'm not angling for sympathy, or even understanding. I just find it interesting that we can know such intricate details about ourselves and still persist in acting as if we're powerless to change.

I stopped watching television years ago, around the same time as I stopped listening to the radio. Neither medium, I felt, had anything left to offer me. I didn't stop intentionally and it wasn't an attention seeking statement of some kind. It was just something that very gradually happened.

When I first moved to Melbourne, the house I was living in at the time existed in a television signal dead zone. Very poor to zero reception most of the time. So eventually, I stopped trying to fix the aerial and found that I actually felt better without the signal coming through at all. A couple of years later, I went one step further and sold the TV outright.

Eventually, of course, the fact that I couldn't watch films hit home and so the TV necessarily returned. But the aerial stayed resolutely unplugged.

I mean, you know what it's like. There's an ocean of junk in the airwaves and there's only so much you can tolerate.

By-the-numbers TV shows with product placements where the ideas should be, advertisements screaming at you to buckle down and buy, the celebration of the vacuous and the bland, hours of shoddy and superficial journalism, rampant sensationalism ... and while these are certainly not the defining characteristics of all television, they do tend to make up the lion's share of content.

In short, it's not all that difficult to lose your belief in the medium.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, something comes along that restores your faith in just about everything.

My first reaction to The Wire was a kind of baffled, reeling and joyous confusion. How was such a thing possible? Who could have conceived and produced a TV series of such depth, wit, soul and majesty? The audacity of it, the sheer furious brilliance, was almost too much to handle. That anybody could utilise such a seemingly spent force as network television to produce something approaching the upper echelons of high art was mysterious and thrilling.

What I love most about The Wire is its absolute refusal to apologise for either its message or the delivery of that message. It is one of the most courageous productions I have ever seen on television, full stop.

It is intelligent, complex, sad, angry, heartfelt, hopeful, passionate, contradictory and often bitterly, darkly funny. To me, it is akin to watching someone painting the largest canvas imaginable with the most vibrant and bold brush strokes humanly possible, then cutting it up with a bowie knife and burning it and finally making a beautiful sculpture from the ashes. It is honestly that good.

The series aims for, if not actually attains, perfection on every level. The script, the characterisations, the acting, the stunning photography, the deliberate and sensitive placement of music, the realistic representations of relationships, families, sex, drugs, violence, streets, institutions … the very genuine passion the creators seem have for Baltimore city and its inhabitants ... every detail is treated with the most extraordinary attention.

But perhaps the most powerful element of The Wire is that it forces your mind to work. You cannot afford to not pay attention. The minute you let your mind drift, you're likely to miss an essential piece of the puzzle. And even when you do pay attention, the relentless waves of dialects and slang and rapid fire dialogue can leave you completely lost, wondering who is talking to who about what, or relying on the next event to inform your understanding of the last.

The hidden benefit of this is that when you do get it, when you really understand the words and the meanings, it feels like you've been rewarded for your attention, because the moments of impact have a genuine effect. You become psychologically involved in the story.

Rapid, intense and concentrated thought at this level is not generally part of the plan when you sit down to watch television. You're usually looking for a temporary, easy escape. But rather than providing you with a way out, The Wire essentially snares you in a trap, which happens to be the very same trap that its characters are in. And just like its characters, you are suddenly forced to calculate, reckon, unravel, question and ultimately survive.

Astonishing works of creativity such as this can have a dual effect. They can inspire you to continue with your own work, or they can dwarf you to such a degree that you wonder if it's even worth continuing.

I'm choosing the former option. If someone has the fearlessness to create a work on the scale of The Wire, then what excuse could I possibly have for not attempting the simple task of writing a song?

Finally, after months of inactivity, I feel that I can finally take that dreaded step of (once again)
putting pen to paper.

But only, of course, after I finish watching the next episode of The Wire.