Dumbfoundery, and art--

It's time to tear myself away from a lively game of facebook table tennis over "Dan Brown's 20 worst sentences" (do read them--if, like me, you have not peeped into a Brown-book, they are illuminating and amusing in the worst possible way!) It's time for me to visit my blog--hello!--where people are busily passing by without so much as a new wave from me. In the course of batting about comments on Dan Brown, I noticed or re-noticed several things that ought to make us all dumbfounded.

• One, people do seem to think (even other writers) that one is agonized as a writer. 
• Two, people rush out in great numbers and buy Dan Brown when they could be rushing out to buy books by much better writers), and this suggests something curious about the state of American arts and culture in the 21st century.
• Three, even people in the arts (actors, composers, and so on from my facebook friend-list) run out and buy drek out of sheer sizzling curiosity and lemming-fever. 
• People evidently have zero trouble in suspending their disbelief--even the belief in their own intelligence--upon opening certain books.
• Tripe is edible. People will pay for it and then eat it and make fun of the stuff (after it has already polluted their minds).

Now, what can I say about these cold, hard bits of news from the Dumbfoundery?

• First off, I would never write if writing was agonizing. Never! As I just said somewhere in that facebook thread, writing is a great, piercing joy. The good kind of piercing.
• I don't write for filthy lucre, even though I think it would be quite nice and even right were wordsmiths of merit to be paid for their work. I write because wordsmithing is my gift. Because writing is my vocation. Because a flood of words drowns me in the most delicious way. Because dancing with a reader is the best dance. Because I reach out my hand to you through the beautiful artifice of words in best order. 
• From a worldly point of view, it is quite mad that people like me go on, year after year, striving after what is strong and beautiful--and even giving up good jobs so that they can devote more of themselves to the art. 
• Like salmon, people can swim against the tide in order to be creative and add beauty to their own culture. We are all culture-makers, and we choose what our culture will be when we buy a painting or a book or purchase tickets for a concert.
• Readers and followers of the arts can support strong, beautiful books and art and so build the culture they wish to see, one worth handing on to their children. 

I knew all that already, but sometimes it helps to sum up the reality of the times, and how one doesn't quite fit. You probably knew it too. We're in an era when the idea that "we are what we eat" is continually stressed. But we are also what our minds and spirits embrace. And we build our culture out of either shifty sand or stone.

Meeting me elsewhere: Excerpts from 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, The Foliate Head) at Scribd. Thaliad at Phoenicia Publishing. (Thaliad is on sale during Poetry Month. Hardcover is only available through Phoenicia, and the paperback anywhere.) See page tabs above for clips, links to reviews, and information on those brand new books plus The Throne of Psyche from 2011, and more.