On Cohesion – A Review
I see life in cycles. And to be honest, that’s most likely a problem I’m going to have to face eventually. You might remember me defining the different “epochs” of my life from an older blog, in it I should have mentioned how you can’t generalize or label something, because then you degrade that thing into something generic. People really mean it when they say everyone is unique, and I tend to take it a step further and acknowledge that nearly everything is unique.
There are countless reasons why I idealistically embrace uniqueness. Part of it is how much beauty lies in variation. Asymmetry, for example, forces variation. The concept of asymmetry is foundational in art, as its what gives paintings movement, it’s what makes buildings and skylines stand out, and it is the entire basis for photography.
But all that being said, just because you shouldn’t boil something down to its core and generalize it and just because I prefer a world that’s unique, doesn’t mean there can’t be a unifying thread amongst every unique snowflake. What I’m trying to say is essentially: I think “themes” are important.
Good art, in my opinion, is unique, but also cohesive. The beats in a narrative are called such for a reason. They’re additive, but they’re also repetitive. Albums like Tyler the Creator’s IGOR or Watsky’s X Infinity, or even Green Day’s American Idiot all play on the same themes (both through style and literary meaning). That is what made me come back to all three of these albums multiple times. Watsky’s album seamlessly blends the songs together, even the last song ends with the same sounds as the first, making the album loopable, replayable an infinite number of times. Hence the title, X (or times) Infinity.
And so, while I can’t exactly say “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake me Up When September Ends” are about the same thing, I can say they have the same theme, what happens when a soul is crushed.
I’ve been stuck on the concept of theming lately, because I noticed that all of my stories I dropped were themeless, but all of my stories that reached their literary conclusion had a strong theme that tied everything together. My favorite poems that I’ve written weren’t the ones with all the clever writing I could muster, but were the poems with strong theming from start to finish.
The same goes for even things I enjoy. When a song seems to be just as directionless as me, I can’t enjoy it. It feels lifeless. The same goes for TV shows and movies.
Smarter people than I have talked at length about why the last two seasons of Game of Thrones were a letdown. And most of them focus on how the show stopped following its own rules and that the show stopped caring about its themes.
A theme doesn’t have to be limiting. It’s not a trail marker. It’s the mountain the trail is on.
I’ve been wondering how I can get to a place where I can write blogs that I’m proud of again. I’ve been trying so hard to get back in the habit of creating… not what I used to, but creating the same feeling I had when I was writing regularly. And I think that that starts with making sure everything I write has a theme.
Now, it’s not easy to pick a theme. Trust me, that story I’ve been updating on here every once in a while? That thing? yeesh. Hardly a theme in sight, and I’ve been working on it for over a year.
So, hopefully, if I can stick to my guns, the blogs going forward will be a bit more unified. It’s going to make it easier to write them, enjoy them, and enjoy editing them. Because, well. You might notice that all my depressing random blogs that really go nowhere in particular are the ones with the typos. How can I expect someone to enjoy a blog if I can’t even bother rereading it more than twice to check for errors?
And then he let out a long sigh.
So. Here’s to a better start… right before I’m about to be busy at work again.
Oh well!
Hope you’re having a great week. Happy Monday, and I look forward to writing some more real soon.
-Connor
