The Price of The Gift

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

There is a price for “gifts”. This is a given of fairy lore, of course, but it’s also a known thing of the human brain.

As humans our period of having our every wish catered to is limited, and frankly I think we learn early that our wishes and needs won’t be perfectly met. After all, I remember as a mother having to ignore my babies as they fussed once I knew they were clean and fed. Why would I do that? Because what they wanted was play and the limitations of my own adult world wouldn’t allow me to spend the whole day playing with them, of course.

And after the infant stage everything we do comes with effort and time to learn. Which means we learn everything is a price.

Hence, when we find something awesome that seems to be handed to us for free — be it a thing or an ability to do some things — we tend to want to know what it’s going to cost us. If we didn’t there wouldn’t be all sorts of proverbs telling us that we definitely shouldn’t look too closely at the gift. I’m particularly struck by “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” because we all know what happened to Troy when they didn’t.

Which brings us to the Bardic Gift. I’ve been told — repeatedly — this week, by very disparate things that this is what my particular curse should be called. We’ll examine that in a minute.

I came to this post because I’m still reading The Voyage of The Spaceship Beagle. For various reasons, but mostly because the cough came back and apparently I was sleeping like fine hammered carp, it’s been heavy going. Last night I gave up and had the strong anti-histamine (more on that in a moment) syrup which knocked me out, and it’s amazing how much focused I am today.

Just in time to hit the middle story (I gather it’s three) which hinges on mind control for various purposes. This made me growl and got my hackles full up, and it took me a while to figure out why. (I mean, it’s a book. It’s not physically biting me. Heck, it’s on the kindle, and my kindle is almost tame.)

I have an intense dislike of anything that distorts my mind. I want to know that however my mind is functioning, even when under my own influence and therefore trying to dredge the depths of depression and the shoals of the seas of unwarranted despair, it’s my own. Partly because I have over a half century of checking for and adjusting for my own peculiar quirks, like depression. I know the black dog is there, I know its growl. I’m aware of its bite. I know how to muzzle it. And if I can’t I know it’s the sign of something else, like physical illness or not sleeping very well. (At this point the cough is probably allergies. I need to clean my bedroom. It’s the only place the cough persists and not coincidentally one of two rooms in the house that hasn’t been thoroughly cleaned.) But if you throw an outside factor at the mixture, I might not even be aware of it till things spin out of control. This almost happened in fact with both adderal and montelukast. The second is particularly puzzling since you’d think a brain trained to detect depression would detect depression. But this was alien, strange, unaccustomed depression. And it almost offed me.

Anyway, my aversion to pain killers and mood adjusters and yes ADD meds and asthma meds with side effects extends to almost disabling levels. Like refusing to take pain meds after surgery and therefore — apparently — prolonging the time of recovery until the doctor lassoed me and made me take meds. (On my own terms. It was more weaponized Tylenol than anything else.) Or, refusing to take the effective anti-histamine syrup, because I’m afraid it will have some effect (most anti-histamines turn off the writing) until I’m a zombie, walking into walls from coughing all night.

Now, I’m not an irrational being. Actually, I overthink everything to the point of paralysis. So my aversion is likewise not irrational.

I intensely dislike being under the influence of drugs that affect my mind, even in relatively small ways (that’s not either Adderal or Montelukast) because they affect what I still find incredibly pretentious to refer to as my “Bardic Gift”.

What the heck is a Bardic Gift? Well, I don’t know what it is to you (tovarisch.) Or even to other people possessed of (by) it. But I know how it manifests. And I suspect I know where it comes from.

The human mind is a mechanism for making sense and meaning out of chaotic reality. Some of our minds are just particularly afflicted with the need to create overarching, intricate mental machines of sense and meaning. We do it as we breathe, and it comes from such a basic level of our minds that we do this at a sub-conscious level. Literally as most of the time we’re not aware of it till the finished product presents itself with force and urgency to our conscious mind, fully finished and demanding we do the work of parturition to present it to the unsuspecting and fortunately largely uncaring world.

Fortunately? You say. Oh, heck yes, because the manifestations of this curse that I’ve identified fall on every artist, sure, but they also hit hard on the founders of cults, or creators of compelling, fully-formed, internally consistent political theories that sweep a lot of other people into the machine of sense and meaning. This is dangerous — do I need to tell you that? — because not all cults are on the side of light and, humans and reality being chaotic, almost any political theory that demands everything make internal sense and everyone fit into a niche in its vision spins more and more out of contact with reality. Such political theories fill mass graves.

Now, yes, this means that great advantage could perhaps be derived to the world in general by filling those mass graves with people like me. In theory. In very broad theory.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t work worth a damn. And to the extent you can cause it to work it plunges the civilization engaged in it into a cycle of repeating stupidity that amounts to civilizational Alzheimers.

I suspect it happens a lot to tribal civilizations, where it’s both possible to identify such people with much greater accuracy — In a smallish group you know which family is prone to wandering around with its loincloth on its head muttering about how we must paint ducks yellow so they don’t take over the world. And you know it’s hereditary — and eliminate an entire genetic strain. I suspect they’re eliminated over and over again. (Mostly under the guise of witch-hunting.) Until the tribe … remains in the neolithic for millennia. Which is why innovation and higher achievement comes with letting the oddlings move away and do their thing. Like, you know, our improbable, amazing nation. (Yes, there’s something seriously wrong with the harp in the illustration. do you really want me to spend the rest of the day autistically fixing it, or do you want me to finish this post and go work on the novel? Right.)

But we do have an example of a society with writing falling into this cycle too. China became so obsessed with getting rid of everyone with the bardic gift that they have not one but several periods in which they executed grandmothers that told stories. It came back. It is a natural tendency of the human brain, just exaggerated so it can be recreated by genetic drift. And they did it again. If you study their history (not recommended if you’re a depressive) it’s like watching grandad who has forgotten his own name continuously watering the cat and giving tuna to the house plant while walking around in someone else’s underwear and muttering how he’s the center of the universe.

So, you can’t eliminate us. And we can’t stop doing what we do, for the simple reason that it’s how our brains function while they remain alive. (I have had friends be disabled by serious health events, and I myself have been battling an intersection of serious issues for 20 years now. (Yes, it is getting better, but you only see it in the bird’s eye view. This year I can do things I couldn’t last year, but I’ve been so sick I’ve done very little. Still, it’s gains.) who still have the compelling stories — or other stuff, but most of my friends do stories — show up on whatever their schedule used to be. And they drive them insane, because–) The price of the gift is to use it.

We are given for free something for which most human beings have to struggle and the price is we have to do it. (Keep this in mind. It’s important.)

There is a plurality of creatives who are consciously creative and work hard for it. Most of the time I can tell when consuming the product, and I suspect most people can. But they are also more often really successful because they can control it and shape it to “what is selling.” Those of them who know we exist (many refuse to believe we do and think we’re lying) hate us with a purple passion, because they must painstakingly assemble structures that appear fully formed and moving to us. On the other hand, they can walk away from it when it stops paying, or when the field is so embuggered that it kills your soul to stay in it.

But we can’t. Because the vision that presents itself is so enormous, so clear, so immediate and pushes so hard that the only way to stop from creating is to kill what we are. And the only way to do that — in my case — is to feed the depressive cycle until I come to as close to death in life as I can.

I suspect most people who suffer from this use a similar mechanism to damp it, because Herr Professor Jordan Peterson has stumbled on the certainty that “Creatives who stop creating start dying.” He’s correct on that. If you take nothing else from this post and you’re a creative in this way — i.e. have the bardic gift — please, I implore you, take this: Creatives who stop creating start dying. I don’t honestly care if the creations of your gift are good or not, if you can make money or not. I don’t care if you have very little time because your real life job eats your life, I beg of you to start carving out some time to create. (Oh, and if your bend is either cult leader or political leader, unless you’re fighting on the side of letting individuals be individuals and not imposing your oh so compelling vision on them, please deviate it to writing. It’s usually possible.) TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE AND SANITY PLEASE START CREATING, no matter how slowly. (I have reason to believe at the extreme ebb of the dampening you start sending signals that make your body ill. Yes, I know that sounds newagy, but I am also convinced that’s what I did about 20 years ago, when I was trying to walk away from writing.)

Because the price of the gift is to use it, but you can channel it, it is vital that you stay in control of your own mind, so you can channel it in the right way. What is the right way? Well, again, I don’t know about you (tovarish) but in my case I try to use it not to drive people to despair or suicide. And to stir them away from the more poisonous of compelling bardic visions that involve restructuring society towards authoritarianism. Even if the thing isn’t exactly under my control, I usually can control it enough for that. (It’s a negotiated peace. I still have to keep certain elements in, or it’s worse than denying the gift.)

I’ve heard of other gifts, non-bardic. Grandma, for instance, had a healing gift. And she had sharp warnings about what happens if you don’t use it, which I gather is exactly the same as what happens to my kind, only hard and fast and with spikes in it.

Anyway — all this amounts to — I’m really leery and will always be of anything that takes control of my mind, because however misaligned and weird it is it is mine, I know it, and I have some idea how to navigate it so it doesn’t cause harm. But giving control to someone else–

Well, now. If you knew that the someone else was perfect and wanted only the best for you it would be tempting. (This is why a religious belief is protective for my kind, again so long as you keep it within bounds. My people fall into insanity all too easily. Because we do believe there is a being who is perfect and only wants what’s best for us. And (as someone put it recently) He doesn’t dress like either Jim Jones or Mao.) But there is no such human. Even the smartest and with the best intentions aren’t fit to control others, because each of us has highly personal biases and phobias that aren’t entirely under our own control. (Which is why totalitarian societies always, inevitably, become shit-holes.)

So, you must keep your mind as free of influences you can’t account for as possible. Or I can. Though I suspect the anti-histamine is less harmful than not sleeping for a week straight.

And it’s a balance. And I must walk it. Because I got this gift for free. And I need to use it as best possible. Or it will spin out of control and eat me.

Now for those not thus afflicted who’ve been reading this with horrified fascination (LOL. Trust me, it’s worse from the inside.) you too, if you’re living in this wonderful, chaotic, ever-inventing land of ours, were given a gift.

You were given Liberty for free. And the price of the gift is to use it. Or you start dying.

Use your liberty and do not let it be unnecessarily be encroached upon or deviated. (The “necessary” is up to each of us to determine. Like the juggling of lack of sleep with anti-histamine dulling of the senses.

And use it. Use it joyously and extravagantly. To create, to innovate or (simply! Ah.) to cretae a life you want to live the way you want to live it.

As we begin this long weekend, meditate on your gifts and how best to use it.

Stay frosty. Stay free. Stay creative.

*And for those wondering: Yes, sometimes I use blog posts to convey ideas that would be best conveyed in short stories. And this post might yet be a short story at some point. It’s just right now, mid-revision I don’t have time to go walk into yet another world. But it will come I suspect. Because this is complex and intricate and yeah, best conveyed in an emotional past. However this will stave it off enough for me to stay sane while finishing the monster novel. Until then:

Sincerely, SAH*

76 thoughts on “The Price of The Gift”

  1. IIRC, Plato’s Republic included “killing the story tellers”.

    The story tellers were disliked by the “Masters” of this “Republic” because they told stories that the “Masters” didn’t like.

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    1. Now, now. He thought prohibiting them would do the trick. Down to having mothers and nurses tell the babies only approved stories.

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      1. True, he preferred “forbidding” the “wrong stories” to be told, but I still suspect that if they told the “wrong stories” that he’d kill them.

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  4. When you get father into the story you learn the mind control is more or less accidental, which is almost more horrifying. It could also be seen as a cautionary tale, since the control simply exaggerates the rivalries and suspicions of the various factions aboard ship, which in turn reflect the faction.alism (drat WP) which threatens to destroy their parent civilization.

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      1. Ah.

        it occurs to me that Van Vogt was, perhaps unconsciously, proving his own point: in a culture poisoned by factionalism and personal ambition, even the man dedicated to “saving” the culture from itself becomes a dictator because his own ambition drives him into it.

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  5. I’m lucky. I need to create, but it doesn’t really have to be any specific thing. So I can burn it off in the day job, or working minis for the table top, or loadouts in games. Or even my occasional off shoots into writing. But nothing is chaining me to any specific thing, so I can browse and enjoy.

    I do think stories should treat mind control with a good bit more horror than they usually do. I remember some short about buying ‘love’ potions we had to read in school. The rest of the class was agog at how casually the alchemist was suggesting the buyer would be back for an untraceable poison at some point, and I’m like ‘Dude, he’s going to erase her personality and substitute the one he feels like. How is that that far off from killing her and replacing her with someone else?’

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    1. Several years ago, I read a review about a collection of stories about “how you create a Utopia”.

      The reviewer was shocked about how many of the stories used “mind control” of some sort to create the Utopias.

      IE “Mind Control” is OK if it done in a Good Cause.

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      1. IE “Mind Control” is OK if it done in a Good Cause.

        –

        Very much like the Leftist or Elite: “Mass Murder” is just dandy if done in a Good Cause.

        If you can’t control ’em, just kill ’em. Gaia demands human sacrifices.

        Much of mass media is mind control. Effective considering how many people got the clot shot.

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        1. I find the idea of “Mind Control” worse than the idea of “Mass Murder”.

          Sadly, I suspect the Left would find “Mind Control” better than “Mass Murder”.

          IE “But we didn’t kill them” as an excuse.

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      2. I do recall one of the *topias is a place where everyone should be miserable but has been mins controlled to be perpetually happy.

        Oddly, that was used as a reason why the Leagues of Votan is grimdark enough to fit the Warhammer 40K universe. The Space Dwarves are happy, because they are each constructed from the ground up to enjoy doing what they were made to do.

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    2. “need to create, but it doesn’t really have to be any specific thing. So I can burn it off in the day job“

      –

      I was the same. My programming, for pay, not just because, was my creative outlet. After I was furloughed from first post college timber job (along with 100+ others), I started knitting and crochet (can’t wear knits), quilting (gave away a few dozen baby quilts), needle work (mostly cross stitch, also gave away), some sewing (15 teddy bears and 30 sock rabbits for nieces and young cousins), tried homemade shirts for hubby (didn’t say I was good at it), and even macrame. But once I started programming I dropped all of that. The one thing I’ve never dropped is reading fiction. Between programming jobs, and after I retired I never got back into the crafts. Thought I would after retiring, but 9 years later, no.

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      1. Sometimes I can do some creative coding or scripting at the day job, but mostly it’s tool, process, or people wrangling.

        So I delve into old school math, graphics, system and radio programming at home. Help the spouse populate the Plex server. Playing with microcontrollers and retro gear. Miss the big antenna’s, need to adapt to smaller or mobile.

        Used to read libraries of fiction, but I’ve burned out ,so going back to actual hard science and history. Any science fiction or fantasy is from gaming.

        “Do you get to the Cloud District very often? Oh, what am I saying, of course you don’t,”

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    4. My (seasonal) day job is the post-production end of a photography studio, so not only do I get to use the creative side, they love it when I do. Like, I am basically in charge of the composition of team photos from individual poses when they’re photographed that way, and when I decide that it looks better when there are some custom poses in the front row, the response from my job is “ooh, that looks fantastic!” rather than “that doesn’t meet our standard format.”

      And on that note, to relate it back to “the computers aren’t coming for my job yet,” an acquaintance told me about a photo that was similarly composited from another studio, where one person was literally twice the size of all their teammates. Yeah, that’s why we aren’t using a program to create these teams. We’d spend more time fixing them than we do making them from scratch.

      When I’m off? I find other things to do. In the last two weeks I have made several rosaries (wire beading), refinished the top of a small side table, am in the process of refinishing some flagpoles (I want them dark, like espresso, so multiple layers of staining), have been practicing music a bit, have been working on photo slideshow-movies… and really, I’m not using my time wisely. Too much online stuff. Kids have one more week of school, and then oh my. I have to figure out how to keep THEM busy too.

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  6. I hate mind control stories because it robs the controlled character of agency, so why am I reading it? Babylon 5’s last season tiptoed that line because it didn’t let us in on one of the characters being mind controlled until he learned to fight it. JMS just let us think that the character had gone off his arc by doing things that were off-kilter for him.

    As to the bardic gift, I’m not sure if I have it because I have so frequently channeled it into strange streams that all peter out pathetically. My wife definitely had it in everything she did. In fact she challenged an author who had just claimed to his audience that a writer must outline. She got him to admit that he didn’t actually do that, he just thought that was the best advice for beginning writers. When her health and despair made it too difficult for her to write something sale-able any more, she instead bought miniatures on Etsy and delighted their creators by making up stories to explain what they were and how they were displayed like two monkeys on beach chairs that she christened Mischief and Mayhem or the winged elephant she named Mothica complete with backstory about being a fabric sommelier living in a Paris loft with her rabbit companion Bunnykins.

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    1. When that thread came out on B5 I mentioned on the Compu.serve Babylon 5 forum that Garibaldi’s behavior suggested his personality traits were being exaggerated and got an “attaboy,” from JMS for noticing.

      if you want a matter of utterly trivial “woo-woo,” I had a dream about Garibaldi picking up Sheridan in a black pickup truck at the beginning of that season. Given how that plot line worked out, it was symbolically prophetic.

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    2. Any society dealing with reliable psychic abilities (or reliable magic) has to have some means of detecting / nullifying them in use. That was a plot hole you could drive a truck through.

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      2. Apparently in the B5 universe, only Telepaths can counter other Telepaths which is why Psi-Corps exists.

        Of course, since Psi-Corps has since the beginning of Psi-Corps has controlled the non-telepaths who “are to control Psi-Corps”, the Earth Alliance hasn’t developed other means to control telepaths.

        Note, according to the Psi-Corps Trilogy, the first head of Psi-Corps was a secret Telepath.

        Mind you, there should be a way to discover via mechanical methods that a person is being mentally controlled by a telepath but it’s very possible that Psi-Corps itself blocked any development of such methods.

        Of course, Black-Mailing people would be easy if you have telepaths searching for black-mail material.

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        1. There was apparently a version of the “Sleepers drug” that killed Ivanova’s mother, that Sheridan forced Bester to take…. by threatening him with Minbari telepaths.

          “Nothing like a level playing field to ruin a PsiCop’s day, hey Mr Bester?”

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          1. Nod, powerful Minbari telepaths were a counter to a powerful Human telepath.

            IE Even the Minbari didn’t have “devices” that could stop telepaths.

            Of course, the Vorlons might have had such “devices”, but they created telepaths as weapons against the Shadows.

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  7. because I’m afraid it will have some effect (most anti-histamines turn off the writing) until I’m a zombie,

    Been there, done that, until the military put me through 7 years of multi-allergy, anti-allergy shots. (Maybe that’s why the clot shot didn’t kill me right off?) Anyway, all of my breathing allergies are mostly gone to the point that I only take one or two antihistamines every couple of years. The shrimp allergy I have no idea why I got it, or why scallops, clams, crabs and lobsters are okay (and I’m not complaining about those!)

    The only thing wrong with the harp is someone left it in the steam bath, and then some sumo wrestler sat on it.

    That’s not my grandad, sounds more like our former fauxident.

    Hitler needed more encouragement as an artist. He also could have used some pushing in other literary directions while he was in prison. The world still may have gone to hell in a handbasket, but he wouldn’t have been the acme of evil for it.

    I’m not a raptor rescuer, but I did stop and put a fledgling gray owl up out of easy reach from the OTHER predators around here. He was funny when I came up to him with my welding gloves, puffed himself up as big as possible and hissed, “I’m a big mean deadly owl. Fear me!” Except he was already the size of my cat. He’ll be huge when he grows up.

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    2. Oh, that is an awesomely adorably grumpy fledgling. May it eat many, many mice to come around your place!

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      1. My name is Kuari, I’m not very scary
        Someday I’ll be scary and I like mice!
        My name is Kuari, I’m not very scary
        But I don’t think you’re scary, I think you’re nice

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  8. I am emphatically not a bardic-gift kind of creator, and I don’t understand it in the least. It’s deeply weird and I can’t erase the suspicion that all you “gateway writers” are just making the whole thing up (even though you’re not…probably…maybe). I’m also jealous. The highest pinnacle I’ve ever achieved and probably ever will (even writing, for which I do have a real talent) is thoughtful-craftsman style results; worthy enough, but your way seems a lot cooler and probably more fun.

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    1. Please don’t be jealous. No seriously. it’s not just “have to do it” it’s the lack of control. I’ve been kidnapped by a mega book for going on a year now. I HAVE OTHER THINGS TO FINISH.

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      1. I feel you SO HARD on the “I have other things to finish.”

        …I mean, I’m going to trudge through the sequel to the learning exercise, which wasn’t supposed to actually work long enough to finish, much less have a sequel!! Mainly because it’s words flowing, and that’s better than no words flowing.

        But I have Combined Ops to write, three books of it started or planned!

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        1. Combined Ops to write, three books of it

          My wallet fingers are getting itchy. When you’re ready, they’ll be too. :)

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      2. *Waves in rueful agreement.* The Words of the Night. Three years, counting the research.

        …And must write sequel. Fortunately the plotbunnies seem to have decreed I can improvise a lighter more D&D-ish isekai as a treat in the meantime….

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  9. I’m about as creative as a stump, but I fully understand the need to be in control of my own mind. The wife likes to say that I’m not a control freak, I’m an in control freak, and that only of myself I care little what others do.

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    1. yeah, but the problem is I stupidly set up to sort things in there, then got sick. So there’s piles of stuff and dust for…. 7 months…. yeah. Good thing it’s a 3 day weekend, no?

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      1. Have you tried an ozone generator? I got one earlier this month and one of the first times I used it, got rid of a persistent musty smell in one room. Might be worth a try.

        If you do: close the room up as tight as you can, and STAY OUT for a couple of hours. Ozone is not something to play around with.

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        1. The filter in the great(ish) room has one, though I can’t notice much difference. We have an electrostatic filter in the bedroom (last I looked, they seemed to have fallen off the market) that does wonders. On low, it keeps the bedroom reasonable and is quieter than my not-so-quiet CPAP sleeping. ($SPOUSE gets the ear plugs when it’s bad. I occasionally sleep with my mouth open, and a full-face mask was a miserable failure. Maybe if I can find one in XL. ResMed goes to L only, and it rode up to my lower lip.)

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    2. Over at Cat Rotator’s Quarterly (TxRed’s blog), she and I were discussing the problems of AIs who can’t leave your words alone.

      As I told her, I want an AI prompt to tell it “If I want your advice, I’ll read it in your electronic entrails!”

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      1. Yeah, “AI” for writing is all the frustrations of the way the autocorrupt-style spellcheckers have evolved to be more and more “helpful”, but with persistence and a fair simulation of an intent to “fix” your efforts.

        And one thing that icks me about the current chat-style “AI” is how sickeningly saccharinely obsequious they are – “What a fascinating and intelligent question you have asked! In fact, if Earth’s moon were made of Jello brand pudding…”

        I mean, sometimes a question is just dumb, but everything is always the best question evah!

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        1. They are made to be that way because 1. normies want it like that, and 2. no one wants to deal with the response when a model tells a normie that they are being an idiot.

          You can change this behavior though.

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  11. If your house has forced air heating or cooling, it could be that the vents need to be cleaned. We once had the vents cleaned in our last house, and it did make a difference.

    I don’t suffer to the degree you do, but I have many of the same conditions, to a lesser degree. Desensitizing allergy shots in high school helped. I’m still allergic to many things: grass, mold, trees, dust mites, animal dander, etc. Each new one is a loss; wool, lilacs, etc.

    I once walked into a rug store; it was like walking into an allergy chamber. I don’t think people without allergies know how it feels when your nose is telling you, “we’ve gotta get out of here!”

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    1. Cleaning the air vent will stop the mold issue. Other things to try:

      • Get rid of any pillow more than a year old. If feathers/down, replace with polyester. Put an anti-allergy cover over it. Don’t keep pillows more than a year or two.
      • Use mattress covers. Wash bedding, including blankets and duvets/covers, regularly.
      • Get rid of carpeting in the bedroom.

      Use a nasal spray. I recently switched to a nasal rinse with saline solution, and it works great – maybe it’s flushing the pollen and particles out of my respiratory system.

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    2. oh yeah.

      What really bugs me is when people in medical offices don’t seem to be aware of what perfume can do to asthmatics. I know it’s an invisible disability, but people in the field should be more self-aware.

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    1. No, that’s the next political rant… or explanation of the state of trad publishing, lo, how it has fallen.

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  15. As for “the price is you must use it”, weirdly, the worlds in my head seem… content… if I just visit them a lot. Yes, I should be writing them out and putting them into the world. But not doing so isn’t burning me up.

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  16. “almost any political theory that demands everything make internal sense and everyone fit into a niche in its vision spins more and more out of contact with reality.”

    My current WIP (further in the plotline) has the MC frustrated and angry because people and things stop making sense. Then he realizes, that’s something they never always did, anyway. There are a few things that do not make sense in the story, and won’t for a long time. Intentionally, I mean. As plot hooks. I think the nonsensical stuff is what makes the readers identify it as being more realistic, while still being squishy sci-fi (not sci-fu stupid autocorrupt).

    People being wrong, things having to be re-evaluated because original impressions were wrong, lies, obfuscation (sometimes intentional), and constant cliffhangers seems to be a pulpy staple for a reason.

    Side note, this reminds me of a story I read (or maybe I wrote it- it was a weird time) where the main character’s body slowly degrades as he becomes increasingly able to create. Eventually, on his deathbed, he manages to save the world, and goes on maintaining it for an implausibly long time. The next book, which I never got (or never wrote?) was supposed to be the plucky young heroes facing calamity, and trying to re-engineer how he did it. Creativity, and price.

    Also, this sort of thing seems like why we as humans feel like whenever something good happens, we’re waiting for the other shoe to fall. Had an unexpected windfall? Expect and unexpected car repair, or home emergency. That sort of thing. The feeling that good things never come alone, that bad things are always right on their heels.

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  17. I can’t not tell stories. They come. Like the inscription around Karl Jung’s door: Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit. Replace “deus” with fabula, and you have it. [Vocata atque non vocata Deus aderit]. Bidden or unbidden, stories are present.

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  18. The flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. – Lao Tzu

    Considering how old that saying is, I suspect there are multiple examples from every generation, in every culture, all around the world. Anyone of GenX that was into sports saw that in the late 80s with Bo Jackson.

    Most of us have a talent that no one else ever sees, but if we work hard we can grow, and mold, and hone that gift into something useful. I hope we all discover our own talents and learn to turn them into something joyful. I pray for you every day, Sarah.

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  19. I was that kind of creative for a long time. Then I discovered that another kind of creation was just as compelling. Now it’s seasonal. During the summer I create gardens, grow plants; during the winter I write obsessively. It gets odd–when I can’t get outside in the summer the need to write ambushes me. If my computer goes down and I can’t work in my garden the garden plans come out.

    I am still creating, it’s just a different kind of creation.

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    1. writing isn’t the only creative thing I do. It’s just the hardest one. So it’s the first thing to give way in times of stress.

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  21. Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind talks about the efforts in ancient Israel to suppress “the nabiim who nabi,” which sounds like the policies you attribute to the Chinese Empire. On Jaynes’s account what you are talking about could be considered the partial survival of an archaic mentality dominated by pattern recognition functions.

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    1. Bicameral Mind is an interesting book that is wrong about almost everything in the various fields referenced in it. Guaranteed to make language and linguistics professors incandescent with rage, for instance.

      It did inspire a lot of research in opposition, though.

      To create a big theory or model is useful, even when it doesn’t convince people in the fields affected by it.

      I basically opened the book, found something experientially erroneous, tried to find something better, and eventually gave up. So I have respect for those who got all the way through.

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  22. The brightest days in recent memory are when I was releasing a song a week. Something happened in the lead-up to 2020 – I lost the muse. Or, it left me. There was an something to my creative process that seemed to come from the gestalt of everything that started fading in 2019. During 2020-2023 I couldn’t bear to create anything for the world that was inhabited by the Eloi. My anger at having my world destroyed stopped me every time. “F*&k those people, they don’t get music from me”.

    I got twisted. It culminated with a 15-mile bike ride that I kept getting more rage filled with every lap of the 3-mile course when seeing all of them out clogging my route like tourists after almost 2 years of soft lockdown. I didn’t realize how hard I was pedaling, turning and banking ….

    and then the front wheel went out from underneath me while banking through a turn on gravel with over-inflated tires and a warped rim and I ate the ground at 15 mph. Shirtless, no helmet, in shorts. I had road rash and gravel stuck in the bloody mess that was my skin from my shoulder to my ankle on my left side. Sprained left shoulder. I couldn’t ride for a while, I couldn’t run.

    I had plenty of time to think about how I got there.

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    1. Ouch. Not that the bike helmet saved me from road rash, or the time I put my front tooth through my upper lip. Getting chunks of tooth coming out over the next few months was a solid reminder not to do what I’d done. (Rode too fast on a “high traction surface” that resembled ice when the overdone plant watering got too it. Touched the brakes and whee!)

      Betadine and neosporin for road rash helped a lot.

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    2. I hope you healed up well and I hope the music comes back for you. Perhaps find individuals for whom you can make music? It’s not for them. It’s for a person who does not induce rage.

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  23. Thank you. Everyone needs a reminder (kick in the seat of the pants) occasionally. We are all prone to wander on rabbit trails.

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  24. The first time in my life when I *couldn’t* imagine things was when my mother died. For weeks I lost my escape valve.

    lots of stress the past five years have also been a big disruptor.

    say, Sarah, could you give us a list of recommended Jane Austen Fan Fiction? 😉

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