WRITING vs Desperately scratching on the walls of the NY Times trying to get out
(This article is Part-2 in a series; for Part-3, go here; for Part-1, go here.)
William Gibson is a writer.1 He may have disappeared into his own mind, I don’t know. People may have labeled him a cultural landmark and walked away from him. Not sure about that. But he’s a writer:
“The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he’d cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn’t there…”
“Home was BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis.”
“Program a map to display frequency of data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic threatening to overload your simulation. Your map is about to go nova. Cool it down. Up your scale. Each pixel a million megabytes. At a hundred million megabytes per second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta.”
Put that up against this:
“Yesterday, officials from the Treasury Department said they were cracking down on the ability of businesses and the wealthy to manipulate the value of their assets to lower their taxes. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo2 estimated that the crackdown should yield about $50 billion in the next decade.”
“The struggle to resurrect a government that works for ordinary people rather than concentrating power and wealth in the hands of a few was on display in President Biden’s announcement today that, in the absence of congressional legislation, he is trying to streamline the process of applying for U.S. citizenship for certain undocumented spouses and children of U.S. citizens, allowing them to apply for legal permanent residency without leaving the country.”
Turns out the “writers” trapped inside the NY Times style book aren’t trying to get out. They’re quite comfortable serving up major tranquilizers.
They have webs; and words and phrases stick to the threads, and form sentences on their own. The sentences spool out. Thousands of possible realities blink out and die in the process. But no one seems to notice, so it’s all right.
William Gibson is cash and carry. You pay for every sentence you read. The price is reasonable. The house cleaning of your thoughts.
You needed it. You didn’t know, but now you do.
Agree with him; disagree. It doesn’t matter. You get carried away. Floated. Singed.
An old castle disintegrates. Replaced by cities you never heard of.
The NY Times writer is soft rock. Smooth jazz. You’re strapped to a wheel and turned. But no one beats you. They rub you with a feather.
You think you’re being provided with content. That’s the double illusion. One, there is no content. Two, no one is providing.
Where you gonna go? To a new street, or the old one that doesn’t exist?
-- Jon Rappoport
And let us not forget the New York Times lies and has propagandized people throughout its history. They covered up Stalin crimes during the forced Ukrainian famine, for example.
A writer writes! Right?
Whatever subject one chooses to write about, or perhaps even invent. The writing which is alive and captivating will have it's words and language ooze life from the pulsating flows and rhythms of it's unique passages. It will pull the reader into a new and exciting world far beyond the worn-out and stale. The reader will feel the electricity of the writing transpose into their being. That's enlivening, That's writing!
As opposed to the soporific drivel, a NY Times journalist timidly dribbles onto the page. Which renders the reader into a state of narcosis.
Thanks for another smashing article Jon!