November 21, 2013

If you're an artist, your rudeness is excusable

Dear M,

Apart from the fact that we can take revenge on people through our writing, writers have one more advantage. (A writer's life is pretty much miserable most of the time, though outsiders assume otherwise, but these are the little joys we can count on.)

Again, this is applicable to all creative artists.

In general, non-writers (by that I mean people who are not mad about writing as the rest of us) consider writers a slightly-disoriented, absent-minded, genius-type lot, bordering dangerously on insanity, and can be excused for their unfathomable (or embarrassing) gestures and speech. (The kind of kurta-wearing, cloth-bag-carrying, hair-in-disarray, spectacled genius scientists that we get to see in movies.) I hardly think it's true these days when every second person is a writer. Writers and thinkers have become fab-looking and fashionable too. However I believe this old-school assumption gives us an advantage. We could be mysterious, forgetful and annoying when we please - we have a real valid excuse. In fact, we can be just rude and walk away talking to ourselves, and we could almost hear them murmuring to themselves, "oh, these writer types!"

The spouse forgives the writer's weird unbearable behaviour and action for the same reason. After all, writers have to be a little eccentric so that they can produce something worthwhile for us to read.

Yes, that is a safe bank that we can rest on, when we make mistakes. They live in their own world, our friends think, that they cannot be bothered with the mundane priorities of this world. If you look gloomy and do not interact with others during a party, they will attribute it to the failure to find an exciting climax for your story (that's how heroes in films behave when they cannot find a climax - and the best misery that writer-heroes face is a failed climax).

Your lapses are forgiven if you are a writer. People will shake their heads and tell themselves, Poor thing, he/she is a writer. It happens.

Love.

Like this post on Facebook!

2 comments :