Writing: Who are we today?

When I have fears that I may cease to be.

Okay, so Keats died last night. It wasn’t fun. I finished reading Andrew Motion’s biography of Keats. He was alone and miserable and stuck on some awful diet that only allowed for bread and anchovies. Anyone who was worth their salt as a doctor should have known that this is not the breakfast of champions. I don’t care how inferior your technology is. You don’t starve a man. Plus, bleeding him. Who ever thought that the cure for all ailments would be to stick some leeches on a body and suck out the blood from the man’s body? What’s wrong with those people.

He was literally starving and he also had like no lungs left and he was separated from the love of his life and he had no money and he couldn’t write or read or go outside and, since he trained to be a surgeon, he knew exactly what was happening to his body and when it was going to happen. He was also completely sure he was a failure as a writer. The similarities to my current circumstances is somewhat unavoidable. I’m not dying or starving….although I have had a cough lately. Oh, crap. But I am pretty much a failure as a writer thus far.Oh crap. I just coughed.

I’m dying.

I’m consumptive.

Shit.

Jerry!! I’m consumptive!!!! Jerry. I’m telling you jerry.

One of the greatest insights we have into John Keats’ life and his personality is his letters. His letters are some of the best descriptions of his life and what he felt and how he lived. His love letters to Fanny Brawne, while considered obscenely feminine and whiny by some, are some of the most honest intense letters he ever wrote. They have pretty much convinced me that he’s the love of my life. He might be dead but still……..It’s a long distance relationship.

I left this big so you can appreciate the writing and also maybe read parts of it.

I was thinking about all his writing and everything that we learn from what he says about his struggle with writing and his struggle with women and self-identity. To me, it is such a great gift, to write a good letter. The sheer number of letters he wrote is astounding to me, but then again it was the only mode of communication he had if he wanted to talk to anyone.

Then, I started to wonder about our generation. Since the telephone and the computer and all these great technological advances are at our fingertips, we don’t write letters hardly anymore. I used to try and write letters but no one ever responded. I’d write a long letter and seal it with this cool letter sealing wax and write with my ink pen (yeah, I’m a little weird) and then I’d get a text:

Cool letter.

It’s sad to think that we might not leave such valuable insights behind. For example, Clara Schumann the great female (woo!) pianist and Johannes Brahms were long believed to have had a love affair while her husband and composer Robert was off going cray cray. The big deal about that is that we don’t actually know what went on with Clara and Johannes because they burned their letters to each other, mostly. Everyone wishes they hadn’t because we lose such a great a story and insight into the life of such great composers etc.

So, what do we have? We don’t have anything like letters to record our lives by. Back when the so called Cockney School was in full swing, writing and reading was the biggest tool to bettering writing ability and Intelligence. They held competitions on who could write the better poem in a given amount of time. They were like a think tank of poetry and art and Beauty. The world became their schoolroom. To hear them discuss music and literature and art and politics in their letters is amazing. The ease with which they switch from one to the other is incredible and the way they manage to transcend from one to the other makes me catch my breath. Look at ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’. Keats takes an urn and involves Greek mythology and politics and his own personal struggles with old and new and death and life and success and failure. All in one little poem.

When I asked myself what my generation had to offer to continue this tradition, the pessimist in me immediately said Nothing! We Have nothing! our generation is too preoccupied with stupid material things to ever be as great as Keats and his generation was. And then I thought about Midnight in Paris and how Owen Wilson wanted to back to the twenties and whoever Marion Cotillard played wanted to back  up to the Belle Epoque.

Basically, I decided that I am not quite sure I have quite perfected time travel so I’m stuck here. Would I rather be in the eighteenth century writing letters and shamelessly pushing that tart Fanny out of the way so I could selflessly nurse Keats back to health so we could get married and magically write wonderful music and poems and plays and etc forever and ever? Hell to the mofo yes. Do I realize that won’t happen? Yes.

What I have is the internet. Eventually, when people die, they will put together collections of their emails and make them into an e book and people will read them on their kindles and text each other about them. Yuck. But, the internet is powerful. Actually, instead of being limited, we should be unlimited. We can communicate with anyone in anyplace at anytime. It is possible for us to create our own Cockney School right from our couches as we watch Murray kill Federer in our pajamas.

This blog and all blogs is also a way of leaving a sign to posterity. Not that posterity would ever be concerned with my posterior. This revelation gives me a little more desire to persevere to write and keep this blog up. It seems hard to believe that Keats could ever be as doubtful as I am now, but it must be true. He too knew what it felt like to be cheated by Fame. Especially since Shelley and Byron ran around complaining and shagging everything that moved while effortlessly making money and being happy no matter what.

Here’s looking at you